Birds – Page 2

Post #25 Monday 1 May 2017 – an anniversary

May 2, 2017 by MG Leave a Comment

Posted in: Adventure, Birds, City, Letters from America, Travel, Urban landscape

Letters from America

Monday 1 May 2017

When 1 May comes around each year I am delighted and surprised every time that I am still living in the light and shiny apartment that I have lived in since 2013. The lease started on 1 May 2013.

This morning about half an hour or so after dawn I took this snap which records the path of the sun to the city and picks out some autumn colour on the London plane trees in Victoria Street.

I went to the Blue Mountains for the day and there was more autumn colour for me there. No time to linger at home. These shots are taken in the garden of my very best Japanese friend, from left to right: maple (with camellia), maple, weeping cherry. This place is named Aoyama after a fashionable and leafy district in Tokyo. Aoyama literally means blue mountain in Japanese.

While we sat on the verandah above the garden a very small and brilliant bird came down to feed on the daphne bush already in flower in the shady part of the garden alongside the house. One of my favourite small birds, it seems to be always wearing a little tuxedo. The Eastern Spinebill, here in a photo I borrowed from the internet.

Such a lovely day really.

Hope you are all travelling well, and that you are visited with that wonderful feeling that comes with routine, day to day, in the details, happiness.

MG xx

Post #21 Thursday 6 April 2017 Compelling shapes – the arch

April 6, 2017 by MG Leave a Comment

Posted in: Adventure, Birds, Country, Sky

Letters from America

Thursday 6 April 2017

I have been in the country for a couple of days. Doing country work things and also rummaging around in the outdoors, probably the New Zealanders would call it tramping.

The night sky was especially beautiful on Tuesday night 4 April. There was a half moon (a moon that looked as though it had been cut squarely down the middle). In the early hours when it was lowdown in the sky it became a luminous buttery gold. And even with a bright moon the stars were beautiful. We don’t see anything like it in the city thanks to city lights. But in the free open country skies the stars are a wonderful presence. The sky does not feel like a flat ceiling over the earth. It feels like a soft dark presence cloaked over the earth with the stars screwed in at their various places – thousands of them! And the stars shine back out from the dark softness. So beautiful to see in the middle of the night when stumbling out to use the bush loo.

So here is a photo taken on a walk on Wednesday 5 April. In the top left side of the image in the sky you can see dark flecks – birds. This was a flock of Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos. The cries of these birds are marvellous. It all sounds like mischief to me. When I find a good recording I will include it. [Ed: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/sites/www.birdsinbackyards.net/files/factsheets/audio/calyptorhynchus-funereus.mp3]

The image as a whole shows another one of my compelling shapes. This one is the shape of the arch. The arch in this instance is formed by the trees growing over the country road.

Good night friends
MG xx