aussiebirder

It was our Wedding Anniversary again and we chose not to go away but have a lovely day out in the city at our local famous Taronga Park Zoo, which we both love visiting to see the Regent Honeyeater they are breeding for future release. We catch a train into the city, a ferry across our beautiful Sydney Harbour and a bus up the hill. After a coffee n cake while watching the Goodfellow’s Tree Kangaroo climbing along large ropes, we made our way to the Bird Show which was cut short due to strong winds, which make it difficult for birds to perform. Click on image to enlarge. These amazing creatures are endangered and found in the dark rainforests of Far North Queensland, where we have found them on our previous journeys. They are essentially fruit and foliage eaters but don’t mind the occasional bird egg.

At the bird show we saw a demonstration of the clever Black-breasted Buzzard, a bird we had seen on our travels in the Kimberley region of Far North WA. It uses a rock to break open Emu eggs to eat their nutritious contents.

Being our Wedding Anniversary we spent some time watching this couple of Gang Gang Cockatoo showing affection to one another, with the male coming on strong with courting behaviour. These birds will soon be breeding and are busy making preparation. It was a gift from God to us of our relationship, two ‘love birds’ who love birding together. Loving my new Sony A6700 mirrorless, the images are amazingly easy to achieve, so much better than the Canon, and with amazing light sensitivity. I love the auto to manual (DMF) function so good I do not have to labour between the two, and its amazing unique manual focus ability.

There is a great variety of bird and animal species from all over Australia, all under the same covering. If you are a birder and travel to Sydney do not miss a trip to our Taronga Park Zoo native bird enclosures. There is a Rainforest and a larger Australian bird section as well as a Finch enclosure. The main reason we love to visit is to see our beautiful endangered Regent Honeyeater. The zoo have a breeding and release program to attempt to save the species from extinction, since most of its feeding trees (Mugga Ironbark) were logged to make railway sleepers in the 18 and 1900s. There conservation is the largest public/federal conservation program in Australia involving hundreds of volunteers. I have had the privilege to actually see wild non-banded birds while birding, but they are very rare to see these days. This bird use to inhabit much of the dry woodlands of western NSW and Victoria in large flocks, but now they are scattered in small family groups along the coast and inland.

It is just such a brilliantly stunning bird having the regent colours similar to the Regent Bowerbird male. Take a look at the plumage patterns in the light.

On observation these honeyeaters, like their cousin honeyeater species, such as the Miners, Friarbirds and Wattlebirds, are quite aggressive birds and will threaten and drive away other species. They seem to be chasing their own species continuously.

It was lovely try my camera on one of Australia’s most beautiful tiny birds, the Gouldian Finch which is endangered and threatened with extinction due to loss of habitat due to fire and feral cat predation. These birds are now only found in the dry arid Kimberley region we visited a couple of years ago. Listen and you will hear the unique sound of the high pitched Finch calling, much of it is outside our hearing range.

A few more of our rainforest birds we saw. We loved sharing with the many American tourists and birders that we met on this occasion, probably off the cruise ship in port at the time. Most of our rainforest birds are fruit eaters and feed from the variety of fig, palm berries, Lily Pilly and other berries.

We had a wonderful Anniversary date doing things we enjoy together.

Have a wonderful week. Its getting quite wet and windy for next week here as Cyclone Harold makes landfall tonight up the north coast.

As my 1st book “What Birds Teach Us” now enters its tenth year of having been published and successfully had several reprints in its popular 2nd Edition. If you have not seen this book, click on the title in the above line to find out more. A book shop employee told me today how much she enjoyed it. This is the original promo video.

We are loosing many thousands of birds every year due to loss of habitat, predation by ferule animals, human interference and destruction of nesting sites, and blatant disregard for our native wildlife. The Zoo is attempting to bridge this gap and prevent the loss of endangered species, the Regent Honeyeater being just one of several.

In a similar way, we humans suffer from times of loss and destruction of our habitat and lives from the effects of war, disease, disasters, accidents, destructive weather events, murders and self destructive behaviours. At some point in our lives we will have to deal with the grief of loss, either the death of a loved one or friend, loss of property, finances, health and mobility. Unfulfilled expectations in life fuel the anger and disappointment that follows a significant loss which grieves our spirits and leads to depression and the dark night of the soul. Loss is not something we tolerate well since our eternal souls were made to be in a sinless forever world, but in this decaying sinful world the curse of sin and death prevail due to the failure of people to acknowledge God’s authority in their lives. Jesus overcame the power of sin and death for us since we were unable to do so. Salvation through Jesus is a free gift from God, the offer has no rain check.

“The law of Moses [keeping the 10 Commandments] was unable to save us because of the weakness [failure] of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins.” – Romans 8:3

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 6:23

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” – Revelation 21:4

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Adv. Dip. in Counselling and Family Therapy.

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To introduce people to our unique Australian birds,

And learn from them how to live a healthy and happy life.

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