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.
This small plover is one of many species native to Australia that self-introduced themselves to the Kiwis. The Kiwi of course is not only a flightless bird endemic to New Zealand and the national symbol of that country but also the colloquial term used in Australia for the human inhabitants of these islands on the opposite side of the Tasman Sea.
The picture of this small passerine bird of the swallow family you can see here, was taken right next to an oversized hardware store called Bunnings Warehouse in Sydney’s suburb of Alexandria. Coming from a European country where the do-it-yourself approach to building, modifying, or repairing something is frankly an activity for freaks, the size of such a warehouse and the quantity of stuff inside is truly baffling.
This iconic species of the crane family is one versatile Bird Of The Week and I could easily devoted half a dozen entries to it. They are probably best known for their spectacular dance displays, something that impresses me even more as I’m known for a rather clumsy dance-style myself.
