Wild Bird Trust photographers of the week

I have two pictures chosen by Wild Bird Trust in this week’s edition of Top 25 Wild Photographs of the week. They are both from my vacation to Australia earlier this year. I haven´t really taken the time to go through the material from Australia yet, but I hope I will find time soon.

The first picture is from Tasmania and is taken when we visited the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens of Hobart, the biggest city on Tasmania, together with Marias cousin Jenny. I had asked Jenny to take us to a good spot to photo Parrots, but we soon we ended up in the Botanical Garden where we found this not so shy Little Wattlebird.

The Little Wattlebird was one of the first birds I saw in Devonport on my first day in the country. I thought the feathers where something special and that you see in this picture.

I managed to followed this wild bird for many minutes while it was actively foraging for nectar. If you look closely around the beak you will see pollen that it has collected from inserting its beak into the flowers while sucking nectar. It was interesting seeing and document this behavior and I will surely put up more pictures from my meeting with the Little Wattlebird in Hobart.

The second picture chosen by Wild Bird Trust is one taken on mainland Australia at the tourist resort of Lakes Entrance where we stayed for almost a week.

On the first evening there we saw a small flock of Little Corellas feeding on the ground just by the main road. I understand they can congregate in flocks of up to several thousands and that would be spectacular to see.

I got out of the car on the opposite side of where the Little Corellas where feeding and used a parked car to obscure my approach as I suspected they would fly off if I approached them heads on.

My plan worked well and I managed to take a couple of photos before a walker with a dog scared them off.

I like the cockiness of the Corella. That together with the depth of field is what makes the picture for me. To get the depth of field I had to sit down. This is not a big secret, but something you always should consider taking photos of wildlife. A picture taken from “above” will most often be flat and not interesting.

I like both pictures, the cocky Corella and the calling Wattlebird and they both make me want to go back to Australia and discover more of the wildlife there.