Thirteen species

I had an unexpected spare hour, the afternoon was warmish but overcast and for some crazily prescient reason I decided to grab my camera and sit outside to watch the birdbaths.

Superb Fairywren

I didn’t even have time to properly set up my tripod before the activity began. There was not a moment without at least one bird at the birdbaths. Usually there were several birds, often there were several species! I didn’t know where to point the camera and there were many shots where the bird I was focussed on was photo-bombed. It was wonderfully hilarious.

I always love seeing fairywrens and this male, along with three females, visited a few times during the 55 minutes I had to spare.

New Holland Honeyeater

New Holland Honeyeaters are colourful characters to watch, noisy, assertive and either slim-lined or fluffed up if they are caught shaking water droplets from their feathers, like this one.

Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Another species that is usually very slim-looking is the Yellow-faced Honeyeater, so you can imagine how I smiled seeing this one looking like a pompom with a beak.

Brown Thornbill

Brown Thornbills visited several times too, rapidly darting around as they bathed and preened. Often I’ll see Striated Thornbills with the browns but they didn’t appear this time.

Red-browed Finch

Red-browed Finches love the beautiful birdbath a friend made for me. This birdbath is shallow and kept on the ground. It is often used by fairywrens and scrubwrens as well as the finches. The finch looking at the grass hopped down and picked a blade – I’ll share that photograph another day.

Spotted Pardalote

A splash of colour turned up as I was photographing a couple of other species. It’s always a delight to see Spotted Pardalotes!

Grey Fantail – juvenile

Adult Grey Fantails and a couple of juveniles were also frequent visitors during the hour. They prefer the shallowest birdbath on a pedestal. I especially like the rufous brown colours of the juvenile fantails.

Eastern Yellow Robin

I look through my lens with my right eye but I make sure I keep my left eye open so I can see a little more of what’s going on around me – the field of view through my long lens is extremely small. If I’d had my left eye closed I wouldn’t have seen this Eastern Yellow Robin turn up to bathe in the deep birdbath on a pedestal. I keep a rock in that bath to ensure that wet birds are always able to climb out safely if they get waterlogged.

White-naped Honeyeater

Just when I was thinking things would have to start slowing down this White-naped Honeyeater arrived at the shallow, pedestal bath. I always let birds drink or bathe before I click the shutter button as I don’t want to risk frightening them before they’ve done what they came for.

Eastern Spinebill

Eastern Spinebills are just about always visible in my garden as they bath, or feed on Kangaroo Paw, correas and other nectar-bearing plants. I enjoy the way they hover to feed, like our version of hummingbirds.

Silvereye

And then the Silvereyes turned up, happily splashing about in the water regardless of which other species were also bathing.

White-browed Scrubwren

The White-browed Scrubwren shot is from a previous day as it didn’t stay long enough for a new photograph. The scrubwrens usually use the shallow bath on the ground but this time they use the shallow pedestal bath. That has just made me wonder if it’s a little warmer up there as it gets a bit more sun… probably not. The thirteenth bird was a Common Blackbird, the only non-native bird that popped in for a quick visit.

I took over 400 photographs in 55 minutes, some are beauties, others are record shots but the overall experience was exhilarating. I was blessed.

If you have a moment I’d be super grateful if you would send a note to the email addresses below to advocate for a ban on duck shooting in Victoria. Many MPs have publicly spoken in favour of a ban but the issue is being discussed now and the more pressure from the public the more likely we are to win. I believe we are close to joining WA, NSW, ACT and Qld to ban this cruel, archaic and unnecessary ‘sport’. Nature-based tourism, including bird-watching, has been proven to provide more financial benefit to regional areas while also being much kinder towards our diminishing wildlife. Your email can be brief and addressed to these ministers: sonya.kilkenny@parliament.vic.gov.au gayle.tierney@parliament.vic.gov.au ingrid.stitt@parliament.vic.gov.au lily.dambrosio@parliament.vic.gov.au and the Premier daniel.andrews@parliament.vic.gov.au If you’d like more information about the issue please check my ‘Season of Shame’ posts in the right-hand sidebar.

Thank you so much, happy birding, Kim

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