Forster - New South Wales, Australia

Main Beach - Forster, Australia

The 26th of January is Australia Day, one of a handful of public holidays over here in Australia. Since it fell on a Thursday this year, we took Friday off and headed up to Forster for the long weekend.  We stayed at one of our friends apartments which is just a block away form Main Beach.

More photographs inside.

Forster - Tuncurry Bridge across Wallis Lake - Forster, Australia

Forster and its twin town Tuncurry, lie on a thin strip of land between Wallis lake and the Pacific Ocean. Forster and Tuncurry are home to a population of around 18,500 people, more than half of who are aged over 55 years. Forster is located in the great lakes area which is roughly 300 km north of Sydney, an easy 3 hour drive.

The Marina - Forster, Australia

The Forster marina is the first part of town that you see on the right hand side of the bridge when you drive in from Tuncurry. The breakwater is open to the public and a paved walkway provides easy access from the public car park. Dolphins can be seen around the breakwater on a regular basis.

The Pelicans - Forster, Australia

The Marina is also known for the flock of relatively large Pelicans that are often seen there. Facilities are provided for fishermen to clean their catch at the Marina and the birds gather around the cleaning tables hoping to feed on the scraps. They are quite used to people and gather by the table whenever someone is cleaning their fish.

Ocean Baths - Forster, Australia

As with most coastal towns in Australia, Forster also has Ocean Baths. The baths are located at the southern end of main Beach and are open to the public. The baths can be tricky to photograph as the rising sun will be directly in the background in most compositions. The best times to photograph the pools would be late evening or early morning before the sun rises. A Tripod is essential.

Ocean Baths - Forster, Australia

I made several early morning starts and managed to shoot the pool in varying light conditions. These two photographs are the ones I liked best of the lot. I tried using a graduated ND filter to compress the dynamic range of the photographs but it was tricky due to the compositions that I chose.

Tuncurry across Wallis Lake - Forster, Australia

All the images on this post were taken with the Canon 7D and the 24-105mm lens. A graduated ND filter was used for some of the photographs and a tripod came in handy on many occasions.

Bathing Purple Rumped Sunbirds

A Bathing Purple rumped Sunbird photographed in Colombo, Sri Lanka

It was early evening and our garden, at home in Colombo, had just been watered. I walked out of the house and found this drenched female Purple rumped Sunbird sitting on a large leaf. I was curious as to how it had got soaked and was trying to figure it out when it started rubbing itself on the wet leaf. More images and info inside.

A Bathing Purple rumped Sunbird photographed in Colombo, Sri Lanka

While I watched, the bird proceeded to wash its self by using its wings to flick water off the leaf. The whole "shower" took around 5 minutes and  the bird was not at all bothered by my presence. It was soon joined by a second Purple rumped Sunbird which did the exact same thing.

A Bathing Purple rumped Sunbird photographed in Colombo, Sri Lanka

I have a number of shots of the birds flicking water around but they were not very sharp. The birds movements were very quick and there wasn't sufficient light to use a faster shutter speed. If I remember correctly, the shutter speed for these shots were around 1/320 to 1/400. which in itself was quite fast.

A Bathing Purple rumped Sunbird photographed in Colombo, Sri Lanka

These images were captured with the 7D and the 100-400mm lens. I think the focal length was 400mm and the aperture was set to f5.6.

A Bathing Purple rumped Sunbird photographed in Colombo, Sri Lanka

More images of the Purple rumped Sunbird can be found here.

White-rumped Munia

The White-rumped Munia or White-rumped Mannikin (Lonchura striata), sometimes called Striated Finch in aviculture, is a small passerine bird from the family of waxbill "finches". More info inside.
The White-rumped Munia is about 10-11cm in length with a stubby grey bill and a long black pointed tail. Adult birds are brown above and on the breast and lighter below. Sexes are almost impossible to distinguish in all subspecies.

The bird is a resident breeder ranging from South Asia, to Southern China, East to Taiwan and South to Sumatra. It frequents open woodland, grassland and scrub and adapts well to agricultural land use. It is a gregarious bird which feeds mainly on seeds, moving through the undergrowth in groups. The nest is a large domed grass structure in a tree, bush or grass into which 3-8 white eggs are laid. It is a common and widespread species across a large range and is not considered a threatened species by the IUCN.
Source-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-rumped_Munia

I photographed this bird in our garden. It was having a drink in the bird bath when I noticed it and luckily the camera, with the 100-400mm, was with me. I had to push the ISO to 1600 as it was late evening and the light wasn't good. The fact that the birdbath was in the shadow of a tree didn't help matters either. I'm pretty happy that I managed to capture a sharp image of the bird using a shutter of 1/40, handheld.