Luck takes a hand in what's spied from the hide

Lady Luck got to work for me in Tyto today. Been haunting the hide of late because water levels gradually dropping and offering bit more mud for White-browed Crakes - in particular - to forage on out in the open. Doubly lucky to get a bird right below hide, after just missing great action shot yesterday.

And there have been teasing calls - mainly from afar, once quite near - from Australian Little Bittern/s. More luck. Today's sighting of female and male could not have been made from the hide. Distant picture above of male with treefrog (probably Peron's - usually brownish, but as with many frogs able to change colour) came as I was returning after quick check on nesting fantails and sunbathing python.

More luck. Walk to Northern Fantail nest led me to almost step on Large-tailed Nightjar. Blur of brown before my eyes and much diversionary fluttering followed. 

Bird kept trying to lure me away. I kept trying to locate egg/s/hatchling/s, oh so cryptic and laid or lying near the track. We both failed. But all the time being taken produced the lucky sighting of the bitterns.

So, just for luck I'll throw in a few more from the latest Tyto outings, starting with Brown-backed Honeyeater.

And ever-present Crimson Finch, female chomping weed seeds.

Solitary Sulphur-crested Cockatoo sitting a while before beginning to chomp chucks out of perch.

And Common Koel male taking break from noisy advertising for females. But he'll probably get lucky. Just not so lucky as this watcher.

Of Koels and cool cameras

This juvenile Common Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea) continued its nonstop demands for food from a pair of Blue-faced Honeyeaters (Entomyzon cyanotis) at the caravan park today.

For a large, incessant caller the bird has been surprisingly difficult to spot in the tall trees. It came a little lower early this morning. But feeding was done at such a rush I missed two chances, and then the Koel moved out of sight.

In a post with emphasis as much on photography as the natural world, I like the attractive patterns in the out of focus branches and leaves behind the bird. A plug for image stabilisation: 420mm=630mm, handheld at 1/60sec F14 ISO400. Naturally many more blurred shots hit the trash.

Here's a Golden-headed Cisticola (Cisticola exilis) on a sugar cane flower stalk, also early today. The side-on pose helps keep all in focus. 420mm=630mm handheld at 1/800sec F10 ISO400.

And finally a Monarch butterfly on one of the few Tyto lagoon-edge weeds not to have been sprayed in the last few days. Not a macro, this is another handheld 630= shot, at F13 1/1250sec ISO1600. The picture has been lightly sharpened, without any denoising. Not a super shot, but a telling example of camera technology at work.