Thread: Birds

A silly thrush failed badly at stealing my raspberries and somehow managed to get itself in quite a pickle stuck between the netting and the fence...

Silly bird (1) by Ben, on Flickr
Silly bird (2) by Ben, on Flickr
Silly bird (3) by Ben, on Flickr

Today was only the second time I've seen this. I ran off about 25 images with the SX50, but the chick was following "Mum"/"Dad" around continuously, so once I had the exposure optimised manually to combat the sky background, I still had to rely on the auto-focus as I was changing position constantly to keep the birds in view. Many of the images were lost as a result to the auto-focus picking up on intervening branches.
The chick looked wide-eyed (and-bushy-tailed) - it didn't yet have that sly look about the eyes that the adult Shining Cuckoos seem to have. It was the constant begging call for food that first put me onto them, and the poor Grey Warblers were going flat out. Both Warblers were about, though I couldn't keep track of when each was feeding the chick - they were in and out like lightning.

I popped out of my back door to introduce a noisy Possum to my .22, and when I lit the trees up, this wee beauty was sitting 3 metres away

got close enough to this guy to get pic on the cell phone... he was waiting for us to scare up some prey in the tussock.

I was impressed with this guys fishing skills

happy wee Nth Is. Robin

This kingfisher stopped by and posed for a couple of photos

Terrible quality pic from my phone , but drove under these lines yesterday and saw this bird and thought WTF turned around and went back and sure enough its a Kookaburra , there was another one also in a tree close by I could see .

Game camera photo from 200m above our house

Originally Posted by Shearer

Game camera photo from 200m above our house
Attachment 166716

Cool.

We have had our first black-variant fantail here. I've seen it several times in the garden over the past month and will try and get a photo or two to post here — if it will just stay still long enough. Apparently it is rare to find them in the North Island, and while less so in the South, they still make up only 4% of the population.

Has anyone else come across any Black Fantails in the lower North Island, and if so, any pics please ?

Originally Posted by Puffin

We have had our first black-variant fantail here. I've seen it several times in the garden over the past month and will try and get a photo or two to post here — if it will just stay still long enough. Apparently it is rare to find them in the North Island, and while less so in the South, they still make up only 4% of the population.

Has anyone else come across any Black Fantails in the lower North Island, and if so, any pics please ?

Be cool if you can get a pic

Originally Posted by Puffin

We have had our first black-variant fantail here. I've seen it several times in the garden over the past month and will try and get a photo or two to post here — if it will just stay still long enough. Apparently it is rare to find them in the North Island, and while less so in the South, they still make up only 4% of the population.

Has anyone else come across any Black Fantails in the lower North Island, and if so, any pics please ?

I didn't know there were variants, as an avid bird watcher and amateur photographer phone cam and trail cams I will keep my eyes peeled now and keep you posted @Puffin.