Beautiful Mistletoebird
Mistletoebird
One of my favourite birds is the colourful little Mistletoebird, shown in today’s photo. I can’t say it is a resident species in our garden, but it is a frequent visitor. In our district here in Murray Bridge, South Australia, it is a widespread species occurring in small numbers. They are usually only seen singly, occasionally two.
Today my wife and I were working in our garden and a male landed briefly in a nearby Eremophila bush. It stayed only a few seconds before flying off. The male, as shown in the photo, is far more brightly coloured than the female. In the female, the red is a washed out colour and only present under the tail. She also lacks the dark blue-black colour of the male, being mainly plain brown instead.
As I didn’t have my camera with me today, the photo shown above was taken some years ago, also in our garden.
This species has a special place in our records for our home block. Over the 30 years we have lived here we have planted hundreds of trees, shrubs and bushes. The mistletoebird was the first species to make a nest in a tree we had planted. At least – it was the first one we noticed.
100,000 visitors – well, almost
Male Flame Robin, Mt. Macedon, Victoria
This blog about my sighting of Australian birds has been going for just over five years now. During that time I have published nearly 1200 articles about our beautiful birds. Many of these articles have one and often several photos of birds I have been blessed to get focussed in my camera lens.
Over the years a community of people who appreciate birds has grown on this site, and we are approaching 4000 comments and questions, a significant milestone which will happen any day now. (I’ll keep an eye on the statistics and let everyone know. Sorry – no prize for making the 4000th comment.) I’d like to thank all of you who come here regularly, and especially those of you who leave comments. You are appreciated.
You may have noticed a logo on the sidebar from the Fat Birder “Birding Top 1000” ranking. This site ranks the top birding sites from around the world. Over the last year my site has consistently been in the top 50 sites, sometimes as high as about #24. This amazes me. The ranking is based on traffic to my site, so plenty of people must be visiting on a regular basis.
I use two other programmes which analyse the traffic coming to my site. On one of these I had just over 250,000 visitors last year, but this site can be rather misleading. Google Analytics is a far more reliable indicator I believe, and last year Trevor’s Birding had almost 100,000 visitors – actually, it was just 600 short of that figure.
Darn.
Never mind, figures so far in 2011 indicate that visitor numbers continue to grow. I am planning to continue posting new articles here at least every two or three days – more if I have the time – for the foreseeable future, so stay tuned.
And don’t forget to leave a comment or two. I appreciate your efforts.
Good birding.
A great photo gallery
I love taking photos of the birds of Australia. I always have the camera ready for taking shots of birds around my house and garden. I rarely forget to take it with me on trips anywhere.
Readers have often commented on the photos they see here on my site. Thank you everyone for your kind words. I get great satisfaction out of taking the photos and your comments are the icing on the cake!
Every now and then I come across another great photo site on the net. I’m especially drawn to those featuring birds, of course.
Recently my attention was drawn to the Bird Observation and Conservation Australia site (BOCA). They have started a very beautiful photo gallery. It features hundreds of wonderful photos of Australian birds. The collection is constantly being added to so it’s worth frequent visits.
Links:
Male Flame Robin, Mt. Macedon, Victoria
Happy bird-day to me
Yes – it’s that time of the year again.
IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY.
Had a very quiet day and didn’t do much. Bought a couple of novels to read as a treat and had a few friends visit in the evening. Didn’t go out birding despite a much cooler day after our unseasonal heat wave of the last 8 days. So I thought I’d treat everyone to a few of my favourite bird photos of the last year.
Laughing Kookaburra, Lane Cove National Park, Sydney
Australian Pelicans, Mallacoota, Victoria
Male Gang-gang Cockatoo, Botanic Gardens, Canberra
Male Flame Robin, Mt. Macedon, Victoria