The birds of Heron Island

As I mentioned in my last post, I have a new Nikon SLR, and I couldn't have wished for a lovelier place or more cooperative models to test it on than Heron Island and its wildlife, particularly the beautiful Eastern Reef Egrets.

Our guide told us that although they were once referred to as herons, they have been reclassified as egrets, and the name 'heron' is now only applied to species with more than one colour plumage. However, there are two distinct colour forms, the white and the grey (or blue), but they readily interbreed and both colours offspring can be found in the same brood.

Because the island is a reserve, the island birds are very laid back and seemed only too happy to pose with their beautiful island home as backdrop.

 

In a casuarina tree

One of the other island residents, the Sacred Kingfisher

Crested Tern landing on the gantry. These are visitors to the island along with boobies, cormorants, oystercatchers, frigate birds, flycatchers, and raptors, like the Australian Hobby that I saw but didn't manage to snap. They breed elsewhere but visit the island throughout the year. 

Silver gulls

Buff Banded Land Rail - these birds have really adapted to living with humans: the restaurant was screened to keep them at bay!

Pathway to the beach

The  green door - entrance to the Pisonia forest.



Octopus Bush

The flowers of the Octopus Bush inspire its name 

A cooperative couple strike a series of poses

The University of Queensland's research centre

White-Breasted Sea Eagle

Bar Shouldered Dove

The Sacred Kingfisher in a different location on the lookout for crabs

Silver Eye

Taking flight

Blue Tiger butterfly on Octopus Bush

Noddy Tern with old nest. During the breeding season between September and March,  the population can reach between 70,000 and 120,000

 

 

I told you those rails have made themselves at home. Talk about the good life!

Hope you enjoyed meeting Heron Island's wildlife and thanks for persevering with me. I am back to studying for a couple of months so have gone a little quiet on the blogging front, but I will be back with a vengeance come Spring and post when I can till then. Hopefully, my garden will forgive me.

Fluttering through Singapore

Well, I have been home over two weeks after my sojourn in Jakarta, and I have been so busy. The garden is a disaster. I hear that it barely rained the whole time I was away, so there have been a few losses. I headed back to work the first Monday after I got back and it's sooo busy, and I still have to submit the final reports for my work in Jakarta, so please excuse me if I have been a little remiss in responding to your comments and visiting my favourite blogs.

As a peace offering I thought you might enjoy these photos that I took at the Butterfly Garden in Singapore's Changi airport. I love Changi. There is so much to do there, it must be one of the easiest airports in the world to while away the hours in transit. My favorite things, apart from the butterflies, are to check out the orchid displays, snap up beautiful Asian trinkets from Madam Butterfly (in two of the three terminals), and enjoy a great meal - this visit it was lunch at a vegetarian Indian restaurant.

But back to the butterflies... I am a self-confessed terrible photographer of any fast moving wildlife, but I discovered there are slow butterflies (my kind), and there are others whose wings seem to be a continual blur. Maybe the slow ones were a bit sluggish after lunch, but all the better for us to enjoy them!

I saw some butterflies like this in Kalimantan (Borneo) on our orangutan trip. They were spectacular and seem to range up to about 7 or 8 inches across.

Butterfly food station - lots of delicious pineapple.

This small, dark and handsome specimen had a bright orange body, beautifully coordinated with the ixora!

Pentas seemed to be the most popular plant in town.

This was one of the more fluttery varieties, so it is a little out of focus, though in my defence,  it did seem to have a preference for dining upside down, which surely added a degree of difficulty.

These were beautifully camouflaged to resemble dead leaves.

An embarrassment of riches

There were also some interesting pitcher plants in the display.

Here the underside of one of the blue patterned butterflies can be seen lower right.