Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Members of the kingfisher family are typically very confident; these predatory birds are not much preyed-upon.
Fish are not invariably their primary prey, and not all kingfishers live near rivers or lakes.
Pictured is the most ubiquitous of Asia’s kingfishers, Halcyon smyrnensis – the white-throated kingfisher.
By itself, this perky individual’s demeanour was almost enough to qualify it for inclusion in this series…
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Presumably, the living lizard had no sense of the pictured circumstance’s synchronicity, let alone any awareness that a human passer-by might find it quirky or amusing.
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Technically, the country in which Alice Springs sits really is a desert environment.
It is, however, far from barren.
Central Australia is beautifully vegetated – botanically “rich”, not “poor”.
Trees and flowers are not its only beautiful plants.
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This post’s photo is far-from-perfect.
Nonetheless, I think/hope it conveys a sense of just how fleet-and-flurrying (and splashy) is the to-and-fro of zebra finches at a drinking/bathing “station”.
In arid regions such “stations” can themselves appear and vanish, very rapidly.
The pictured pool sat at the base of the eastern wall of Jessie Gap on 14 June 2023. (photo is copyright Doug Spencer. Jessie Gap is a short drive from Alice Springs)
Musically, I agree with the listener who suggested that if J.S. Bach had heard Chris Thile play, there’d be a set of Bach mandolin suites.
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Two questions arise when considering all three birds in today’s featured image.
The obvious one: “clearly, their wings are not black, so how do they merit their name?”
The other one: “why is Himantopus himantopus in the Guinness Book of Records?”
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The featured image looks north/ish, to the silhouetted edge of the Namib’s “sand sea”, circa 40 kilometres east of Sossusvlei.
I took the photo at 7.37 pm – Sossusvlei’s sunset time on 21 November 2022.
This little series’ final image was captured 7 minutes later.
Had I had available the necessary time and technology, I would then have loved to listen to a particularly sublime musical creation which I first heard in 1989, and which amazes and inspires me, still.
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South India’s large terrestrial mammals hog the limelight, but its insects, amphibians, birds and reptiles are equally worthy of appreciative human attention.
The non-mammals offer an enormously higher number of individuals and species, with a mind-bogglingly diverse array of shapes and colours.
Butterflies abound.
The pictured individual is a member of this region’s (probably) most oft-sighted butterfly species.
One CommentThis post’s musical bonus really is astounding, I think.
November 4 2022, at Okonjima, was one of the most rewarding days of our lives.
The immediately-preceding post’s leopard encounter was its most electrifying moment, but we also saw another leopard, giraffes galore, cheetahs, many other animals, and some beautiful country.
Circa 7 pm, we adjourned to a hilltop, to enjoy “sundowners”…and/or the actual sundown.
I took the featured photo at 7.06 pm.
The other images, below, are in chronological order.
One CommentImagine (no, not that song) this:
The Tardis delivers a very surprised J.S Bach into the present day, with no briefing.
He finds himself seated at an interesting “new” keyboard – a grand piano.
Atop it is a device, pre-loaded with a diverse selection of music/s from the second half of the 20th century.
He is given absolutely no “background information”.
The printed instruction to him says, “press button to listen to these pieces, then improvise upon whichever one most pleases you”
JSB is intrigued by I Am The Walrus.
Q: what would he do with/to it?
A: perhaps, something like what you are about to hear….
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All four images feature the same moon.
However, as is true of just about anything observed more than once, “our” moon offers an infinite number of different “faces”.
The featured image shows a “blood moon” over Perth’s Lake Monger at 9.31 pm on 31 January 2018.
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