Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan 6/12/2014
Yesterday’s trip to the Australian Botanical gardens, Mount Annan, after the week of rain bought out all the mushrooms, the gardens were alive with little mushrooms this time after a few weeks on nothing. There wasn’t so much bird life around but there was the next storm approaching so guess that’s why they were all in hiding.
I started up going to the Wollemi Pine walk of discovery, and there was a few mushrooms popping up there.
I then walked along the board walk there to see if the Pardalotes were still there but no sign of them but by now I was expecting them to have left their burrow by now, so not really surprised.
From there I drove around the southern loop of the park looking out for Kestrels but there was none to be seen today, So I headed to the connections garden to see what was about there usually Mushrooms and an abundance of Birdlife. There were more mushrooms about though not so many birds I could hear them but they wouldn’t come out to play today.
There was a flock of Cockatoos flying overhead and I managed to capture a small section of them in flight.
There was a small group of Noisy Minors feasting on the something amongst the flower gardens so I managed to get a few shots of them as the bounced around.
As I left the noisy minor and when pack to the car in the car park I managed to get a shot of this Red and Green Kangaroo paw.
As I was driving out the next storm was just starting to break so got out just in time before the next soaking. So all good.
Thanks for dropping by.
Glenn.
Landscape chance - 30/11/2014
Last weekend Was the Christmas party for my work, so we had to drive out through the country side to a national park along the way was this field full of hay bales, so on the way back I stopped an took a few shots. I managed to stich a few together to get the panorama here as well so definitely worth the stop. The single shot I post processed a little more than normal but still happy with the results, I may go back and revisit that image one day and work on it some more as my skill at post processing gets better.
Enjoy.
Thanks for dropping by
Glenn
Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan 29/11/2014
This week only a short trip to the gardens today late in the afternoon so after a warm day there not to much activity going on there today bird wise, Mushroom wise non-existent. So this week I went back to the Wollemi Pine walk where a pair of Spotted Pardalote are nesting in their burrow,
by the amount of times they come back with food in their bills looks like they have young to feed, they land on the same perch each time so I’ve set up focus on the area they land on before they head home, this was the best of today shots of them, still not entirely happy with it is yet so more work requited here. Form there I took a quick walk around the gardens and didn’t find anything to take my interest today with the short time available so I headed to the lakes and practiced some panning shots again of Birds in flight, this is the best off of today’s shots, again nothing to great so more practice required here. But slowly getting better.
Picking on the Swallows is hard going so I figure If I can get these down I’ll be OK for mort others in the coming weeks.
There are pretty heavely cropped in so the detail is being lost here. So I'll have to get closer in the comming weeks to get better results.
Thanks for dropping by.
Glenn.
Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan 22/11/2014
This week’s trip to the Australian Botanical Gardens was one I was waiting for all week, wanting to try out my new toy to see just what it can do. I also took along my old camera and now have my Macro lens as a permanent attachment to that one now so my 60D is a dedicated Macro camera for now and my new 7Dmk2 is now my primary wildlife camera. The 60D didn’t make an appearance this weekend as there was no Mushrooms to but the 7Dmk2 get a reasonable work out, the Autofocus is great and I found a much better acceptance rate for birds in flight with this one, and the ten frames a second certainly helps as well. The other plus is the ability to use much higher ISO settings that I was comfortable with on the 60D, which enabled a higher shutter speed so all in all happy with the results of my first really day out with it, here are a few of the shots from today.
A Rainbow Lorikeet having his breakfast on a Pine Mountain Coral tree (Erythrina numerosa)
A female red rump catching the first of the morning sun.
A Pair of male red rump grass parrots coming down to drink.
A Latham's Snipe coming in to land on a small mud flat.
The Auto focus was good enough to enable me to get a few swallow shots for the first time in flight, still need practice on this one. These two are both heavily cropped something I'm hopping to avoid when the Sigma 150 to 600 lens hits the shelves.
Practices quite a few panning shots of brids in flight this one is a Little Pied Cormorant comming in to land at there nesting site.
The next three is a set form burst mode at ten frames a second showing a male Little Pied Cormorant brings nesting material to its mate sitting on the nest. The nests are in the middle of a lake.
This one is of a Spotted Pardalote with the ISO cranked up to 3600 but still only 1/50 of a second due to the darkness in the understory of the Wollomi pine walk of discovery. But happy with the quality of that at that ISO.
So still need practice at with this new camera but so far happy with the results, but with practice hope to get better results in the coming weeks.
Thanks for dropping by.
Glenn
Fitzroy Falls 15/11/2014
This week thought I’d venture further afield to look for mushrooms, so drove down to Fitzroy falls in the southern highlands of NSW south of Sydney. The drive was about an hour and a half, and our first surprise was that today was a free entry into the national park as they are celebrating their 40 year anniversary, so a good start. Last time I was there the bust track had quite a few mushrooms growing along the track so I thought since I wasn’t having any luck in my usual places I thought I’d try here, there’s waterfalls flowing all year round so figured it would be a good place to find some in the moist air there. However as we walked along the track I noticed that the normal damp tracks were dusty dry L so not a good look. There were plenty of wild flowers out though, So I took the opportunity to shot some of these hoping that mushrooms may turn up.
The first was a small white flowering plant, I haven’t been able to identify the plant yet of this one, but there was quite a few of these dotted around the bush.
Then the Mountain Devils (Lambertia Formosa) were out in flower. These little red flowers were also all over the bush and you could see these little red flowers everywhere.
The walk around the rim of the valley had several lookout so the falls so naturally you have to stop for a few shots of the various falls there the main falls are 81m high so a decent drop.
Also along the walk was several banksias this one was one from last season’s flowers and was opening up to allow the seeds to disburse these usually only open after a bush fire has been through.
But no luck on the mushroom front along this walk, as we were making our way back my wife mentioned that we actually had one growing in our back yard.
So after a drive for a nice bush walk,
We headed back home and found the mushroom of the day in my own back yard. Sometimes thinks are right under your nose.
Thanks for dropping by my blog, back next week.
Glenn