Whilst I’m a fairly novice bird watcher, Suki the cat had always a great interest in birds for her own reasons. With the exception of cooked specimens, I tended to ignore feathered animals before I moved to Australia in late 2005 to join Mrs. Schmitz in Sydney. This changed soon after we settled in the suburb of North Bondi where the sheer abundance of colourful and exotic species sparked my interest in avian topics. I started to write down bird inspired observations which I put on this little weekly blog about Australia, Sydney and the feathered and not feathered locals.
I could spot these small graceful raptors frequently hunting along roadside during my recent trip to outback Australia, most of the six thousand kilometers in total through remote New South Wales and South Australia. And like I already explained in last weeks Bird Of The Week it was not only a fairly long journey but also insightful all the same.
This little fellow had good long look at me at the steepest section of the Mount Ohlssen Bagge trail in South Australia’s gorgeous Flinders Range. And without a doubt this bird was pretty bewildered by my sight, a sweating human draped with two cameras hauling a heavy tripod up a seriously arduous mountain.
I go to great efforts on this blog to make connections between the birds and the topics that occupy my mind at the moment but this week’s Bird Of The Week must be the worst example in this regard. So here you are – apparently there is a well-known baseball team in the USA by the name of Baltimore Orioles which brings me to sporting teams named or nick-named after animal species which in turn leads me to the winners of this year’s Australian rules football premiership the Sydney Swans.
