You should have seen the one that got away!

/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)

The Sad Sentinel on the Isle of Mull, Scotland

Heron on a loch on Mull, Scotland

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!!

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!!!

Delicate Spring Apple blossom

Beautiful Spring Apple Blossom in my garden in Sissinghurst, Kent England

On the Apple tree in my Garden in Sissinghurst Kent, UK. The tree was smothered with these beautiful blossoms last spring and a beautiful white climbing rose scrabbled through producing the most wonderful sight. Nine months on and a good crop of apples has come and gone and I can’t wait for these gorgeous flowers to emerge again this Spring!

The Awesome Australian Eastern Osprey (Wild Bird Wednesday)

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!

Click here for more of my bird photographs – enjoy!!

Rainbow Bee Eater, Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia (Wild Bird Wednesday)

Rainbow Bee Eater in Port Douglas. Beauty on Chains

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!!

This Wednesday is rather special: Stewart, who spearheads the weekly Bird photography blog exchanges and links which make Wild Bird Wednesday (WBW) such a valuable source of photographs and web links is today hosting his 100th WBW!! He has selected 15 of his favourite WBW photographs and posted to his blog. They really are spectacular, so do click the link below and enjoy them. Links to this weeks participating Blogs (around 70 )from around the world can be found on his page, so do drop in and enjoy the weekly event which is WBW :0)

Today is my third WBW blog posting, so a long way to go to catch up with Stewart’s landmark figure and after last weeks British bird, I have chosen to return to an Australian bird, the spectacular Rainbow Bee Eater (Merops ornatus)

You will never forget your first encounter with this beautiful bird and the brightly coloured feathers have an almost metallic sheen to them.
I took this shot in a Park near the Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia.

I have a number of shots of these birds on branches and plants, but there is something about the mix of the modern steel chain with the stunningly beautiful colourful bird which makes this one that bit unusual and a personal favourite!

The bokeh background is provided by a Paperbark tree (Melaleuca spp), a stunning tree, superficially resembling a Eucalyptus, but unrelated, with a soft bark often hanging off in huge multilayered sheets – hence the name.

Click here for more of my bird photographs – enjoy!!

The Northern Plover or Peewit (Wild Bird Wednesday)

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

More of my bird photography here

Jabiru (Wild Bird Wednesday)

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 offering for WBW is another unconventionally beautiful Australian bird, the Black-necked Stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus), also known locally as the Jabiru (not actually the correct name, as a rather different to the real Jabiru from the Americas). An imposing bird up to 5 feet tall and another Australian bird with the most stunning iridescence if viewed in the right light. A water bird and a carnivore, it feeds on other small water and crustaceans and amphibians. A delightful bird you will certainly not forget meeting!

Click here to see more of my Bird photography!!

Beautiful black swans in flight

Beautiful Black Swans in flight

A shot from my Son’s”best day ever”!

We took a boat trip around the lake at the Mareeba Wetlands, Queensland , Australia, and there were several black swans (Cygnus atratus) gracefully paddling as swans do. I had assumed that all their plumage was pure black and only when these 2 appeared in flight did I see that the front third or so of the wings are pure white, which disappears entirely the moment they touch down.

the background shows a shallow fringe of reeds, Eucalyptus trees and the lighter patches are huge termite mounds

Taken from the boat with the Canon 7D and my favourite Wildlife lens, the Canon 100-400 mm F/4.5-5.6 EF L IS USM Lens

As for me, it has to be one of my best days ever too :0)

PS it is Harvey’s 12th Birthday today, so this ones for him 🙂

Symmetry, Rainbow Lorikeets

Rainbow lorikeets in Cairns, Australia

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

The Iconic Australian bird, The Laughing Kookaburra

Laughing Kookaburra

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 😉