Flamingos, Adelaide Zoo
Adelaide Zoo has only two flamingos, a Chilean Flamingo and a Greater Flamingo. They occupy the flamingo grotto built in in 1885, a specially made quiet corner of the zoo. Only a low fence separates them from the admiring public. They usually make excellent photo opportunities as they feed in their small pond.
You can read further information about these birds from the Adelaide Zoo website, including details of distribution, diet and other interesting facts. The pages include short videos of the birds:
Common Blackbird, Adelaide Zoo
Despite having Common Blackbirds in our garden I have found them to be hard to get good photographs of them. This is probably because we have a fairly open garden with only a few bushes where they can hide or skulk around. I was therefore quite pleased to get this shot of a male blackbird on a recent visit to Adelaide Zoo. He was in one of the animal enclosures, scratching around in the leaf and bark litter under a tree.
Further reading:
A short non-birding holiday
I am sorry about the lack of posts here in the last few weeks. I’ve been busy, distracted, somewhat unwell, and occupied with other tasks. Life happens.
Last week we hitched up the caravan for a four night mini holiday in Victor Harbor on the coast south of Adelaide. We usually head down there for a few days this time of the year so my wife can attend the CWCI Convention there. This convention is enjoyed by Christian women from all over the state and even some come from interstate. Meanwhile, the respective husbands, including yours truly, sit around in the caravan park talking about all manner of things and generally solving the world’s problems. Sometime we even gather up the energy and go for a walk.
This time around it was different for me. I was recovering from dental surgery and was not feeling much like walking. I did a lot of sleeping and reading. I also had long chats to some of the men on some quite deep topics – about life, the universe and everything. It didn’t leave much time for birding.
I just made a sketchy list of the birds seen or heard from where we were in the caravan park. Not a great list but I was aware of a few birds. Probably the highlight was seeing four Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoos flying low overhead. Quite a nice species to add to my list for the weekend. I didn’t have the camera on me at the time. In fact, the camera didn’t even come out of its case all weekend. Now that’s unusual for me.
There was one other nice sighting. On the way home we saw about 50 Cape Barren Geese just south of home. Here’s a photo of one I prepared earlier.
Further reading:
Bush Stone-curlew
The Bush Stone-curlew is a species I have yet to see in its natural environment. They are not all that common here in South Australia, so I was pleased to see and photograph this bird recently in the Pelican enclosure at Adelaide Zoo. The white thing pointing at it in the top left hand corner of the photo is actually the beak of a pelican.
Bush Stone-curlews are found in the western half of Western Australia, across northern Australia and in eastern and south eastern Australia. In some parts of their former range they are now uncommon to rare in areas settled for farming or urban sprawl except in Brisbane suburbs where they seem to thrive.