100,000 visitors – well, almost
No Comments »22nd January, 2011; Category: Blogs
Male Flame Robin, Mt. Macedon, Victoria
This blog about my sighting of Australian birds has been going for just over five years now. During that time I have published nearly 1200 articles about our beautiful birds. Many of these articles have one and often several photos of birds I have been blessed to get focussed in my camera lens.
Over the years a community of people who appreciate birds has grown on this site, and we are approaching 4000 comments and questions, a significant milestone which will happen any day now. (I’ll keep an eye on the statistics and let everyone know. Sorry – no prize for making the 4000th comment.) I’d like to thank all of you who come here regularly, and especially those of you who leave comments. You are appreciated.
You may have noticed a logo on the sidebar from the Fat Birder “Birding Top 1000” ranking. This site ranks the top birding sites from around the world. Over the last year my site has consistently been in the top 50 sites, sometimes as high as about #24. This amazes me. The ranking is based on traffic to my site, so plenty of people must be visiting on a regular basis.
I use two other programmes which analyse the traffic coming to my site. On one of these I had just over 250,000 visitors last year, but this site can be rather misleading. Google Analytics is a far more reliable indicator I believe, and last year Trevor’s Birding had almost 100,000 visitors – actually, it was just 600 short of that figure.
Darn.
Never mind, figures so far in 2011 indicate that visitor numbers continue to grow. I am planning to continue posting new articles here at least every two or three days – more if I have the time – for the foreseeable future, so stay tuned.
And don’t forget to leave a comment or two. I appreciate your efforts.
Good birding.
Pacific Black Ducks, Laratinga Wetlands
Pacific Black Duck, Laratinga Wetlands, Mt Barker, South Australia
Pacific Black Ducks and Grey Teal are probably the most common and well known ducks found in Australia. They are very common in parks, on lakes, rivers and reservoirs and can even be found in private gardens. More than once we’ve had ducklings in our swimming pool.
They are one of most recognisable birds and are very popular in public parks and gardens where people love to feed them. I don’t encourage this practice as the food – often bread – is not only unsuitable for ducks, it is potentially harmful to them.
Pacific Black Ducks are generally quite unafraid of people, especially in public places like the Laratinga Wetlands in South Australia. This makes them excellent subjects for photography.
Further reading:
Pacific Black Duck, Laratinga Wetlands, Mt Barker, South Australia
Coots and Moorhens, Laratinga Wetlands
Dusky Moorhen, Laratinga Wetlands
The Laratinga Wetlands at Mt Barker in the Mt Lofty Ranges usually have a large number of Eurasian Coots and a moderate number of Dusky Moorhens. On my recent visit the numbers were reversed. There were a few Coots, but they were far outnumbered by the Dusky Moorhens which seemed to be everywhere.
It was also interesting to note that there were many juvenile moorhens getting about in the lagoons. The high rainfall of the latter part of last year may well have triggered a very productive breeding season.
Related articles:
Eurasian Coots, Laratinga Wetlands
More Wedge-tailed Eagles
Wedge-tailed Eagle
For over 26 years I’ve kept a month by month list of the birds seen in our garden, on our five acre block or flying overhead. In that time I’ve only recorded Wedge-tailed Eagles on a handful of occasions, despite the fact that they are relatively common and widespread in the region in which I live.
That seems to be changing recently. I saw one flying high over head a few weeks ago – read about it here. Then last Saturday we were entertaining some friends around our swimming pool when another one flew low over our neighbour’s garden. We had good views as it soared back and forth looking for a meal.
My latest sighting was yesterday morning. My wife was walking in our driveway and saw two Wedge-tailed Eagles soaring overhead. This is the first time I can recall seeing two at once over our place. They glided on the thermals for about five minutes before moving out of sight over the nearby hills. I had excellent views through my binoculars, but they were a little too far off for good photos. Instead, I’ve included a photo of a WT Eagle taken during the Free Flight Bird Show at Taronga Zoo in Sydney early last year.
Reflecting on these recent sightings I concluded that there may be a link between the appearance of these birds and rabbits. Until a year or so ago, we never saw any rabbits around here because of a virus. They have now become partially resistant to this virus and are breeding up in large numbers. We have several baby rabbits residing in our garden. This increased breeding has been aided by a much wetter than usual winter and spring last year, and there is still plenty of food available for them.
Now how do I encourage the eagles to visit regularly and partake of these meals on four legs?
Good birding.
Superb Fairy wrens, Laratinga Wetlands
Superb Fairy-wren, Laratinga Wetlands, South Australia
The Laratinga Wetlands at Mt Barker in the Mt Lofty Ranges in South Australia have been established now for over 11 years. During that time the various ponds and the surrounding areas have been planted up with many native trees, bushes, grasses and water plants. The area is now an excellent habitat for both water birds and bush birds.
Every where I walked along the various paths on a recent visit I heard and saw families of Superb Fairy-wrens. There seemed to be plenty of them, but sometimes they can be frustrating little birds to photograph. They can move so quickly when chasing flying insects to eat that one has to be very quite focussing on them to get a shot. Many times I’ve taken excellent photos of the twig or branch where the bird was sitting a fraction of a second earlier!
In other places this species can be a delight to photograph as they pose on picnic tables or hop around between your feet. I guess I have to be grateful when a bird poses nicely with enough light and time enough to focus and compose the shot. It certainly makes this an interesting and challenging hobby.
Related articles:
- Wrens and cockatoos (this one has a better photo of a male wren)
- Great Birding Moments: Superb Fairy-wrens
- Superb Fairy-wren, Botanic Gardens, Canberra