Flight of the Night Parrot!

Can't catch me!

Just reported this week in the Australian press is a fascinating story about the first sighting in over 100 years in Western Australia of a Night Parrot. What's also remarkable about this is that until three years ago this bird was presumed extinct - in 2014 the present of Night Parrots was confirmed in a remote part of western Queensland! This bird is seriously elusive and has been considered the Holy Grail of the bird watching world. This is the only photo captured by a determined group of Western Australian twitchers and unfortunately it was flying away, hence the rear end shot.

My own contribution to the Australian world of ornithology is this snap of a White Faced Heron at Redcliffe north of Brisbane. This rather tame bird hopped over these rocks at the water's edge and then jumped on the verandah of a house close by to be fed by an elderly Australian lady. For those in the know this common bird is not in the genus Ardea, which is where most herons fit in, but it's Latin name is Egretta novaehollandiae (Egret because it's more like an Egret and Novaehollandiae because it's Australian. New Holland being the name given to Australia by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. Tasman actually never got to the Australian mainland but he did discover an island off the south coast - guess what that's called?)