A Taste Of Things To Come.

Yesterday, on the way home from taking my Mum to do her weekly shopping we stopped by a small reserve with a very small lake (pond? ditch with water in it??) There are usually a couple of Coots and perhaps a few Pacific Black Ducks swimming around on the surface or duck-diving for food and sometimes a few Australian Ibis will pop in for some refreshment and snacks, although they generally prefer the larger lake i usually go for walks around a few hundred metres away, all in deep dark suburbia.

This time however sitting on the water, floating by a small bed of green reeds something caught my eye and i had to look twice and three times to be sure i was seeing what i was seeing!

I was!

I saw something i have never seen before and would not expect to ever see again… these days however weird things are becoming more commonplace so who knows?

I took a snap or three with my smartphone camera for posterity and proof i was not dreaming and then took Mum home to put the shopping away before things melted  (was 29 C that day – 30 today and tomorrow forecast  – and we are a month away from Winter down here!)

Shortly after i got my trusty Nikon and went back in the hope ‘it’ was still there and i could get a few decent pictures.

I will say no more about it for now, other than to say i took almost 200 shots and found a couple of other surprises when i was there. The results when i checked them on my computer were truly astounding. I think they deserve to be spread out over the next week and will do so as from tomorrow.

But so as to not leave you hanging too much i’m posting three snaps i took the day previously of visitors to my birdbath. It was a popular spot that day with repeated visits from at least 6 different bird species, large and small.  🙂

(Click on a pic to open in a new window and click again for full detail 🙂 )

Starting ‘small’ – A Willie Wagtail, apres dip! 🙂

Getting larger – a similarly coloured Magpie Lark, mid-splash. Her brilliant, clear eye is being protected from the water being thrown up by a translucent eyelid.

The largest visitor to bathe on the day – An Australian Magpie, also similarly attired to the previous two! 🙂

A clearer view of the Magpie.

Watch out for greater things to come…

love.