I've been working, yes working...like Toad and Ratty on the banks of the lower reaches of the Brisbane River down stream of the Gateway Bridge at Pinkenbah. Its an industrial area close to the river mouth of oil refineries, container terminals, factories, docking wharves, ships, barges and dredges all full of high viz shirts, hard hats and scuffed boots; and suitably out of sight from the social graces of the cafe dwellers upstream. Here the river lazilly flows back and forth in its own good time in tune with the tides and swirling about among the mangroves that line the banks, the navigation poles, mooring bollards and all shapes and sizes of boats. Pinkenbah is an Aboriginal word meaning "place of turtles".
An Australian Pelican sleeps on a bollard after a nights foraging. A Little Black Cormorant looks on...
Being an industrial area you wouldn't imagine that as a bird watching hot spot it don't amount to a hill of beans. However, that said there was a constant passage of bird life up and down the river and in the trees and lawns surounding the factories. Brahminy Kites, Nankeen Kestrels, and White-bellied Sea Eagles patrolled up and down. Willie Wagtails, Rainbow Bee-eaters and Welcome Swallows foraged for insects and Superb Fairy-wrens flitted in the bushes. White-faced Herons fished along the muddy banks.
"Look at me, look at me, I can stand on one leg... pelican yoga!
I'm going to look the other way if you're going to show off ...
A Cattle Egret flies overhead.
An Eastern Osprey feeds on a fish. It must have taken a bucket load of upward lift vectors to get a fish that big up onto the top of that pole..
I've had the pleasure of seeing Osprey in Scotland as well as in many places around Australia. In the Kimberley, a pair of them raised their family on a nest built on the roof of the Catepillar road grader... which meant we couldn't use the grader for six months until the chicks fledged... the second one usually doesn't survivie. Osprey are usually quite content to live close to people. It's always an unexpected thrill to see them and especially rewarding on the Brisbane River out the front of where I was working. But I can't for the life of me work out why they are regarded as a separate species to the Osprey in Scotland... they're just a world wide species!
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