Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Superb Fairy-wrens and Splendid Fairy-wrens both deserve their names.
The former – Malurus cyaneus, pictured above – is the “Blue-wren” most familiar to humans who reside in Australia’s southeast.
The latter – Malurus splendens – is the Blue-wren most commonly seen in Australia’s southwest.
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Photographically speaking, birds on the wing are – in equal measure – irresistible, humbling and frustrating.
Their irresistible/frustrating aspect is especially apparent when a photographer attempts to capture/convey how a bird launches itself into the air, or returns to earth/tree-branch/rooftop/ledge/water’s surface…
“Successful results” are guaranteed to be rare events, and one’s “successes” usually prove “qualified” rather than “total”.
This post’s image is one such qualified success…
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Reportedly, this species – a southern African arid/semi-arid savannah/grassland specialist – will sometimes fly 120 kilometres from its nest, in order to find water.
Happily, for many Burchell’s sandgrouse this is no longer necessary; boring humans – well, humans who sink bores – have proved a boon to Pterocles burchelli.
Named after an English naturalist, they are somewhat pigeon-like in appearance…but not in their abilities and behaviour.
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Dead yaks reputedly provide rather more than half of the food eaten by Gyps himalayensis, but many members of Homo sapiens have also been devoured.
“Live” humans, fear not!
These very large raptors are scavengers, not hunters.
For countless human generations – via so-called “Tibetan Sky Burials”, in which religious rites are meticulously conducted, but the recently-deceased are not buried – Himalayan Griffon Vultures have done high-altitude humans a valuable service.
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You are looking at Sturnia pagodarum – so named for its alleged habit of perching on temple pagodas in south India.
One of the oft-seen, more handsome starlings/mynahs, it is commonly known as the Brahminy starling.
The pictured individual was delivering a full-on vocal performance at 7.46 am on 05 March 2023 in Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka.
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On any day in well-wooded parts of southern India you can reasonably expect to see kingfishers, more than once.
They do not only eat fish.
Accordingly, trees overlooking ponds, lakes and rivers are not their only favoured places.
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Just one week ago we were enjoying our final early morning safari in Karnataka’s Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, before a long drive to Bengalaru (formerly Bangalore) and our longer-again, two-flights journey home.
To an Australian visitor, what you can see above is an utterly amazing, very “exotic” sight.
To a local person who is very familiar with this national park, it is a perfectly ordinary circumstance.
Such an “amazing”/“commonplace” duality is a tag that applies to a great many things in India…and Australia too.
(try to imagine how “utterly unlikely” an emu, a galah, a kangaroo, or a blooming kangaroo paw must look to someone who has never before encountered any of them)
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Delightfully perky as is its “post-punk” crest, an adult male Indian flycatcher’s signature feature is the prodigious length of its “tail”/tail feathers.
Evidence suggests that here, size does matter: apparently, individuals with longer tail feathers enjoy greater breeding success.
Generally, extravagant tail feathers are a feature of promiscuous species, but the usually-monogamous Indian paradise flycatcher is a spectacular exception to this “rule”.
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If the relevant timepiece registered only minutes and hours, it would have said “9. 23 am” through all of this post’s eight images, which are presented in chronological order.
As it happens, my camera also records seconds, so I know that only 39 of them elapsed from first to eighth photo.
From image “1” through “7” only 21 seconds passed.
A recently-bathed Superb Fairy Wren – Malurus cyaneus – can adopt a great many different positions within such a “short” time!
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As is true of not a few other “country clubs”, the one in Namibia’s capital city is in fact well inside an urban “footprint”.
The Windhoek Country Club Resort offers luxurious accommodation, decent food, a casino, an 18 hole golf course, a gym, and extravagantly “Afrokitsch” reception and dining spaces.
To the astonishment of this non-gambler, non-golfer – and non-fan of Afrokitsch – my beloved and I there enjoyed an unforgettable wildlife experience, just a couple of human footsteps away from “our” room!
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