Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Unmistakably, the pictured individual is an adult male Forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
The tree he is trashing (but fear not: in the longer run, the apparently “ravaged” tree will in fact be all the healthier for the cockatoos’ efforts) is less than one minute’s walk from where I am currently sitting, at home.
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You may be less than surprised to know that this post’s image is not the photo that I had envisaged/intended!
Once a bird is airborne, one fiftieth of one second can prove a surprisingly long time – long enough to transition from “look at that bird!” to “nothing to see but sky”.
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As you can see, the head of the male of this subspecies is – beak excepted – a study in “basic black”.
And, as you will see in following posts, even if the flash of an individual’s tail – or part of his/her chest – is all you can see, it is very easy to identify an adult red-tail’s gender.
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This post’s photo was taken just one lane away from yesterday’s featured image.
As was also true yesterday, the individual you are looking at is definitely a female Forest-red-tailed black cockatoo.
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Pictured above is a small part of an artwork which occupies the entire lane-facing side on one West Leederville residence’s back fence.
It is a lovely, loving salute to/depiction of Calyptorhynchus banksii naso – the Forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
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I loved the little moment which the image captures.
Had I been in front of the mother and daughter – and thereby made my presence intrusive – the moment simply would not have happened…at that moment, at least.
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A heron (or egret) in hunting mode delivers a fascinating, repeating sequence of events.
For unpredictably short or long periods the heron is a study in concentration and stillness, until that stillness is suddenly shattered by the bird’s speargun-like attack.
The prey – usually a small fish, crustacean, mollusc, amphibian or insect – is swallowed, rapidly.
The sequence then repeats…
For obvious reasons, a photographer cannot “capture” this behaviour from a very close vantage point, directly in front of the heron’s beak/“speargun”.
However, one can sometimes get surprisingly close, “from behind”.
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For a giraffe, drinking is as necessary as it is for any other mammal.
The very act of positioning oneself to make drinking physically possible is, however, an enormously more delicate, demanding task for a giraffe than for other mammals.
Giraffes’ approach to a waterhole is always slow, tentative, hesitant…and in a group.
Anxiety and hyper vigilance are especially evident at the crucial moment when a giraffe has to decide that it is now “safe” – or not – to get into drinking position.
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I took this photo in the latter part of an amazing three hours, which had begun shortly before sunrise, well within Jamnagar’s city limits.
Jamnagar, in western India, is a whisker inland from the Arabian Sea, in Gujarat.
Nearby is what bills itself as the world’s largest petrochemical plant.
You can’t see any feathers in this photo, but its humans are watching and/or photographing birds – water birds of many species, in profusion…all thriving in a far from pristine, definitely-urban wetland.
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Many birds can swivel their heads across a much greater arc than we humans can.
This is good news for bird photographers; a “from behind” image does not always lack the relevant bird’s watchful gaze…
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