Goolwa Birds

In November, we took a couple of days off, and headed 50 miles down the Coast to stay in Goolwa.  Goolwa is a Port on the River Murray very close to the end of the system, and not so very long ago, it was thought that the entire ecology of the area was irreparably damaged.  We have a terrible drought that lasted for many years, and most of the water was kept upstream for various reasons, none of which really went down too well with South Australians.

Anyway, Mother Nature came to the rescue with 2 years of flooding rains.  These floods caused a terrible amount of damage up in the higher reaches of the Murray/Darling catchment area, but as always there is a silver lining.  And the silver lining for the Murray was that a massive amount of water came down and flushed the River out - quite literally.  Miraculously, the bird life has come back, the water quality has improved, and the Lakes (which were just about dry) are full of water again.

Here is a series of bird photos I took on the first day we were away.  My camera was a Canon 60D, and the lens a 70-300 zoom.

Cape Barren Geese in flight.  I love to see images of birds in flight, but very rarely can I capture one for myself .  

I love the symmetry of this image - 2 up and 2 down.  Pelicans would have to be one of the photogenic birds of all time.  They are big - which helps, and they don't move awful fast.

This is a Red Kneed Dotterel.  I love the name of this little bird.  This one was well intent on catching dinner, and it was interesting to see him jab down into the sand with that beak, and come up with a worm.

A black swan family.  The grey coloured ones are the youngsters.

A little White Egret surrounded by very many little cormorants.  they were all preening, but all the egret wanted was his dinner.

Another pelican - I couldn't resist.

Cape Barren Geese

Another mob of Little Cormorants.  There were hundreds of them down there.