This weeks Photography started a day early with a photography workshop I’d booked in on starting 6:00 pm Friday night at the Mount Annan Botanical Gardens, they were holding an Astrophotography workshop, so thought I could do with some work on that so signed up.

Turns out after many nights of clear skies Friday night wasn’t to be, started out with a large bush fire near by so the sky was smoke filled so not a great clear night, The decision was made to head up to the area and see what it was like so we drove of to the foot of the hill the Human Sundial is on and walked up, still quite smoky and a thunder storm was also heading our way so being on top of a hill with Metal tripods in a thunderstorm hmmm probably not the best conditions for Astrophotography so the night was cancelled but we managed to get a few sunset shots in. this is one of the ones I got from that.  

From there the night was cancelled as s the storm was rolling in and lighting was starting to fly around not that far away.

The next day I headed back out to the gardens to see what was about, no luck on the mushroom front not to be found. But better luck on the bird front. This first one is on an Eastern Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis), there’s plenty of these about in the gardens and they are just starting to be come vocal now as well so you hear them before you see them. 

While walking along the track I spotted this little tortoise on the dirt track ahead so waited till he moved away, got a couple of shots here as he watched to see what I was doing. 

Thought I'd try my hand at a few different kinds of shots so went for a detail shot of the old fence post with the barbed wire on it, not sure that it worked that well but something to practice a bit more on in future I think 

Opposite the Plant bank a White-faced Heron (Egretta novaehollandiae) was on the hunt for lizards, managed to get three while I was watching. So didn't go hungry today there. 

Theres a few Spotted Pardalotes (Pardalotus punctuates) about as well and managed to get a few decent shots of one this week. These are colourful little birds. that actually nest in burrows on dirt mounts or in rock walls.

This next one is of a Brown Thornbill (Acanthiza pusilla) Chick waiting to be feed these were chasing the parent birds around constantly demanding food. 

The other week I got a shot of the white Waratah this week the Red ones were out. They are usually a few weeks later than this so a little early in the year this year probably due to the hot weather of late, quite a few days already in the thirtys (Degrees C.) here already this year and still early spring. 

But a sign of the warm weather about seams to have bought out the snakes in the area this ones a little Brown snake indent one you would want to be bitten by. According to Wikipedia these are the second most venomous land snake in the world so not one to play with, need to keep an eye out when I'm on the ground shooting mushrooms with these about now through summer. 

Well thats it for this weeks shots. Thanks for dropping by my blog. 

Glenn.