I’m not a great fan of groups, but yesterday I joined the Eurobodalla Naturalists on a birdwatching ramble over Jemisons Headland, hoping to learn something more about my home turf. I had unaccustomed binoculars hanging around my neck beside my camera and I was already reconciled to the uselessness of the latter when it comes to birds.
It was pretty much as I expected. I stood in the group, peering roughly in the same direction as they were. All I managed to see was the flash of the disappearing birds: three rainbow lorikeets, silver-eyes from Tasmania, red browned finches aka firetails, a hoary-headed grebe, a varied swordgrass brown butterfly, a white-faced heron, a sea eagle and 300 black swans. Except in the case of the sea eagle and the three hundred swans: I can manage to spot size and volume. As well as birds there were butterflies, moths, the odd fungus, and holes that caused debate: probably bandicoots.
It was a perfect day, I chatted amiably about things other than birds, and I cleared group birdwatching off my list of things to become obsessed with.
If I was a better spotter, this is the array of things I would have seen, courtesy of Google image. Gathered like this, using someone else’s eyes and camera, it’s a pretty impressive haul.
If I’m to do the headland justice I probably need to include a bird I often spot in groups early in the morning along a bushy part of the headland track. I’m always especially delighted when I spot red-tailed black cockatoos, which I chose many years ago as my avatar. (photo from Google image)
snippetsandsnaps 
I’m too dopey to use binoculars, I can never find anything, so I’d come across as a right prune if I joined a group like that. I would like to see one of those little birds with white eye liner though!
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So would I! I could see movement in the bushes, but that was all.
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Oh I love this, I’m not the only totally incompetent bird-watcher out there! I was much cheered when a friend who went on a bird-watching tour reported back their guide assured them there is a whole category known in the trade as “LBJs” — not a long-ago president of the USA, as some of us Old Wrinklies would assume, but an acronym for “Little Brown Jobs.” Isn’t that lovely? Finally a category I can identify…
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Like a friend of mine who gave me a plant once and told me it was a plantthatlikesthesun. I love sharing my incompetences because it always invites equivalent confessions, and I know I’m not alone. Thank you – and thank you too for LBJs – although naming them still requires that you see them.
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Meg, my avatar is the King Parrot. It was also Al’s and my niece found him a stained glass version of one that I now have hanging in my window, easily visible from my computer and when I come into this room. I saw two live ones just outside my window this morning. They may have been saying hello to my stained glass one. xxPrue
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King Parrot is perfect for you. How did you come by it as avatar? Did you choose it or did it choose you?
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A bit of both. Definitely it, the stained glass version, chose me after Al died, and he inhabits its spirit and makes my window and me glow. The real ones wheel around me every day on my walks, so they definitely choose me, flighty tho’ they are, so rudely red and green, squeaking at me with a tad of derision, methinks. Prue
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I’m quite happy admiring the birds that come into my garden, There are a lot of others that visit during winter and live on the nearby estuary, but you need good binoculars and a damn big lens to see any of them as they stay quite a distance from the road. And I have neither. I’m not much of a joiner either, but keep thinking maybe I ought to join some group or other for the social aspect if nothing else.
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Trouble with a birdwatching group is if you socialise you scare off the birds with chatter! I’ve got reasonable binoculars, but (a) you need to know where to point them; (b) you need to know how to focus them and manoeuvre them round your specs; and (c) you need to be able to hold them with unshaking elevated arms. Your garden birds obviously provide you (and us) with plenty of bird pleasure.
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Oh, Meg! I think you are very sensible not to become obsessed by birdwatching! Plenty else to do in life….
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And with more immediate and easier returns. I’ve been more attuned to birds since I came home, partly I think because at least I recognise some of them. I’m developing a distant connection with my front-deck brown pigeon, and a slightly closer one with currawongs on the back deck – they’re cheekier. And I forgot to mention signs of emus on the headland: they’re escapees I think from a long-ago attempt to farm emus. So – not bird-obsessed, but bird-attuned!
By the way, what else do you suggest?? I’m always on the lookout for a good obsession!
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Oh, goodness, don’t ask me! Photography, travel (which can just be finding places nearer to home that you’ ve never visited…..but you do all that anyway!!
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At least you could name them all! If I even manage to see one it’s still a thingummy bird. 😦 😦 Becky puts me to shame. Sunday hugs, darlin, though I appreciate you will be slip sliding into Monday land 🙂 🙂
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Tell you a secret! I had a pen clipped on the front of my T-shirt, and a small notepad in my pocket. Every time a name was mentioned I wrote it down, and then checked in my bird book for the right species for here before I snaffled the photos. Some of them were hard to find: birdwatchers are also avid copyrighters it seems. All the shots I loved were by the same man and wisely copyright. It 6am here as I read this, so I’ll send hugs accompanied by morning birdsong.
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How lovely! (the birdsong 🙂 ) I’m munching cashews with my red wine.
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