Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
It is very safe to assume that on 26 March 2025 the pictured grassy “runway” experienced more landings, take-offs and taxiings than did Flinders Island’s airport.
At the airport each such action was a “one at a time” affair; in the paddock, invariably, each such event simultaneously involved a pair of partners-for-life.
The featured photo and the one below were taken within a few seconds of each other, and they show the same couple.
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Cape Barren geese are monogamous, and a “breeding pair” usually forms a life-long bond.
During the breeding season the pair focus almost exclusively on each other, their nest and their eggs/chicks.
After breeding season (generally, in tussocky wild places on offshore islands) Cape Barren geese usually fly to grassy places.
These are often on south-coastal, mainland-Australian farmland, or paddocks on the larger offshore islands.
In “grazing mode”, the geese are more generally-sociable.
However, as you can see in the immediately-preceding chapter’s photo, even within grazing “flocks” the pair-bonds are conspicuously evident.
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The world’s rarest goose lives only in Hawai’i; click here to discover more about the Nene, aka “The Hawaiian Goose”.
The second rarest goose species – pictured above – lives only in certain southern Australian coastal places.
Like the Nene, the Cape Barren Goose (Cereopsis novaehollandiae) very nearly became extinct; by 1950, both species appeared to be “doomed”.
However, conservation efforts in the 20th century’s second half proved successful.
Neither species is now on the IUCN’s list of “threatened” species.
Certain key physical and behavioural features of Cape Barren geese are evident in the photo.
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This post’s photos were both taken from atop Red Bluff, circa midway along Flinders Island’s east coast.
No bird is visible in either image.
Both the wide angle and “normal perspective” images – respectively, 34mm & 58 mm – look to Babel Island, which covers just 440 hectares.
During one large seabird’s breeding season, this small island is home to a deal more than six million individuals!
You are looking at the site of the world’s largest shearwater “colony”.
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None of Australia’s 10 fairywrens are “true” wrens.
However, all are truly beautiful.
3 equally beautiful species: superb fairywren, splendid fairywren and lovely fairywren.
The last-named lives only in near-coastal parts of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula; the other two have much wider ranges.
When southeastern Australians wax lyrical about “blue wrens” they usually have in mind the “superb” species, whilst a southwestern Australian is probably thinking of the “splendid” kind.
On Flinders Island all “blue wrens” are “superb”, albeit members of the island’s own subspecies of Malurus cyaneus.
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Three of Australia’s nineteen to twenty-one recognised “finch” species are “firetails”.
(Australia has the world’s most “collectible”/“beautiful” finch species, but some members of the human species do not regard Australia’s finches as “true” finches)
Arguably, the finest-feathered firetail is the one that naturally occurs only in a small portion of a single Australian State.
Within its range, this species is neither rare nor threatened.
However, remarkably few humans have seen this bird.
An even smaller number have ever managed to see one, properly.
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Both photos were taken within a few seconds of each other.
The pictured individual appeared to relish dip #2 even more than it had evidently enjoyed its first immersion, five minutes earlier.
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Chapters #39 through #41 feature the same individual; #39’s photo was taken immediately after that morning’s first sighting of him/her.
S/he was so sodden as to be unrecognisable, in terms of species or age.
The featured image, above, was taken three minutes later.
I then assumed that our hero/ine was relishing the morning sunshine’s drying power… and would soon be airborne.
I was wrong.
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#40 will answer the headline’s question!
The very tiny star of this and the next two chapters was photographed within a single five minute “window” on the morning of 09 February 2025.
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This chapter’s three previously-unpublished photos show the same individual.
They were taken within a single minute, on the morning of 07 February 2025.
Above and below, this grey fantail had just emerged from what soon proved to be the first of two immersions.
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