Sunday on the Woronora

[khiemtran]

It's another calm morning, and we're out for a paddle on our favourite local river...



As we put in, we met another paddler heading off to The Needles, but today we're just going to potter around and see what we can spot. It's an idyllic morning as we drift and listen to the whip birds.



Amazingly, we manage to spot no fewer than three sacred kingfishers. We followed this one for a while in hopes of getting a good close-up. Liem is getting very good at spotting them now. The ancient Greeks believed that kingfishers have the power to calm waters, and we have only seen them on still mornings. I wonder if they only ever come out when the winds are light.



Drifting home, over the clouds...

Comments

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Beautiful birds!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, they're extremely hard to photograph though. Most of the time you just see them as a blue flash. I was quite surprised we were able to track this one for so long.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

What gorgeous pictures! A mirror calm...

We have kingfishers on the rivers here too, but they're very shy - I'm lucky to catch a fleeting glimpse of one maybe once or twice a year.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's how I normally see them too. But maybe we've worked out how to spot them now, since we saw some the last time we were out on the Hacking (the other river near our house) too.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Drifting home over the clouds--exactly my thoughts :-)

Is the sacred kingfisher sacred to first peoples in Australia, or does that name come from some other region the bird is present in? (ETA: I love that they were believed to have the power to calm waters)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the local people (who would be Dharawal), but according to wikipedia (which, as you know, is never wrong), the "sacred" name comes because it was a regarded as holy bird for Polynesians.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Neat--thank you