G'day Folks, Yesterday the Savage household had a small visitor. Willy Wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys or Djidi djidi in the local aboriginal dialect...gotta love Google <g>). They're a small native bird about the size of a budgie.
Anyway, after Dad finished mowing the lawn he was doing some maintenance on the mower when this little guy/gal (?) paid him a visit: http://tinyurl.com/3uhgt They're generally not too afraid of people, or anything for that matter, but I've never seen one this fearless (Though I have seen them attack crows & magpies that got too close to there nest. :-)). It would follow you around the yard like a puppy, going after the small flying insects you disturbed as you walked. It was quite happy with this arrangement, however, if you stopped and sat down it would start chirping at you as if to say "Hey, no sitting down on the job". When the chirping didn't get it any results, it'd start jumping all over you. I ended up spending about an hour and a half taking pictures (and just enjoying the moment). Started off using the FA 80-320 & finished with the FA100 macro. Towards the end I could get it to fly onto my left hand while I took pictures with the right. This is my favorite of the lot: http://tinyurl.com/5by3b Here's the gallery (9 images between 100 -130k): http://www.arach.net.au/~savage/GESO/GESO_001/ Just though I'd share. Comments always welcome. Dave S
