a few more birds, natures bounty

Seen recently in various locations about the lake.

Egret, looking very special on the day

 

crested pigeon flew up into the tree; it'd been resting-up with ducks on the foreshore.



Sitting where the tide had gone out,  There were ten all up; Mum, Dad and eight young ones

 

almost all of them, the male was with another two a short distance away

 

hadn't expected to see this young elkorn/staghorn, high up on the tree trunk.  It's hardly a rain-forest pocket, but more a bushland environment where it was growing.

 

 and a couple more of them

 

arboreal termites (a.k.a. white-ants in Australia) nest

 

kookaburras often will use the termite nests for their own nesting site

 

white-faced grey heron

 superb fairy wren
 

dancing this way, and that..

and back again, with the long-shot, egret.

Did you know that the egrets plumes were much sought after in the 1800's for womens decorative finery? I came across a sad account in the pages of An Australian Bird Book, written by John Leach, published 1911.  He was a founder to the Gould League of Bird Lovers in 1909.  I was a Gould League member in my primary school years, when for a small fee we'd receive in return, a treasured enamelled (bird) badge to wear.  If I remember rightly, there was a new one issued each year. 

 

Here is the author's account:

 

Now come those beautiful birds, the Egrets. Man's cupidity and selfishness, and woman's desire for ornament, seem to have doomed these birds to total extermination, for the plume trade, which is responsible for some of the "most abominable cruelty practised in the animal world," is a war of extermination. Egrets are shy, and are approachable only in the breeding season. At that time they are, in obedience to parental instincts, brave in defence of their young. It is just then that the plume-hunters visit the rookeries and shoot the parents, leaving the helpless, almost fully-fledged, young to die in the nest, so high overhead. And all for what? Could anyone who has seen the devastated nests, with the famished bodies of the fledglings rotting in the sun, ever take pleasure in Egret plumes decking the head of a sister or wife? Women of refinement and tender heart will refuse to wear the proceeds of human cruelty. Those engaged in the trade resort to the mean trick of calling the plumes "Osprey plumes." Now, the Osprey is a Fish-Hawk, and so possibly of little use to the land-dweller, but these plumes grow on the back and neck of a valuable insect destroyer. The extent of this trade is appalling. At one plume sale, held in London on 4th August, 1909, the breeding plumes of 24,000 birds were offered for sale. Think of it! The slow starvation of 40,000 nestlings, the death of 64,000 birds, to provide the plumes for one day's sale. No, ladies, if you consider you are in need of ornament, wear ostrich plumes and pheasants' feathers, for these do not involve the death of a bird, but rather the reverse, for the greater the demand for these feathers, the more birds will be bred; but spare the Egret.

 

Spare the egret indeed!  Wondering now, how and when, this atrocity was abolished.

Later Update:  Thanks to Maggie who wrote me the following exerpt:
The Plumage Act entered the Statute Book a year later in 1921. A bill ”to prohibit the sale, hire, or exchange of the plumage and skins of certain wild birds”, The Plumage Act was celebrated as the factor that brought an end to the “Age of Extermination”. How much this change was due to the effects of the Acts’ hunting and trade regulations or that a growing inclination toward promoting humanitarian ideals reduced the allure of feathered garb is not clear. What is clear is that dwindling feather sales had as much to do, if not more, with changes in the everyday lives of women which simply eliminated opportunities to wear oversized, constraining hats.

The full story is here.