Nymphicus hollandicus ('Percy' & 'Patrick')
 Always intensely social; constantly displaying, playing, grooming and singing.
Budgies were the first birds I ever kept as a child and regardless of how commonplace they may be they still are magically diverting.  Yes I have a problem...I like chickens. Just watching them poke about when ranging free is obscurely relaxing for me.  These snaps were taken with our teeny Canon S95 pocket camera; I like it's noise character which is very 'film-like' to my eyes. It's the last of the S models with an old-tech CCD sensor, you can pick them up for around $100NZ currently and they're only going down from there. And it really does fit in your pocket, even the pockets of my skinny pants.
I might do a mini review of it as part of my Obsolete and Inexpensive series. A massive, clumsy and slightly dim tropical fruit pigeon that anomalously is found in our cool temperate southern beech forests ( and also in the gardens and parks of cities and suburbs, if they have desirable food sources such as our bird-plum tree here). They were heavily hunted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but have made a pretty good comeback in some areas in spite of their low rate of reproduction, particularly down south. They're much more critically endangered in Northland however; the introduced Australian brush-tailed possum is everywhere a problem for them.  Often you are unaware there's one roosting above until the characteristic head-bob or soft, deep and short 'coo' draws your attention. Or a bit of crashing physical incompetence :-) We're lucky to have them.   One of a series of early shots I took with my, fresh out of the courier box, Tamron 70-300 vc zoom on the D300.
I still haven't used this lens all that much, but I'm very impressed with it; particularly since mine was quite a modest price on the second hand market. I used the Nik plugin 'Vivesa' to selectively bump up the exposure on this wee guy whilst leaving the background untouched. The weather has been so mild and dry that we have had a good breeding season for these tiny personable flycatchers. |
Roger
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