This weeks blog post is a walkthrough of last weeks walk in the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan. Was only a short walk last week due to the high temperature. I left the gardens at 11:30 am and it was already 37 Deg C, later in the afternoon it topped out at 48 Deg C. so a little on the warm side, the birds were all feeling the heat and certainly didn't need me there chasing them out of any cool spot they may have found that I didn't notice. 

First stop was to check if the Night-jar was still in residence looks like the Red-rump Parrots (Psepotus haematonotus) have regained their home again. 

On the banks of the lake in the morning before everyone arrives and the temperature gets too hot the Eurasian Coot (Fulica atra)  are all clustered on the edge of the lake. In the early morning, there's usually no wind or little wind so you get a better chance of a reflection.  It helps to get down low with water birds.

This pair were staying on the island but keeping a close eye on the goings-on. 

Just by walking a few steps and changing my angle you get a totally different light for the shot even thou the birds haven't moved. So always pays to walk around a little and explore the light. 

The morning was still early when I walked through the woodland picnic area, a small group of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) had taken over the picnic tables but soon went to the trees. 

These next two shots again show the bird in the exact same spot on the branch but a matter of getting a little lower to clean up the background. 
In this shot, the Bird is in a clean background, always check the background and see if you can clean it up just by moving, makes it a lot more pleasing a shot. in this case, I just had to go about 300mm lower to get the clear patch in the trees behind the bird. 

Up opposite the plant bank is a small dam and it often has water birds about this time a White-faced Heron (Egretta novaehollandiae) up in the tree, again a bit of walking around to try and get a clean shot, I couldn't clean up the background in this case, but did manage to get a clean uninterrupted shot of the bird without anything in the foreground in front of the bird. Not a great shot still but at least its a clean shot in front. 

Back on the lake, an Australasian Grebe (Tachybaptus novahollandiae) was slowly cruising the lake. 

A pair of Chestnut Teal (anas castanea) were also on the lake today, the bright red eye against the dark green head certainly shows up brightly.

Last stop on the edge of the lake before I left was to shoot a few shots of the Black-fronted Dotterels (Elseyornis melanops) these are usually pretty skittish so take a while to be able to get close to them, it usually works better if you wait and they slowly come to you, If you start to chase a bird then it will keep moving away and eventually get too far away from you so better to stay still and wait for them to come to you.  

Due to the high temperatures today there was no mushrooms out, but when I go home I did find these growing in a pot plant on the back decking so bought them inside into the cool and took a few shots of these, lit with two off-camera lights and focus stacked and post-processed in lightroom and photoshop. 

So that wraps up this week's shots out of the Australian Botanic Gardens plus a bonus shot from home. 

With the new year starting now the first of my workshops in the gardens is now open for books via the garden's website, link here.

There are still a few places left for this Sunday 9th Feb. 2020 even in the rain.

https://www.australianbotanicgarden.com.au/Whats-On/Learn-from-the-Experts-Beginners-Photography
 

This one is aimed at beginners so someone that's just got a new camera or wants to learn about the effects of aperture, and depth of field, shutter speed how to freeze or blur motion etc then this would be a good start, March there will be an intermediate workshop, this year I'll also be running a mushroom photography workshop in Autumn and of cause, the usual bird photography workshops will be running, so keep an eye out for upcoming workshops I've also added a workshop tab on this site now so you can follow along there for upcoming event as well.

Thanks for dropping by my blog hope to have it back to a regular blog post again this year. 

Glenn