Sunday Walk Feature - Paths and Byways in the Early Morn

It's hard to fit these walks in, but I'll keep trying. This is taken from one of the walking tracks that criss-cross Canberra at around 06:30 in the morning. I was hoping to catch the local bird-life at breakfast, but that's not quite how it turned out.

The day was overcast, lending atmosphere to the pines overshadowing the path. Spring blossoms lightened the day, even without the morning sun to brighten them.

I like the idea of frames and reflections and look for shots that allow me to experiment with both. Tree trunks  and branches can lend some structure, and drains provide urban sources for water reflections.

The first birds I see are these two crimson rosellas, but they're cagey and don't sit still, and I botched most of these shots. This is the clearest of them.

Wildflowers form a muted splash of colour on a dull day. These Ipheon uniflorums look like they've escaped someone's garden. Originally transported to Great Britain from Brazil, they are a native of Argentina, although now naturalised to Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

This usually busy road was completely empty, and made me think of abandoned cities and zombie apocalypses.

Bridges were an exercise in horizontals, with the culvert providing contrasting curves... of course, I'm going to have to work on straightening my aim.

Focusing more closely didn't seem to make too much difference, although it did cut out some foreground and side clutter.

With an almost complete absence of birds, paths became the main focus of the day.

This one winds through a small stand of beech trees (possibly Fagus grandifolia... possibly).

No birds, but some unusual tree features, caught my eye.

The path seemed to change as I walked along it, and new shoots announced the arrival of an Australian spring.

The same trees take on a different character in isolation.

The birds started appearing towards the end of the walk. Take a close look - there are two crimson rosellas in this picture.

They remained elusive and uncooperative, but there were still some shots to be had. These superb parrots flew into a tree just as I rounded a corner in the path, but they steadfastly refused to go down to feed while I was there.

The zoom lens was helpful in identifying this species.

I saw this rather sinister-looking bird by the path. It's a white-winged chough (pron. 'chuff'), often confused with crows, ravens or currawongs because of their colouring.

They travel in family groups and, sure enough, this one's family was foraging under a tree not far from the path. (There are four birds in this picture.)

And I couldn't resist the opportunity to use the tree as a partial frame.

or to try to catch the white on their wings, which is only truly apparent when they fly.

 

Magpies do not like them and these spent a good five minutes swooping the family. (You can seen a chough sheltering under the tree on the right.)

Birds continued to be difficult to photograph. These two Eastern rosellas took off the minute I turned the camera towards them.

Something tells me, I either need more practice taking this kind of shot, or a different piece of equipment. So far, I'm not sure which.

With the birds temporarily gone, I turned to the challenge presented by the nearest pine tree.

I'm not sure what I was looking for, here, but I probably have to some more shoots to work it out.

Just when I gave up on there being any more photographable birds on this shoot, I saw this little fellow, preparing to follow its mate down for a drink from another culvert. To the best of my knowledge, it's a striated pardalot.

None of my attempts at using branches to frame it, seemed to work.

So I took a more classic shot.

Next week, well, next week I'll try a different walk.

Blog Update and Cross-Posting and the new 'Sunday Walk' feature.

So, I notice I've been away from here for quite a time. Between a full-time university degree and a full-time job, something had to slip. Unfortunately, my drawing was one of those things to take the hit. I managed to maintain my photography, and my library of reference photos has steadily grown, but I haven't been so good about putting them up here. I'll make up for that.

As things are a tad busy, right now, with a research essay, a 5-minute speech, a listening test and a vocabulary test due in the next three weeks, I'll start by cross-posting the photographic entries I've maintained on my writer's blog. As things ease off, I'll go back to some of the GIMP usage blog entries I have lined up, and I'll get back into the sketching - probably starting with some bird, spider and insect sketches.

In the meantime, I took a walk yesterday morning, and this time, I took my camera with me. I have a dual-language picture book in mind. The text is written, but I need some specific photographs for illustrations. Some of yesterday's shots will do just fine. Here's a sample of what I saw:

I experimented with auto-focus, but the deal with that is that it doesn't always focus on what you want:

This white-faced heron, had a lovely backdrop. Next, I saw a cattle egret:

But he was soon upstaged by the heron, flying past.

Of course, I followed, and discovered that the problem of photographing in nature is that nature can get in the way... not to mention unforseen bits of litter.

This cormorant was just plain hard to position on screen and was right at the edge of what the close-up could handle.

Further down, Mother Duck wasn't too happy to see me.

And the magpie was too preoccupied with food to give me a better angle.

The spur-wing plovers kept right on flying, complaining all the while.

The dusky moorhen was very camera-shy, and made life extremely difficult. Definitely camera shy. This little guy or gal will feature in a later blog.

I also saw two pairs of Eastern lorikeets, but they were even less cooperative than the moorhens.

I saw another magpie, who didn't mind the camera.

And some peewees, who flew off when they saw it.

And the king parrots... I think... were so uncooperative, that this was the best shot I could get of the six that were flying around in the morning sun.

My quest for sulphur-crested cockatoos was derailed by a passing balloon, looking for someplace to land. I rather hoped it would come down where I could take a few shots of the landing, but it was not to be. Here's my first shot of its descent.

I went home a little disappointed, but took some comfort from the top-knot pigeons that came to visit.

I should also add, that by 'Sunday Walk', I don't mean a walk on Sunday... not all the time. I mean that Sunday is the day I will upload a post of photos taken while on a walk from that week. I hope that's okay.