Kniphofia weaves its magic.

The Canberra Spinners and Weavers use the title "Warped and Twisted" for their Annual Exhibition.  Given the contorted bird-shapes in the following images I thought a reference to weaving in the title of this post quite appropriate.

Kniphofia is the genus name for the garden plant "Red-hot pokers".  There are many species but I suspect those below are K. uvaria.
We have two differing varieties - or possibly species - which flower at different times.  In the bed outside our sun-room we have the Summer flowering example, while on the Western part of the garden we have a couple of clumps which flower in Winter.  (Usually the emergence of the flowers on these is the signal for a hard frost (-5oC or below) which tends to disimprove them a bit.)

The flowers are very attractive to honeyeaters.  This is a Noisy Friarbird, also known as a Leatherhead.  This is the first twister.
 This image isn't as sharp as I like but is included to show the yellow pollen all over the bill and face.
The second bird species is the another big aggressive honeyeater, the Red-wattlebird.
Sometimes they are stretched as well as twisted.  This shot does show the red wattles, as well as the yellow belly.

 That is what I call twisted.
A few days later we received our annual visit from a New Holland Honeyeater.  They are regular at various Grevillea enriched spots around the area but only come here when the pokers are full of it.

A little later an Eastern Spinebill decided to make nice.  I liked this image because of the shape made by the feet, and spotting the red eye.
 After gorging, the bird went and recuperated ni the shade of a crab-apple tree.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more