Snaps from a few spots!

 We haven't really focused on any spot recently so here are images taken over a few days.

I begin at home, with two White-headed Pigeons perched in the feeding tray in the lawn.

They seem to be disliked by our local Magpie.  

While not totally psychotic as is the one down the road which, for a month, swooped me every time I rode up the road, this one and its partner don't like other birds.  They fly 300 m to some nearby trees to attack a Grey Goshawk or go up 100 m to harass passing Kites and Eagles.  Possibly fair enough as those species are raptors, but pigeons are surely harmless.  (In turn the Magpie is assaulted by a Willie Wagtail.)

The other species that uses the feed is a family of House Sparrows.  Here is the female

.. and the male.

Aa there seemed to be a little sun around I went up to the powerlines to check some Sun Orchids.  Before getting to them I saw a nice clump of Gompholobium huegelii.

Then to the orchids.  As it was only 17C I wondered if they would be out, but some at least obliged.  These are Thelymitra altronitida.

Not forgetting the leaf!

Here is the habitat.  Note the pool of brown water in the foreground.

We have had an amount of rain recently but I am surprised at the puddles on the Eastern track.

NBN have done a good job of not trashing most of the orchid habitat on the Premier Track.  The same cannot be said of the area towards the Pony Club, now called the FUBAR track.  (... Beyond All Recall - the third term in the series beginning with SNAFU.)

In the afternoon we went for a stroll to Bastion Beach.  There is a large (100 -150 birds) flock of Bar-tailed Godwits on the sandbars.

A few the smaller Red Knots are mixed in, some still showing traces of breeding plumage.