July 8

This morning I got up and went running. I ran an out and back loop in the park that's alongside the lake that's right next to campus. About halfway through my run (10 minutes into it), I stopped because I was practically stepping on birds that would fly up alongside the path no more than 5 to 10 feet away. I stopped because I like birds, and of course, I had to look at them and see what kinds they were, and what they were up to. It turns out there was a bunch of yellow-rumped thornbills and superb fairy-wrens, both species which I had seen before. They were both busy foraging on the ground in the grass. As I watched them for a period of about 10 minutes, though, I saw a few new things I hadn't seen before. The first was two adult male superb fairy-wrens in their breeding plumage -- they were a brilliant electric blue and black pattern -- it was hard to believe that they were real! As I watched the fairy-wrens and thornbills I caught sight of a couple of new species as well: several bright red and olive red-browed finchs and two gray and white double-barred finches. I've seen both species in pet shops in the United States before, but this was my first time seeing them in the wild, and it was really neat. Most of you probably could care less about these birds, but if I could get any pictures of them, you'd like them better. :)

Finally I continued my run and came back to my dorm. I showered, shaved, made myself some more oatmeal for breakfast, then proceeded to spend the next several hours at the computer where I finished cropping and editing pictures and worked on getting them onto my blog. :) I noticed outside my window on the roof of another part of the dorm building there was a masked lapwing sitting down and occasionally sleeping on the roof. It was all by itself and just stayed there all morning. I forgot to check to see if it was still there this afternoon or not. I took a picture of it through my binoculars though. :) It's fun taking pictures like that. It kinda makes up for not having a huge lens on my camera in some cases.

This afternoon I decided to go for a walk and took my camera along in case any opportunities came up to take photos of cool things. I was happy to find that a big cement post in the middle of the lake still had an assortment of birds perched on it, and I was able to use my binoculars to identify the birds and even take a couple of photos. The birds were little pied cormorants, little black cormorants, and a darter. They are all related birds that catch fish underwater, but unlike ducks they don't have the oil glands to keep their feathers dry, so it's not uncommon to see them perched in a sunny location, such as this cement post, sunning themselves to dry their feathers.

I continued on my walk and ended up taking a path that I think looped around and came back. but I turned around and came back the way I came for fear of it getting dark. I ended up walking between 4 and 5 miles in all, and saw lots of cool birds. I got some nice pictures of several species including Pacific black ducks, coots, moorhens, Australian raven, little pied cormorant, crimson rosella, a female magpie-lark and a cicada casing. :) For those who don't care much about birds, hopefully the photographs will be appreciated anyway. :)