In full feather

A short while ago I wrote about and showed photos of a very under-feathered cockatoo. Well, we have had a few really cold mornings with quite heavy frost on the lower levels so I would expect that we will not see that poor creature again. So to show you the true beauty of these wonderful wild creatures I was happy to be able to get outside this morning and capture a few shots of these visitors to my veranda.

f/ 4.0  1/800  ISO 160   85mm

I might have told you how I usually chase the birds away because they can be very destructive if they think they can get a regular feed and then find the feed dish empty. As a result of this the birds are quite skittish when I open the door to come out with the camera!
I first noticed the birds on the feed dish cage when one of them had his head thrust between the bars and going his hardest at cleaning out the seed dish. He initially looked as if he was stuck! When I slid the door open he had to wriggle to free himself without removing his neck feathers!
I had seen the birds through the window to start with so changed lenses so that I had the 70-300mm attached. I wanted both birds in the shot first and when one flew off (the one that had managed to get at the seeds) I zoomed in!

 f/ 4.0  1/800  ISO 160   100mm

Don't you just love "back lighting"! Of course I have had a little help from Photoshop to lift the shaded area on the birds front (Select the bird, Ctrl+J to duplicate, use levels, mask and tidy using a soft brush, smart sharpen and merge down) There is rarely a photo that I do not use Photoshop.

 f/ 4.8  1/800  ISO 160   200mm

Zoomed right in for this shot and if you click on the picture to enlarge it you will have the surprise I did - I did not realise that cockatoos had brown eyes! I thought they were black!

f/ 5.0  1/800  ISO 160   240mm

The bird was very suspicious about my activity - many birds think that a big camera is a gun! So it wasn't long before he flew into the tree a little distance from the veranda (We have had a tree lopper in so the branches of the tree available as perches are further away!) This is where I prefer to see the cockatoos! They are beautiful birds but they have been endowed with huge voices that only another cockatoo could love!
AJ

Beauty destroyed

We are visited by so many different birds here at my home and although I chase them away, I cannot but admire the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos with their glorious white plumage and striking yellow crest which always fans out when they land. I chase them away because they can be very destructive - it is so tempting to feed all wild birds that venture near and can be encouraged to be quite tame - however the Cockatoo, although one of the easiest birds to encourage, can become the boss very quickly. Once these birds know that they will be fed when they visit, they will expect a handout every time they arrive. If you happen to not be at home when they call these large birds will vent their frustration by ripping at the wooden frames around the windows, tearing the fly-screens and the cloth covering of outdoor furniture and sinking their beaks into whatever they can. Unfortunately we learned the hard way! They are a beautiful bird (but noisy!) and are best viewed in the bush!
Unfortunately there is a nasty disease that can touch these magnificent creatures, it is called Beak and Feather disease. I have no idea how this starts but the consequences are miserable. The top beak grows long and makes eating and preening difficult and the feathers fall out. Usually the beautiful yellow crest goes first. Eventually the bird is unable to fly or feed - a slow, drawn-out way to die. This morning was very cold - the lowest part of our acre block had a covering of frost on the grass - so I felt so sorry for this poor bird.

I spotted the bird sitting on our bird feeder - it was unable to get to the food because we have a cage over the dishes - intentionally to keep the cockatoos away. I went straight to the camera and put on the 50-300mm lens and quietly opened the door to the veranda and took my pictures while hidden from the bird's sight. Being so vulnerable makes these birds even more flighty and it is very difficult to get close to them.
As you can see from the last shot where he was just in the act of flying away, it has no feathers left on its body. How it was able to survive the cold night, I have no idea.
The pity is that the cockatoo is a native bird and as such we would get into trouble if we killed it - and yet that would be the kindest thing to do. Instead we are supposed to trap it and then take it to a vet to kill! I think that is actually quite a cruel thing to do, trapping a bird is very traumatic for the bird - and who would be expected to pay for the euthanasia? So we do nothing - and feel sad because we can do nothing.
AJ

Playing with the camera

I enjoy writing this blog and when "work" gets in the way and I am too exhausted to write in an evening I start feeling as though I have let the blog down! Tonight the family has departed and the excitement that has gripped the place has relaxed and once again I can sit quietly at the computer and put up a few pictures.
No matter how busy I get I still manage to see things that insist on being the subject of a photograph. Like this fellow who posed so beautifully in the tree opposite the veranda.

 

f/9  1/250  270mm  ISO 640

White cockatoos have become quite numerous and in the mornings a flock of close on fifty of them fly over screeching loudly, at around five thirty. (It is quite bright at that time these summer mornings) They have destroyed every last one of our lemons long before they are even yellow so when they settle in the back yard I no longer chase them away - there is nothing edible left worth getting excited about! This year I will have to buy lemons and passion-fruit. When Colin announced that he was going to build me a vegetable garden I couldn't help but laugh. I have gone to great lengths to attract birds and animals to the garden so it would be a garden for the wildlife! What the wildlife doesn't eat the fruit flies and the grubs will!
At last I have put the Macro/wide lens converter onto my camera and had a little play with it. I really can get up nice and close to plants now - but of course this is not a true macro and I am still limited by the f/3.5 of the 18-55mm lens it screws onto. Here are a couple of shots I have taken with this extension lens.

