October

The first couple of weeks in October I was out west working. There was no sign of early rain, and things were still very dry.

There was an amazing eclipse while I was out there, and I managed to get a couple of shots of the early stages before it turned a fiery red/orange. Not having a tripod with me, I had to improvise using a pile of larger stones from the gibber plains.

The next morning at a small dam I came across the first Black Falcon I had seen in a little while. The bird was no doubt preying on the large flocks of Zebra finches coming in for a morning drink.

I extended my usual break from work in October by an extra week. My dad, brother and I went out to a friend of mine's grazing property north of Muttaburra. They had never been there and I was keen to show them around. As always the hospitality given to us was fantastic and we had a great time doing all the things most blokes like to do. We timed the trip with the first real heat wave of the summer but that just added to the experience. I was so caught up in all the fun I only managed to pull the camera out a few times.

I thought this nice looking feral billy goat with an impressive coat was worth a photo.

My mate Dave put on his best tour guide voice and gave us a look around a rock escarpment jumping up out of the flat downs country.

As we rounded a bend whilst exploring the eastern face of the escarpment, we came literally face to face with a large stick nest that could have only belonged to Wedge tailed eagles. We were even more surprised to find that there was an eagle in the nest. I would say the large fledgling was more surprised than us, but thankfully the bird appeared quite relaxed and never left the nest platform. The remains of goat kids strewn about the place suggested the bird was well looked after and not in a hurry to leave. He or she looked at us with little more interest than we were funny looking goats roaming the escarpment with the rest of the mob.

 



 

Its not too hard to see why this tree was chosen for a nest location. A room with a view... a favourite shot of mine.

 

  

We quickly moved passed the area conscious of not wanting to frighten the bird away from the nest, or to hold the parenting birds away. I would never knowingly approach an occupied eagles nest so closely, and it was only by honest chance that we stumbled into it when rounding a corner. No photo would be worth causing a young bird to be abandoned, or injured/killed from leaving a nest too early.