Category: Western Australia

This little series concludes a few minutes after sundown, looking at some “premium real estate” on the western side of inner-urban Perth’s Lake Monger.

I think the new overnight-roosters have supplanted the immediately-preceding “tenants”: respectively, ibis and corellas.

This post’s photo was taken just after sunset, less than two minutes after the previous post’s.

If I had pointed my camera at the pictured branches a few minutes earlier, they would have been “empty”, and most of the pictured birds would not yet even have flown into our field of view.

There is a deal of grace here, too!

Ibis are among more than a few birds which appear “awkward” when on terra firma  – or on slushier ground, or enjoying the local tip, sitting atop your roof, or “dealing with” a rubbish bin – but are decidedly elegant, aloft.

At 6.20 pm on the last day of March 2024 we were standing  beside the western shore of Lake Monger.

The setting sun had just “disappeared”, now hidden by the low slope behind us.

However, in the sky above us, the last of that day’s direct sunbeams were able to reach the underside of the pictured ibis.

It was just beginning its descent.

A few seconds later it joined a rapidly-growing number of roosting “bin chickens”, settling in for the night.

The very same bird can “look” very different, depending on the observer’s knowledge/ignorance, that observer’s particular preconceptions/prejudices, and the bird’s current activity/stance/position.

And if one is photographing a bird that is both much-loved and widely-loathed, it is easy for a photographer to pander to – or to defy – “negative” or “positive” preconceptions about it.

This little series features one such species.