Two questions...

[James Rolevink <>]

Hey all,

Finally found the time to snap a few more birds yesterday, so I started in the venerable gardens.

Aside from seeing the water dragons for the first time which was both quite cool and also disappointing - when we noticed that every one we saw has a blasted collar even bigger than the poor fairy wrens; I wish we could move the ANU biology department - I was drawn to a couple of calls, one seemingly familiar and one I have never heard before.

Firstly, I confidently looked up into the pines next to the duck pond by the café expecting to see a Crimson Rosella. Now I don’t claim to be an ornithological expert by any means, but the distinct trills and phrases were unmistakably Crimson; I even had a pet Crimson as a child making me even more confident that this is what I was hearing. Yet what did I find when I located the source of the calls:
 


Again, I am no expert, but this looks more like a female King Parrot to me. What gives there? Do they have a similar call to the Crimson?

Secondly, I kept hearing a weird call which almost sounded like loud grinding of tree branches over near the tiny little pond area (near the Sydney gardens); the lack of wind at the time and plain common sense told me it was not really grinding branches. Now I didn’t see the bird actually making the call, but I had isolated the tree and had a rough idea of where it should be and this is what I found right in that spot:



This looks like a plain old pigeon in the body, but the head and face are not familiar to me. Does anyone know what this is, and what its cry is like?

Cheers,

James

www.MacAttack.com.au
A web site dedicated to:  • amateur photography  • elegant computing solutions

James MM Rolevink, BCompSci, BArts | e-mail: | phone: (+612) / (02) 6249 6200 | mobile: 0411 800 204

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