 

f/9  1/320  55mm + macro lens ISO 640

So I can get in much closer to the subject and far from being a handicap, the aperture setting allows more of the curve of petals to be in focus. I am also delighted that the lens is as sharp as it is considering it is two extra pieces of glass in front of the 18-55mm lens, also no distortion.

 

f/9 1/160 55mm+macro lens ISO 640

I don't know if you have ever looked closely at the flowers of a crepe myrtle, it looks like a mass of fluffy petals making up a fairly large head of flowers. Click on this picture and see just one of those fluffy petals! This is a lens I can enjoy using!
AJ

Wet Sunday

It is always good to roll over on a Sunday morning and catch a few extra moments of "doing nothing" before getting out of bed - this morning it was a bit more difficult to roll over for the almost deafening sound of falling rain. I find it quite incredible just how much water can fall out of one cloud - and the cloud that was hovering above us in the early daylight hours (4.30) must have been quite massive. It must also have been dropping its load of water long before I woke up because when I looked out of the window there was an inland sea reaching half way up our land.
The main bedroom overlooks the swimming pool and normally we have a large area of lawn between the pool and the little creek . . . but not this morning

F/11  0.4 seconds  ISO 160

I was rather surprised this photo turned out - it was taken hand held.(leaning on the windowsill)  I used Aperture priority so that I could get a wide depth of field which meant that the camera chose a slow shutter speed - with such a slow shutter speed it really would have been better if I used a tripod. (It was incredible that I had the camera in the bedroom let alone take a tripod there too!). Incidentally the pool is not directly beneath the window, it would be about six metres from the wall of the house.
Before I make breakfast I have to feed my dogs and the wild birds or my life would not be worth living! The bird feeder extends out beyond the shelter of the roof so to keep the seeds dry I put that dish on the floor of the veranda. As long as we keep Byron away from the sunflower seeds (he loves them) the birds will not mind coming in to graze on the floor rather than in their usual place. Byron is not interested in chasing the lorikeets - they do not look like white hens, it is the sulphur crested cockatoos that he chases (and we encourage)!

F/10   0.6 Sec    ISO 160

From this photo of the birds feeding you can see that the water has overflowed the creek which has come up past the dividing fence through the centre of our land, that open gate you can see is actually between our property and that of our next door neighbours. The gate is opened to allow the faster flowing water to go through without pushing the fences over. The gate was closed but is never latched and this morning's rain has pushed it wide open.

Here is a sixty second video taken this morning just to give a taste of the sights and sounds of our breakfast encounters.

Now that the rain has eased and the lorikeets have mostly had their fill of their seeds - and since I haven't swept up the mess they made with all the seed husks, another visitor has just arrived with a yell of defiance. I left typing this blog to see where it was and sure enough, he was about to indulge!

F5.6    1/60 Sec     ISO 450

The rain has about stopped and already the water is retreating, still over our land but only half as much as first thing. The change in the weather can be quite exciting!

Now to clean up that veranda!

AJ

A feathered visitor

I was in the middle of writing an email when a raucous noise caught my attention. It was a white cockatoo that had flown down the bird feeder dish and was screaming his dissatisfaction about the cage that was preventing him from getting at the seeds.

Before I go too much further I must apologise for the state of the photos - I have recently purchased a tiny notebook for travelling and I am trying to use it to both write this little story and upload photos for use in the story on this 10 inch device. The only software I have installed is Picasa which is what I use for uploading pictures to a web album (from where I can access them to put on the blog.) So these pictures have not had any processing done to them (normally I adjust the pictures - sharpness and brightness - in Photoshop. Photoshop is rather too large a program to put on a little machine like I am using at the moment.

To continue!

I raced outside with my camera and shot two bursts on Auto setting since I thought the cockatoo would fly off as soon as I opened the door. He stayed and watched me so I switched to Manual and dialed the aperture and shutter speed and took several more shots.

I crept closer and closer and my final shot was fired just as he was taking off. With a shutter speed of only 1/60 second he is showing motion blurr! But the shot shows off the drama of the moment and the colour that is under the wings as well as on the crest.

The cockatoos are really quite large and if you have seen my previous pictures of the lorikeets on that same feeder you will appreciate the difference in size of the two birds. The cage is over the seed dish to prevent the cockatoos from flinging the pottery dish off the stand - they used to do that before we came up with the cage idea! They can still get their heads through the wire and get at the seed but they cannot stand in the dish as they want to.
Now I am going to try something I have not done before - add a little video that was taken with the Samsung point and shoot camera in movie mode.

This, if it works, will show you just a few of the birds that visit every morning and the incredible noise they make.
AJ