(S)he is a little special, I think. Her parents are quite hostile towards her.
Loudly introduced herself in about March this year with half a toe missing and a droopy wing.
Recently she has taken to wandering in to the house and warbling, screaming and pee-weeing at enormous volume in enclosed space.
Yes, I know you’re not meant to feed them. She only gets one dog food pellet thing in the morning and one on the afternoon. She’s not dependant and is able to hunt and forage, albeit hilariously incompetently.
#Shy Albatross- Philip Island. OK, Saturday after a few solid days of grandchild minding(which we both love but let’s not pretend it ain’t full on) and it’s cold and the wind is howling so forget the Dandenongs, the original target, and it’s off to Phillip Island where the birds revel in hard conditions. Been here a few times but never when it was this windy, literally blowing us off our feet on the boardwalk. Through some fluke of nature BH managed to capture this Shy Albatross in focus and at a considerable distance, first time she’s ever got one in focus she told me with glee.
Curious that the bird at considerable distance and in the gale over the ocean is photographed more clearly than the one sitting still in shelter a couple of feet away…
Credit to GRR’s BH!
If you scroll back to July 3rd you’ll see BH’s pics of this bird at Benalla Airport, of all places. It just turned up out of the blue and BH says it’s still there and is sighted most days in that area. It was so big, I thought it was a wallaby at first.
No pics for this report from last week, and I wish I’d had a camera at the time, but alas I was chilling in the car and I’m not a birder, just a birder’s squire, and BH was off looking for Cockatiels at the time. Down a tree lined side road at Goschen, an ex primary school and a wonderful bird site near Lake Boga, and I’m half snoozing when I spot a big roo dart out of the bush to the side, maybe 70 metres down the dirt road, panic sticken and at top pace heading towards me and behind it 2 huge raptors, clearing chasing it. The roo ducked back into the bush and the raptors followed. BH arrived just after this and we looked but found no sign of anything.
Anyway today BH told me she was checking out the Field Naturalists Club of Vic site and someone reported seeing Wedgies attacking roos in a paddock. Lots of posts confirmed the practice and one of the posters, who seemed to know their shiit, said they harass the adult roos in the hope they’ll drop a joey which they then hoist up into the sky and drop. The dead remains are dinner that night.
#Rose-Crowned Fruit-Dove - Cairns Esplanade. First day of our far north Qld trip after a tortuous delayed Jetstar flight(Really, is there anything worse? Blew out a tyre they told us.) is Cairns and plenty of bird encounters as BH strolled, in my case limped as a result of splitting heel chilblains courtesy of Melbourne’s brutal winter mornings, along Cairns’s beach espy, but this lifer stood out if BH’s hooping and hollering was anything to go by. More colourful than it appears here but the thick canopy brought down a bit of a pall.
PS Ignore the whinging, I loved the walk.
