Birds 2011

[stevecim]

thanks mark, does "look" better but not sure if it's right, If I get a chance tomorrow I'll go and have another look at the tree stump, I recall the tree has a more orange color has in the first shot.

[stevecim]

here is another rainbow lorikeet, lot's of these around at the moment. happy with the image, since it was iso1600 1/80 hand held in a bit of wind

[Greg Beetham]

Still fairly tough conditions too show the lens at its best I think stevecim, I like the white blossom I’m not sure if we have that Eucalypt here. Those Rainbows are Oz’s drunken birds, as the day progresses they get more and more tanked, the nectar ferments in their stomach and produces some alcohol, and just like drunk humans they sometimes get into squabbles too. You can get them sometimes around 2 or 3 in the afternoon while they are woozy and not paying full attention and the sun is still bright enough for good illumination….if you’re lucky.
Greg

[Birma]

Very nice shot Steve. Great colours .

[aster]

Hi Steve,

A sincere shot of the Rainbow lorikeet. Her colours against an almost 'monochromic' eucalyptus branch work charmingly...

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

[mvanrheenen]

Found a new visitor in my neighbours backyard today. I would recommend every bird lovers not only to look for birds in exotic places. Your front- and backyard can hold more species than you might think!

My apologies for the quality of the images. As you can see, I'm still very much struggling to get control over the 70-400G. Here goes:

A group of goldfinches! What a busy bunch they are. One sat still long enough for a photo



Finally I was able to take an image of a Chaffinch. They always sit in a tree behind my house, but there is alway something blocking my way, like twigs or leaves. This time I was in luck.



And at last, a ring-necked parakeet landed on the berrybush in my neighbours backyard.

[Greg Beetham]

Good work Mark, I agree it’s sometimes quite surprising just how many bird species there actually are in your own backyard, they tend to slip under the radar a little because most of them are small I think. And the small ones are hard to photograph as well, they seem more alert and active so you often have to hurry shots, but then ‘a shot’ is better than ‘no shot’ any day.
Greg

[Birma]

More nice birds Mark. Our Goldfinches are a busy bunch as well. The bokeh from the 70-400 is very nice as well.

[jcoffin]

Nice shots Mark. I was a but surprised at your goldfinch -- it doesn't look much like what I think of as a goldfinch. Unfortunately, I can't show a picture of what I think of as a goldfinch. They're quite shy, and small enough that I'm pretty sure you'd need quite a long lens (or maybe a good blind) to get a decent shot of one. In any case, nothing I've tried has ever even come close.

[mvanrheenen]

Hi jcoffin,

I agree with you. I too have another birdin mind when I think of a Goldfinch. I think the common English name of this bird may be lost in my translation. I identify the birds using their Dutch name, when I identified it, I check my fieldguides for the Latin name. For the English name, I Googld the latin name.

For this species, I identified it as a Putter -> Carduelis Carduelis -> Goldfinch. I had the same problem with putting the Robin in the proper family. That differed too between the Dutch and English translatin which threw me off.

[Birma]

Well, different birds do get called the same name across countries e.g. the "Robin" in the UK and the USA are completely different birds. Mark's Goldfinch above is definitely what we call a Goldfinch in the UK, but the American Goldfinch is completely different .

[jcoffin]

Yeah, it's strange. I like to think I've traveled enough that I've gotten used to the same name referring to different things and the same things having different names. I don't have any explanation of why it would be different, but for some reason or other this surprised me anyway.

[Greg Beetham]

It’s the same here with the name ‘Robin’ being used for a different bird, a whole family of birds actually with 20 species of ‘Robin’ in it. They do seem quite similar in overall style to the traditional Robin, but I don’t think there is one of them that is exactly the same. There are a few examples of Australian ‘Robins’ here. http://www.ozanimals.com/wildlife/Bird/ ... obins.html
Greg

[mvanrheenen]

I can give you an example for the European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) and what threw me off.

The European Robin is part of a family of birds which is large. This has caused the scientific community to but some subfamilies in a different family over the years. If you look at the site I use for getting the English name for a bird (link) you can see the European Robin is part of the family of Chats and thrushes (Turdidae). But if you look at the link for this bird on BirdLife International (link) you can see the bird is categorized as belonging to the family of Chats and Old World flycatchers (Muscicapidae).

This is pretty confusing for my amateur hobbyist brain

[Greg Beetham]

I had a look through your list of chats and thrushes Mark and noticed a couple that look ‘similar’ too birds here, the Redstart looks somewhat like the Spectacled Monarch and the Whinchat looks similar-ish to a Scrubwren, the Nightingale also looks fairly similar to our Little Shrike Thrush, but I doubt that they are even remotely related.
The Blackbird and the Song Thrush look identical to the ones here because someone released them here and there is now a small population of them (according to my bird book).
But you are correct about bird id, it's a very engaging pastime, here I don’t have to worry about what 10 countries call the same bird but there are soo many LBJ’s out there when one is actually out in the bush and looking, I have often been stumped by a fleeting sighting or two or three.
Greg