Common, and attractive, birds

As I was in the neighbourhood of Kelly's Swamp this morning and hadn't got a strong candidate for Bird of the Day yet I swung in to see what was occurring.   Bird of the Day was sorted out fairly quickly on seeing, from Ardea hide, a Latham's Snipe toddle across an open patch, but I went round to Cygnus hide anyway to see if I could top it.

I couldn't, but did find some birds feeding nice and close.  The first couple are Red-Browed Finches feeding on grass seeds, about 1m from the window in the hide.

Seen from that angle one has to marvel at the hubris of the taxonomists who did away with the name "Firetail".  Its bad enough when they fiddle about with the Latin but why they also stuff up the common names boggles me.

A little further away was a White-faced Heron, which when not posing for photographs appeared to be researching - or perhaps modifying -frog demography.


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