Azure Kingfisher up a bit closer

'You're not going to show them yet another Azure Kingfisher picture, are you?

'They all look the same anyway. Always with a honking great fish poking out of their bills. Why don't you just run last week's picture? Safe time messing around with Gimp.

'And that's virtually the same male Shining Flycatcher picture as last time too. There's plenty more birds in the bush. Get out and capture something different, why don't you?'

That's not a real person talking, you understand. It's the little voice in my head. Little voice? Big mouth, more like. Are not all kibitzers thus?

And the reply?

Well, I could spend more time on other birds, but the Azures have a hold on me (with Shining Flycatchers a bonus). The chances of getting anything worthwhile when the youngsters (however many there may be) emerge from the nest tunnel are slim. 

But when else will I ever get any such chance again? Even though the birds are said to reuse tunnels, there's no certainty they will.

Perhaps they leave them fallow for a season or so. A sort of natural fumigation. Get rid of the stinking debris, the excreta, and, no doubt, a load of parasites.

So the cycling and sweating over now flooded tracks will go on. So too the slapping at the mozzies, the stiff standing, and the bum-numbing sitting.

Mostly forgotten today when one of the parents faced me (about 8 metres away) and the tunnel (about 3m). Didn't stay long on the old branch poking from the creek pool and didn't go to the tunnel, but seemed less concerned at my presence. Perhaps a happy sign of some acceptance once the fledglings emerge.

Elsewhere today, a very rare sight in Tyto of more than 100 White-throated Needletails hawking low over the main lagoon and higher over the grasslands, and a male Little Bittern taking a typical 20-25 metre flight up from, across, and back down into the Scleria.