Cosy hollows, proud home-owners

top to bottom: Brushtail Possum, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Green Rosella, Rainbow Lorikeet, Young Galah

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Our 'insignificant' neighbours

Spotted Turtle-Dove and House Sparrow, Hobart, Tasmania

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Grey Fantail

I'm not so sure about the quality of these photos, but I wanted to present the species. If I get the chance to take better pictures of the Fantails, I will update the post with them.

Grey Fantail, Tasmania

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ML

Musk Lorikeets, Tasmania

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Nike of Samothrace in Hobart

Black-faced Cormorant, Hobart

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Pollen

Sometimes the last shot for the day might be the best one. Silvereye in Hobart, Tasmania.

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A big 'duck'

Australian Pelican, Sydney

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Pacific Black

Pacific Black Duck, Hobart, Tasmania

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Learning is important

Mallard duck and ducklings, Hobart, Tasmania

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This is not a toy

It is a real newly-hatched duckling. I saw five yesterday.

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The young Butcherbird again

Juvenile Grey Butcherbird, Tasmania

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Elusive Wattlebirds

Wattlebirds have been very successful in avoiding being photographed. I still don't have even a single good picture of them...

above: This one is Brush

above: And this one is Yellow

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Grey Butcherbird

This post shows an adult Grey Butcherbird (above) and a juvenile (below), but most of all it shows the nice bokeh of this lens (Canon EF 70-300 IS USM). The backgrounds look quite like watercolor. Pretty cool, isn't it?

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Melbourne Possums

I loved Melbourne for its possums!

Brushtail Possum, Carlton Gardens

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Eastern Water Dragon

Eastern Water Dragons, photographed at Lane Cove National Park, Sydney

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Real Wild Rainbow Lorikeets

I just saw on someone's blog a photo of a Rainbow Lorikeet taken in an aviary in Hong Kong. The bird looked a bit too skinny and some of the colors were completely 'wrong'. What have they done to the poor Lorikeets? Was it a hybrid or just some strange mutation that occurred in captivity? That made me post some old photos of real wild healthy Rainbow creatures, so that everyone can see how they look in Australia.

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Another great singer

I had the chance to take some photos of the Grey Butcherbird today and this is one of them. More to come soon...

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Where is New Holland?

New Holland Honeyeater singing

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Friday means Duck-day

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Water drops

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A Sparrow

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Lined up

Even in the Land of Parrot you don't see such a sight every day. And it stays like this for a second only. I wish I was fast enough to change the settings and take another one where all of them are in focus. Next time...

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Flash :(

Being a classically trained animator, having the bad luck to start working at the end of the analog era, I'm quite a proficient user of Flash, Toon Boom and many other animation and graphic apps. After all my 14 years in this industry, working in nearly all the possible creative positions, I know three things for sure:
- no tablet matches the resolution of paper,
- no stylus matches the pressure sensitivity of a plain pencil,
- no software is better than a lightbox.

Cutouts are OK. In the hands of Animators who can draw and know what animation is, cutouts can produce some decent results. It becomes a real disaster when people who know the technical side of the programs are hired as animators and do that awful mechanical crap that is so often shown on TV nowadays – thoughtlessly tweening pre-drawn symbols.

My post was triggered by these (click and click) two discussions. If you like cartoons, if you are an animator, you might find them interesting.

A Flash production is usually the best kind of work an industry animator could get nowadays :(

Here are the links again:
http://cartooncave.blogspot.com/2007/10/flash-in-pan.html
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/11/flash-vs-traditional-vs-asia.html

A funny pic for 'Good night'

What do you think is going on here? Please, post your interpretation. I'm curious to know.

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A portrait

I've just come across this nice portrait of a Little Pied Cormorant, taken near the bank of Yarra River in Melbourne about two years ago.

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Pied Currawong

Another guy that used to visit me from time to time in Sydney was the Pied Currawong. Quite wary they are, but the sight of a few grapes was irresistibly attractive to them. Currawongs are mad about grapes!

The photo below shows how the poor Fuji couldn't do better. And I was only about 2 meters away.

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Magpie-lark

This is a bird I miss a lot in Tasmania. Magpie-Larks are friendly and communicative. They sing in duets and are among my favorite Australians.

The male, female and juvenile birds are easily distinguished by their colors. Above you can see a female and below is a male. Both photos were taken in Melbourne.

Below is another female Magpie-lark, but this time in Sydney.

And the photo below shows a father feeding a young chick. Blurry, out of focus pictures like this one made me want to buy a DSLR long time ago. If I could only not miss all those moments... !

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Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

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Australian Wood Ducklings

Yesterday I introduced some more [ bracketed labels ] and to make full use of them here is an image that was a part of an earlier post, but thematically goes well with the new one and they both fit under the same category.

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