The above photo and the one immediately below feature the same individual.
Unmistakably, the tail announces that this forest red-tailed black cockatoo is a male..
Comments closedTag: Perth
On the afternoon of 26 August 2023 Shenton Bushland was already very colourful, although “peak Springtime flowering” was probably still a few weeks away.
None of this post’s flowers are hard to find at this time of year, providing you are in the right kind of place, within southwest Western Australia.
Shenton Bushland is one of several “right kinds of place” that are less than 20 minutes away from Perth’s CBD.
Comments closed
The “donkey” is an orchid.
The “spider” is an actual spider, on the orchid.
The large orchid is impossible to miss.
However, to enjoy a good look at the tiny spider you should zoom in on/ enlarge the featured image… and then inspect the uppermost part of the donkey orchid.
Comments closed
The pictured birds are teals.
These very common dabbling ducks are no less lovely for being “common”.
Probably, this post’s heroines are grey teals, but they just might be chestnut teals, or hybrids.
Comments closed
Our local lake never disappoints.
That said, bird-wise, the least interesting time is during Perth’s cooler, rainier months.
Then, migratory birds have all flown north – some of them, to far-off places in Eurasia.
Other birds spread out across southwestern WA; with water and food generally-available, they do not need to congregate around “permanent” bodies of water such as Lake Monger.
Still, as today’s & tomorrow’s posts illustrate, at Lake Monger there is always some avian activity to enjoy…
Comments closed
Perth’s Kings Park is really three parks in one… plus “lookouts”.
The “lookouts” offer sweeping views from the rim of the scarp on Kings Park’s eastern and southern sides.
Looking east, they flatter the adjacent CBD, and look across the Swan Coastal Plain to the Darling Scarp.
Looking south, they show the full splendour of the Swan-Canning estuary, around which Perth’s wealthier suburbs sit.
If you walk (or catch a free bus) from the CBD – or West Perth – into Kings Park, the loveliness of its manicured, “picnic-friendly”, well-treed, grassed parkland is immediately obvious, as you can see in the featured image, above.
Every pleasant, sunny weekend, thousands of people take advantage of Kings Park’s generous supply of that kind of parkland.
However, what makes Kings Park so very special are its two other kinds of “park”: a superb botanical garden (which showcases WA’s extraordinary flora, conducts internationally significant research, and provides useful information to the general public) and its astonishingly expansive, essentially “natural” bush/woodland section.
Comments closed
The moment I saw this exuberantly “bird-ready” example of Western Australia’s floral emblem, I suddenly remembered one of my favourite Australian poems.
Les Murray (1938 – 2019) never became a Nobel Laureate.
Depending on my mood, I find that fact “puzzling” (at his best, Murray was so very obviously – for much of his adult life – one of the greater 20th century poets) or “utterly predictable”. (his verse was so overtly Australian, and his views were not always “palatable”)
The Quality of Sprawl’s opening verse:
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
One Comment
If it had presented itself to us a few days earlier, the “unanswerable question” would have qualified for the “quirky moments” series.
Comments closed
Certain moments/circumstances – and/or an image which “captures” one of them, without seeking to “manipulate” it – have a “waking dream” quality.
That quality is hugely dependent on how the particular observer responds to the particular moment or image.
Certainly, however, a “waking dream” moment or image does not require the obvious presence of “conflict”, “high drama”, “hilarity”, “tragedy” or “somebody famous/infamous”.
To me, this post’s image captures a “waking dream” circumstance, but another pair of equally “perceptive” eyes could find “nothing special to see, here”.
Comments closed
Above, is the most “heraldic” photo I have taken of a Forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
She is the same individual as in #20, this post’s “moment” happened a fraction of a second earlier.
Comments closed