The north-west corner of Australia is infinitely interesting. We'd been looking forward to this trip for two years and as we read about it in preparation for our holiday the more it intrigued us. Much to our amusement, whenever Philip would mention the trip to Australian colleagues he'd get similar reactions: "What are you going THERE for? Why don't you go to Queensland? (east coast, nice, warm and with tons of people). Let me try to put that into a Canadian context. It's like overseas visitors telling you they're heading for Northern Alberta instead of Vancouver or Toronto. A huge part of the appeal for me of course was the incredible variety of bird life that I anticipated seeing. It seems my enthusiasm rubbed off a bit on Philip as he took some really good photos of birds that I would never have captured with my little camera.
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| Blue-winged Kookaburra |
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| Forest Kingfisher |
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| Orange-footed scrub fowl |
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| Rainbow bee-eater |
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| Great White Egret |
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| White bellied sea eagle |
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| Pacific Baza |
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| Pied Butcherbird |
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| Double barred finch |
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| Crested Pigeon |
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| Galahs |
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| Brolgas |
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| Black kite |
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| Black kites at moonrise |
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| This is not a pile of garbage scraps swept under a bush but the bower made by the Great Bower bird. The male builds an elaborate bower in order to impress females. A likely female choses the nicest bower, he gets the benefit of mating with her and then she takes off and builds her own nest in which to put the eggs, raising and feeding them on her own. Meanwhile back at the ranch, the male Bower bird waits to impress another female. I suppose it's the ornithological equivalent of "want to come up and see my etchings?? Or in this case "hey babe, want to see my collection of rubbish? The bower is the collection of bits in the foreground as well as the branches on either side that 'frame' the collection. This one was located under a hedge that was up against a rail fence so no, the Bower bird did not use a post hole digger in order to achieve this bower. |
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| Red-winged parrots |