/featured/you-should-have-seen-the-one-that-got-away-mr-bennett-kent.html”> Nankeen or Rufous Night heron Near Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia[/caption]
Happy Wild Bird Wednesday :0)
Click the link below to see photographs from many talented folk around the world and feast your eyes on our fine feathered friends!!
I am not sure how well this title translates globally, but this is a dig at the pub boasting of fisherman using their arms to show just how big the fish they ALMOST caught was!!!
Taken near Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia, this is the Nankeen or Rufous Night Heron (Nycticorax caledonicus) coming in to land.
I seem to have gained the confidence of this beautiful specimen and I spent the best part of an hour, just sitting in his company and it really was an honor.
It is one of those experiences which can make wildlife photography so much more than simply pressing the button :0)
Click the link below to see photographs from many talented folk around the world and feast your eyes on our fine feathered friends!!
More from my trip to Magical Mull, one of the small Inner Hebrides Islands off the West Coast of Scotland.
At the start of this amazing holiday, I reached dry(ish!) land at Tobermory and found a B&B for the next few nights. Nice and early, so set off in search of the Otters I had travelled so far to see.
The weather was awful, so I decided to drive around the island making notes of where to visit if and when the rain stopped. A small Island, so after one circuit, I did stake myself out in the rain for a few hours to find these elusive creatures, but no luck.
I was joined by this Grey Heron. I am a huge fan of these guys and they always remind me of rather comical, grumpy old men all hunched up.
There is no denying that the surroundings were beautiful, with the Kelp covered Granite and the calm, Loch water, even in the misty rain, and I enjoyed his company very much
I have broken the rules by placing him centrally, but I have never been a great one for rules and for this shot I think it works and I am happy to break them :0)
I do adore the hugely therapeutic time, just me and wildlife, and on this occasion I felt particularly at one with the heron – cold, wet and bloody miserable!!!
Black Headed Gull Rye Harbour Kent
Happy Wild Bird Wednesday :0)
Click the link below to see photographs from many talented folk around the world and feast your eyes on our fine feathered friends!!
I have barely been out with my camera for the last few months but have been looking through some of my archives. I stumbled across this one from my first proper day out just after I got my first DSLR in June 2012. Here we have a Black Headed gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) a small gull with amber status, but common on the Kent Coast in England, where I took this in Rye Harbour. I do like this shot (especially as it was on my first “proper” day out with a DSLR (!) and was surprised not to have shared it before. I love the bokeh backdrop of waves and breakers and the position of the wings in gliding/hovering mode and the angle of the head with the drop of water on the tip of the beak.
Taken with the wonderful Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens on my Canon 7D. I am eagerly awaiting the arrival, if the rumours are well founded, of the canon 7D mark ii. I appreciate there are advantages with Full frame DSLRs, but the extra reach afforded by cropped frame for wildlife is something I see as an advantage with a cropped frame (1.6X on the Canons). though some say cropping from a full frame is at least as good image quality wise. The 7D has served me well and I have shots which I am very proud of, but I have many buried on my hard drive never to see the light of day. My main gripes are the noise above 800 ISO and the focus which is a trifle hit and miss. Sometimes it deals with tricky shots perfectly but fails miserably on static objects!!
There are more rumours about a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM mark ii. To be honest, I think I have not been good enough for Santa to get me both for Christmas, but a second body would be rather wonderful :0)
Eastern Osprey (Pandion cristatus) on Low Isle Queensland, Australia
Happy Wild Bird Wednesday :0)
Click the link below to see photographs from many talented folk around the world and feast your eyes on our fine feathered friends!!
I took this photo on the Low Isle off the Coast of Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia, this is the powerful and beautiful Eastern Osprey (Pandion cristatus) in the process of launching himself off a Casuarina tree.
Check out the talons on this beauty!! This is why they are brutally efficient fish catchers.
I cannot tell you just how much I enjoyed seeing this majestic bird!
The Northern Plover, Green Lapwing or Peewit, a striking British bird
Happy Wild Bird Wednesday :0)
Click the link below to see photographs from many talented folk around the world and feast your eyes on our fine feathered friends!!
My Wild Bird Wednesday photograph from last week was the Australian Masked Plover. A great nature photographer whose blog I follow ( All downhill from here ) comes from England and now lives in Hong Kong was talking about the “Peewits he used to see in Hampshire, so this ones for you Andrew :0)
Here we have a charming and beautiful British bird, known variously as the Northern Plover, Green Lapwing and the Peewit, after the sound of its call. It goes by the scientific name of Vanellus vanellus. It was a common sight while I was growing up in Hampshire in England, but recent years have not been kind to it and due to loss of breeding grounds and changes in farming methods, its numbers have dropped dramatically and it is now on the Red List as threatened. I had not seen one for years, but on a recent visit to Elmley Marshes near my home in Kent, I came across a thriving population. A wonderful sight they were and a delight to hear their calling and their fast and erratic flight. I tried some flight shots but they resulted in what my Son would call “an epic fail”. They are crazy fast, but the main difficult is that they veer and change direction like no other bird I have seen. A challenge for another day I feel :0). Very similar in build, shape and and size to Plovers the world over and if you have seen my recent shot of the Australian Masked Plover, you can see a more than superficial resemblance
Happy Wild Bird Wednesday :0)
Stewart Monkton has set up a weekly page with links to bird photographers from around the world’s pages each week.
Follow this link to see links to all the submissions and feast your eyes on our Fine Feathered friends!!
Here is my second submission to WBW and a shot taken near the beginning of my 3 week holiday in Queensland, Australia
Here we have a pair of Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) feeding in a tree just behind the Esplanade in Cairns. They rather obligingly posed in near perfect symmetry for me 🙂
If you have never seen these birds yourself, you would be forgiven for thinking the colours had been exaggerated in post processing, but they really are this vibrant and absolutely deserve the inclusion of “Rainbow” in their name!
They were just 2 birds of a large flock which descended on the City each evening in the lead up to the setting of the sun and the air was filled with their noisy squawks and chattering as they played and squabbled
Taken Tripod mounted on the Canon 7D with the Canon 100-400mm L lens
My last blog for about a week – I am in Paris tomorrow until Friday with work, so I leave you with one of my favourite Australian birds, the Laughing Kookaburra
“Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he.
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, Gay your life must be”
The Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) is such an iconic Australian bird that they wrote a song about it (above), which we all knew in England as children.
It is hard to believe that the Kookaburra is a Kingfisher, the largest of the family, I understand.
It is a tree dweller and a carnivore, feeding on small birds, reptiles and small mammals. They are stocky birds compared to their fishing relatives, and much larger, reaching 17 inches in length.
They are most famous for their call (which, of course gives them their name), which sounds like sustained laughter for several seconds and carries large distances.
I can do a passable impression, but my children have banned me from doing it 😉
Follow my blog to see wildlife photography from the UK and my travels to Florida, America and Queensland,Australia.
Birds will feature prominently, along with reptiles, amphibians, mammals (stay tuned for Humpback Whales!!) and insect macro photography. I shall be giving you background to photography techniques and technical detail about the wildlife. I look forward to sharing my passion with you :0)
Nankeen or Rufous Night heron Near Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia[/caption]
MBK Wildlife Photography 