Kookaburras feathers

[platypus]

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Kookaburra feathers in a jar on a rainy day.

M9/75 Summilux

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[Iduna]

Dee,

a charming soft stillife and a fine remembrance of those nice birds.

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[stuny]

Very nice.

[MarkP]

Enjoying that 75 Summilux I see.

[pauledell]

Dee,

 

An excellent shot with great composition, lovely soft lighting and subtle colors.

 

Paul

[euston]

I see a beautiful, subtle blend of the exotic and the commonplace. The muted colours and the perfect placing of the jar make for a sense of restfulness and balance. I like this a lot.

[fotografr]

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Great to see that even when it rains your creative energy still shines.

[Northwest Wanderer]

I'll have to look that bird up.

Rain after a long dry summer.

[kiubabar]

I like the atmosphere, trapped by the rainy day, can't go outside

[allamande]

Dee,

 

Somehow this wonderfull, part nostalgic, part melancholy image feels like a perfect book cover. Now all I have to do is think of the story

 

Ece

[platypus]

Thanks Ece, how about "The little Kookaburra who lost his tail feathers"...?

[platypus]

Thanks everybody for looking and commenting!

[larsv]

Beautiful. Simple, warm.

[fotografr]

For those who don't know what the Kookaburra looks like, here's a photo from the Wikipedia free license image bank. I think they're remarkably beautiful.

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[platypus]

Thanks Brent, it did not occur to me that people would not know what a Kookaburra looks like, which was very insular of me!

These birds are the iconic Laughing Kookaburra of the Australian bush, the same birds that spooked the early English explorers with their weird call, until they worked out what was making the dreadful sound.

Kookaburras are found all over this country and vary in size and colouration from area to area. I don't know what part of Australia yours would be from but, as you can see, it differs slightly from the one in my photo

whose habitat is the South East coastal ranges and Snowy Mountains area.

I have a sizeable mob of them (all related) that I have been feeding on a regular basis (twice or thrice daily) for about 13 years, they like raw minced meat balls. I have been attempting to get a photo of all six at once

but so far it has been impossible. The one in this photo is a male, we can tell this by the amount of iridescent blue feathering on his wings, he is a fairly domesticated bird having been raised from a chick after falling out

of the nest while still in a featherless state.

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Edited April 17, 2014 by platypus

[fotografr]

Dee, you must spend a lot of time making meat balls. That's a wealth of information you provided and it greatly compliments the photo of the feathers. I started chuckling when I got to the part about the birds spooking the early English settlers, but then I remembered being alone in a fairly remote Panamanian jungle a few decades ago and being scared out of my mind by what turned out to be little Howler monkeys.

 

Anybody interested in hearing the Laughing Kookaburra? Click here: http://www.soundboard.com/sb/KooKaburra_sound_clips

Edited April 17, 2014 by fotografr

[platypus]

Brent, that's really funny...those recorded voices sound exactly like my birds when they arrive in a bunch at dawn and proceed to "laugh" until I drag myself out of bed to feed them, specially difficult these cold mornings.

 

Not so funny is that I've just sat down and totalled it all up (for the first time ever) and to my horror I see that, over the past 13 years, I have fed meat balls to Kookaburras to the tune of more than the price of a brand new Noctilux.

[fotografr]

Brent, that's really funny...those recorded voices sound exactly like my birds when they arrive in a bunch at dawn and proceed to "laugh" until I drag myself out of bed to feed them, specially difficult these cold mornings.

 

Not so funny is that I've just sat down and totalled it all up (for the first time ever) and to my horror I see that, over the past 13 years, I have fed meat balls to Kookaburras to the tune of more than the price of a brand new Noctilux.

 

Now THAT is the right kind of dedication!

 

Even less funny is that your calculations led me to figure out that over the last 13 years, I've sipped enough espressos to also pay for a brand new Noctilux.

[platypus]

It's almost enough to make you question your priorities isn't it!

Happy Easter.

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[alan c. davis]

Yes Happy Easter Dee and all. Probably the first one I've spent home in the last 25 years. Had planned to spend a week walking from Parachilna down to Hawker along the Heysen Trail but a back injury from a fall a couple of weeks ago has put paid to that....So I'll add my Kookaburra story to this thread. Of course the Kookaburra is the worlds largest kingfisher. Their diet includes small lizards and snakes which they swoop down to snatch, before flying up into the nearest tree where the unfortunate victim is stunned by being pounded on a branch. The sound of Kookaburras happily banging away their lunch is part of the Aussie bush experience. Some years ago I was staying in a camping ground in Sydney with one of my daughters. We'd chucked some bread crusts to a couple of magpies when down swooped a kookaburra, grabbed one of the crusts then flew straight up into the nearest tree we he proceeded to pound it into submission.