Just a few observations

It has been a slow week for birds this week, With a few medical appointments and a funeral to attend, and a couple of "town appointments" There was little time left for birds. I appreciated a visit from Jillian Nolan, who was hoping to see the Owlet-nightjar, but he was uncooperative and remained hidden.

My walk today (Friday) resulted in a couple of shots of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos. The picture above was taken on the run. When I got it on my computer I noticed that this bird appears to have a misaligned beak with the lower mandible crossing to the right of the upper. I don't know whether it is  a disadvantage. This one appears to be in good condition.

 There was quite a flock (>20 birds) flying around near the northern end of Crawford Road. They are often there but they are usually sitting in one of the trees or TV arials close by. Today they wer flying around noisily.

This is about half the flock. Photographing flocks is quite a challenge particularly to determine how much of the flock to include. Two few and you loose the effect of the flock. Too much and you lose the details of the birds.

 One morning as I approached the Swing Bridge I noticed that there were half a dozen Wood ducks sitting on  one side of the bridge like a guard of honour. They were reluctant to fly and allowed me to get several photos.

I have noticed several Blue-faced Honeyeaters around lately. Their presence is not appreciated by the Noisy Miners, and they have been a number of confrontations between them. This particular morning there must have been about 50 Noisy Miners keeping a constant barrage of noise, trying to intimidate them. My experience is that Blue-faced Honeyeaters have a fairly thick hide and can put up and give out a lot.

I have been making use of the broken time to go though my photograhic archives looking for bird photos and adding them to my bird collection. I have been adding data to the photos metadata, such as location and scientific names. They already include a lot of the photo technical data. In the process I have had to re-identify a couple of birds, sometimes because I could not remember when I had photographed it, and sometimes because naming conventions have changed in the last couple of years.