Black Joy

There was a fabulous cold change last night and I climbed into bed with a strong icy breeze blowing through my bedroom window.  I literally smiled myself to sleep feeling that breeze caress my face as I pulled the doona right up to my chin.  My idea of bliss.

It was still nice and cool when I woke up, so I lingered in bed feeling that breeze some more and then headed off for morning tea with the girls.

There were seven of us this morning all taking turns to catch up with the previous week's events. Always enjoyable with my girls.

I picked up another coffee before I headed home, and decided to take a route that I used to take every day for a couple of years, back when I was obsessive with my photography. It takes me past bushland full of birdlife.

The reason that I chose that way is because there was a bushfire last night and I wondered if I might see signs of it from the road.

I didn't.

What I DID see, was a family of four Red Tailed Black Cockatoos!

I've seen quite a few black cockatoos lately. There were eight of them flying over the council caravan park before I went on the road trip and since then, three or four of them fly over the boat ramp in the mornings and head across the river, squawking as they go. But they are the yellow tailed black cockatoos, which are quite common and I've never been camera ready whenever they've been close, so there have been no photos of them for me.

I have been in search of ANY kind of black cockatoo for five years .. ever since I got my first good camera, so today, finding the red tailed birds .. was exciting!

There was a male and a female and a juvenile, but I'm not sure where the 4th bird fit in the mix.

There were a few problems for me. The light was ever changing because there was scattered cloud that kept hiding the sun. It was very windy, blowing the branches that the birds were perched upon and blowing their feathers all over the place. The birds were very high in the trees .. stretching my lens to it's limit.

Taking all of that into consideration, I was pretty happy with the few shots that I got. If only I could train the birds to stay perched on a branch, out in the open where I could get a clear view, half of my problems would be solved!

Needless to say, I didn't get as much essay work done as I wanted, because I was too excited about editing my black cockatoo shots!

Tonight, I played with a couple of photos from the Christmas in July party, hoping they would be suitable for the 'Simplicity' challenge ...

I'm still searching my brain for better ideas. Please feel free to throw ideas in this direction, if you have any.

I have a big lady's luncheon day tomorrow, so I'm off to bed for an early night .. looking forward to that cool breeze through the window again!

Nite all.