I had to do a presentation in Wangaratta today so took the opportunity to drop by Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park. As I did not have much time I decided to concentrate on one area and the short walk around Cyanide Dam from the Honeyeater Picnic Area is usually good for a variety of bush birds but the first thing that hit me when I arrived here was the frog chorus:
The walk around the dam is only 500m but the surrounding forest provides plenty of opportunities for spotting birds. In forest environments, it's often best to find a good spot and just sit/stand and wait for the birds to come to you. However, forest bird photography has its own particular challenges: the birds are mostly in the canopy so they are a long way away, usually backlit by a bright sky and always seem to be behind a branch or foliage...but, hey, that's what makes bird photography fun...isn't it?
This afternoon was no exception, lots of backlit, obscured birds a long way from wherever I was resulted in a lot of very ordinary shots. These are the best of them and they are mostly cropped and heavily worked in Photoshop to make something half reasonable of them.
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| Brown Treecreeper, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
A pair of
Golden Whistlers could be heard in the vicinity and it took me about 10 minutes to get the male isolated against the sky and clear of obscuring foliage. A fraction of a second before I hit the shutter, he turned his head away making this shot (the first in the sequence) the only (vaguely) usable one and then within a few seconds he flew away to call from the top of an adjacent tree, completely obscured from any viewpoint I could find. I did manage to find the female but she remained high in the treetop foliage.
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| Golden Whistler (male), Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
I tried for 15 minutes to get a shot of one or more of the handful of Noisy Friarbirds feeding in the treetops but this is the best I could get. What was interesting was that all the friarbirds were feeding from the flowers as well as catching insects from the leaves.
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| Noisy Friarbird, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
Two
Spotted Pardalotes were singing and flitting around the under-storey in perpetual motion until one landed on a tree trunk close-by (albeit in heavy shadow) and started shredding strips of bark (almost identical to the one I saw at
Anakie Gorge on Saturday).
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| Spotted Pardalote, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
Even the usually 'assertive' Willie Wagtails remained at a distance, except for the one that landed on the picnic table right next to me when I stopped for a drink (a bit hard to photograph with 600mm worth of lens at a distance of 1 metre)
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| Willie Wagtail, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
A small flock of Yellow-faced Honeyeaters were feeding on eucalypt flowers but were in heavy shadow with bright sky in the background.
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| Yellow-faced Honeyeater, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
Perhaps the most exciting encounter was this territorial dispute between a
White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike and
Yellow-tufted Honeyeater. It only lasted a few seconds, I managed to fire off a few shots but the whole thing occurred at a distance and behind branches.
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| White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike, Yellow-tufted Honeyeater, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
These
Australasian Grebes were the only two birds on the whole dam. They spent most of their time just cruising around the dam with occasional spurts of synchronised swimming: circular 'dancing' followed by parallel gliding with loud chirping calls from both birds.
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| Australasian Grebe, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
The heavy shade over this section of the pond combined with the bright background reflections made exposure a bit of a challenge but they occasionally swam though sunnier patches of water.
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| Australasian Grebe, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
and for something completely different...I dropped by Woolshed Falls right on sunset. No birds but a beautiful place :-)
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| Woolshed Falls, Chiltern-Mt Pilot NP |
