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.


Bernhard Schmitz & Suki the cat


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As I took this picture of an inquisitive Robin in a friend’s garden near Vienna during my recent visit to my old home country Austria I was struck how much this small but bold flycatcher would fit into my new home country Australia. 

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Last weekend Mrs. Schmitz, yours truly and two of our friends, belonging to the diminishing group of Australian residents concerned about environment issues, went to beautiful Capertee Valley to help and plant trees desperately needed to save our Bird Of The Week the endangered Regent Honeyeater. You can trust me that I won’t fly the flag of radical environmentalism and single-minded protection of species here, but the latest major study into Australian attitudes to society ....

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This harmless looking small bird whom I photographed near Humpty Doo, a small town in Australia's Northern Territory, is also known as Blood Finch and is being accused of being a “killer” in captivity.

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