I love it when I can do several things at once. I feel a sense of achievement when I accomplish the goal for the day and feel even better when I can do two things for the journey of one. Bunnings is a hardware super store (for those that are not familiar with Australian Hardware Super-stores). I often make a Bunnings run to procure equipment and supplies for my gardens, home projects and camping trips. Opposite my favourite store is Karkarook Park. I stopped in last week to look for photo opportunities before I visited Bunnings. The Park is a restored sand mine and now has a wetlands area made up of several well vegetated lagoons, a large lake used for canoeing and fishing and pockets of woodlands around the edge. It has a very good range of water and woodlands birds and I often get up to 50 species on an extended visit. It is close enough to home to just pop in for half an hour and look for a species to photograph
Little Pied Cormorant
Common Bronzewing
Male Common Bronzewing
Male Superb Fairy Wren – immature Fairy-Wren coming into his adult colours
Superb Fairy Wren
Masked Lapwing – previously known as a Spur Winged Plover. It can be a very aggressive bird often taking on Raptors (and people) if they get too close to feeding grounds or nests. They make their various alarm calls quite casually, spooking other nearby birds. The Lapwing can be difficult to get close to….
Australasian Darter – a young female, the males are generally all black. This one allowed me to approach slowly along the pier until I was quite close.
Australasian Darter – they are also called a snake bird due to their swimming habit (very low in the water and sliding backwards into the water to hunt) and their very long snake like neck. This one waved it around quite a bit keeping an eye on fish below, hunters above and me…
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Interesting eye and bill detail
When the Lapwing nearby gave one of its alarm calls the Darter immediately looked up for danger. She did not fly off or panic but was very aware. It is interesting that birds know each others specific danger calls
Beautiful wing patterns
The Gap Year and Beyond 