Colourful skies 23 - 24July

 
Sunset on the 23rd

Sunrise on 24th: from the back lawn ...

.. and out in the street.

The widest setting on my camera.

Clouds and Lighting

 Some snaps from the deck.  The first two are from 21 May.

The next bunch are from 23rd, with a range of camera settings (and lenses - mainly 18 - 45 mm) used.

Trying with the 'backlight' setting.  Must try harder!

Very close to dark.

Houseboats heading out.

An attempt to catch the lit up houseboat!  Using the biggest lens at full zoom (400mm) needs more bracing than I gave it!

On 24 May the sunset was quite interesting, IMO especially for members of the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Low light and taken through double glazing, but does show an interesting cloud pattern.

Some sunsets

 Over the past few evenings there has been enough cloud around to give colourful sunsets.  Here are some samples from 3 evenings.

14 May

15 May

17 May

As the evening developed we had a few squalls of rain from this, amounting to 3.2 mm up to midnight and a further 7.8mm by0630.

More birds and skies

 There is a lot going on!  This post covers things seen and (mainly) photographed on 27 and 28 August.

One of my usual processes is to inspect the Airport fence and nearby areas on a Sunday morning.  The route I follow these days is shown in this snip from Google Earth.

The red arrow marks an air-navigation tool which is fenced off.  The fence is fairly decrepid now as it burnt during the fire, but it is still a popular perch for interesting birds.  On this visit the most interesting bird was the first Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo of the season: it is a rather early record.

The bird was sitting alongside a male Scarlet Robin which made a good contrast.

The trip was quite good with a list of 24 species.  (My low point for this site is spending an hour there with a visiting Canberra birder and not recording a single bird!)  In terms of trivia it was interesting to note he list include 4 Australo-Papuan Robins: Rose, Flame, and Scarlet Robin and Jacky Winter.

In the afternoon I went to Wangarabell which was quite pleasant but nothing dramatic was seen or photographed.

On the morning of 28 August Frances drew my attention to 2 White-faced Herons behaving in one of the Angophora trees.  Comments in HANZAB confirm this is part of a breeding display.  They raised 3 chicks in a nest last year and it looks as though they are trying for another go.

A grumpy Magpie disrupted proceedings but I got a snap of one of the birds ding a fly-by.

On the morning of the 28th I took myself for a walk down the Casuarina Walk.

This was a very pleasant stroll with quite a lot of birds around.  I listed 25 species with Crested Shrike-tit and White-bellied Cuckooshrike the least common.  Neither of those was photographable but here are a few common species that did pose.

Laughing Kookaburra

Eastern Yellow Robin

Grey Fantail - surprising few seem to be around at present.

Superb Fairywren - refused to face me!

White-throated Treecreeper

There were a few flowers along the way.  I think this might be Coronidium elatum.

Kennedia rubicunda

Acacia terminalis has moved into seed pod mode

A species of Leucopogon.

Hardenbergia violacea

The evening sky was colourful and interesting!

Jumping ahead to 30 August the White-faced Herons were walking around on structures early in the morning.

Some birds, some clouds and a sunset

 The most exciting birds today were (again) not photographed.  When Frances did her exercise walk today she saw two black birds with red eyes near Bucklands.  Spangled Drongos, which have not been spotted in this area since 23 May - approximately 9 weeks.  I wonder where they have been hiding?  (Thinking on this after the initial post, the very last sighting I heard about was from Mullet Creek, rather than the Karbeethong Jetty - Bucklands area, so perhaps they were up the Creek sans paddle?)

I went to try to get some photos but failed to relocate them.  I did see a Satin Bowerbird wreaking havoc on a Pittosporum bush.

I really like the big blue eyes!

The next image focuses on a very large mistletoe on the edge of the rainforest pocket where the track heads off to Bucklands.  I think this is Dendrophthoe vitellina so should be very spiffy when it flowers.

The flock of Teal at the mouth of Mullet Creek seemed particularly large today.  I think I counted 40 Chestnut Teal out of this image and, counting from the image, 179 Chestnut Teal in the image (total 219 CT)  together with 12 Grey Teal. 

I cannot be fussed doing a precise count of sexes but eyeballing I suspect the flock is about 3:1 males:females, which I find rather strange. 

Later in the afternoon Frances drew my attention to a rather strange cloud formation.  Both photos taken with my small lens set on 18mm.

The 'front' eventually moved off to the East while the lines behind broke up.

The cloud left augured well for a sunset: and so it was!  All these photos were taken with the smaller lenses at zooms between 18mm and 45mm.

Note the lenticular clouds.

Getting a bit of colour!

LURID

Taken sitting on the lounge.  It was too nice sitting in front of the fire to go outside.