Point Cook

Friday 16th March, 2018

This one is for a patient from ED tonight who I had a great chat with about photography. No I wasn’t neglecting my work, there weren’t that many other patients to see at that point, and it’s my hobby…always happy to chat about it!

I learnt a lot! About camera clubs at a local, state, national and international level including one that I might go along to locally, we talked about his 3 dark rooms, I heard about UV and infrared photography, and we talked camera models, good lenses for bird photography…and we could have gone on!! But eventually work has to come to the fore.

Anyway, since I shared my blog but haven’t put up a lot of my photos later, I guess I better. These are some shots that I liked from an outing with Birdlife Australia, Melbourne branch to Point Cook on Wednesday. A great walk, perfect bushwalking weather, nice company and a few stunning and semi-co-operative birds! It all makes for a great day out. The day was a bit misty/smoggy so as I cropped all the photos they became a bit murky; apologies!

Brown Falcon, better not shooting into the light! 

I got a whole series of shots of this gorgeous creature because you never know how close you’ll be able to get, but this was a youngish bird so we got very close in the end, slowly step by step. So the blurry shot isn’t really excusable, but unfortunately these days I have a degree of hand shaking that is bugging me – I really need to learn to wind up my shutter speed beyond what I’ve done in the past. I have cropped this shot.

Brown Falcon, same bird but shot into the glary sky

The conditions of the day make a huge difference as far as the photos you can achieve.

The glare of the sky adds so much light into the camera that it can be hard to make out detail of the subject when you shoot into the light and it is backlit; this is where being able to use your settings well really comes into play…or you just accept that you are operating in impossible conditions…but what fun would that be??

A Crested Tern on the wing

Love Terns, they are so acrobatic in the air and a delight to photograph!

Now THIS is a series I’m super proud of!! Just saying…a little stoush

Now THAT’S the type of shot I want to be taking!

Whistling Kite, not a great shot but the best I got

Perfect! Do you know how close I had to get to this Superb Fairywren for this shot? Actually I had to wait for it to get this close to me. Time and patience pays off! About 2 metres away

This scrappy looking guy is a male Superb Fairywren in eclipse, halfway moulting between immature and full male adult plumage in the non breeding season – this means he’s less than 5 years old

I was sitting at lunch and all the birds took off in a big Kuffluffle behind me! It’s a tell tale sign of a bird of prey flying over; there’s a consensus amongst all the birds that this is a bad thing. 4 magpies suddenly went into attack mode and I discovered exactly where the bird of prey was! Not in focus but a nice action shot, I didn’t have much time to get off a shot

Again, poor focus but I’m proud of this shot because I was the only one in a group of 20 that got a shot, and so I contributed a Brown Goshawk to the day’s count – I’m happy with that!!

Spot the Little Wattlebird!

Not perfect but a Black Kite right above my head?? Wow!

And 2 Black Kites up there?? Perfection!

This was my other moment of contribution – an immature Australasian Gannet, in the bay, out of the colony, away from Geelong, all on its own! I picked it out, someone else labelled it, lots of excitement all around! Love the spotty plumage – the adult is very monochrome

Silver gulls (usually called Seagulls), Crested Terns, Chestnut Teal ducks, Little Pied Cormorant – these are all roosting in shallow water in the bay

Little Pied Cormorants and Pied Cormorants – you can see the size difference clearly

Well, there’s some recent photos. I was overall a bit disappointed with the quality which was partly due to the weather with the glare and the smog, partly due to the settings being poorly managed and somewhat to do with this shake. Maybe I need to make a tripod part of my regular outfit for camera stability, maybe I need to go back to photography school to refresh the basics of which settings to use when, and let’s see what the doctor says about my tremor!

Enjoy!!

Birdlife outings

This is a quick tour through what Birdlife Australia Melbourne branch outings look like to me. I love that there are organised bird watching outings, just like I love my Wheel Women outings; because it’s just harder on your own. You don’t know what locations to go to, where to find the best birds when you get there, and you just don’t have the local knowledge of what birds are around and where they might be. But Birdlife just isn’t the family that Wheel Women is. I know a few people to say hello to and have a chat with as we walk around together for a few hours. But I don’t really have a relationship with any of them outside of our bird watching outings. Still, its a very friendly, helpful group of people who are just dead keen of improving other’s skills at finding birds, helping us to learn their behaviour and hopefully finding new and different birds every outing. This is my photo journal of everything but the birds  (almost) from an outing to Woodlands Historic Park on 27th May 2017.

First off, the car park meet up – yep they’re all ours

 

Getting the briefing for how the day is going to run, what to look out for, who is leading and who is tailing, and the famous sign up sheet

 

Hold up on the bridge as someone spots something…what, what, what have you got?? we call from the rear

 

It’s REALLY time that I got binoculars! The camera does pretty well, but I think binoculars would adjust quicker and let more light in

A bit more scattered along the track as we wander back for lunch

Bring on lunch!!! It’s almost a stampede once 12.30 hits the second hand!!

 

And here is a quick snapshot of some of the birds that we saw. It wasn’t a tremendous day out, although that last bird was a first for me, the Fan-tailed Cuckoo. We got to see some beautiful Flame (above) and Scarlet Robins but at a long distance so there’s not a lot to show for it. Better photos next time!