Australia is amazing. I always knew it was in an abstract sense, but now being here, I can confirm -- it really is. It has been so much fun to go birding around Canberra and a bit further north into Yass and Binalong with a colleague from the Australian National Wildlife Collection (which is also amazing). We looked for Blue-faced Honeyeaters, one of my study species, and had no luck, but I saw so many other excellent lifers. At the Queen Cafe in Binalong, the owners realized we were birders and showed us a pair of Tawny Frogmouths nesting right out back. What amazing, bizarre creatures. The other folks frequenting the cafe became curious too, and a whole group of us stared up at the male -- wide-beaked and rictal-bristled -- doing an excellent job of impersonating a stick as he incubated. The female looked on from the next tree, motionless and silent. Another sweet moment was when a local said "See you later, Boston" as I was leaving. I am not sure why Australian accents are so endearing, but they are.
We also met a retired sheep dog named Lucy at the Queen Cafe, who was luxuriating in the warmth of the wood stove and commanding the best seat in the house. She was very sweet. Australian late winter reminds me of the cold-tinged days of autumn in New England.
This weekend, I went to the Australian National Botanic Gardens and spent about thirty minutes craning my head (and bins) to scan the crown of a giant Eucalyptus tree. There were three or four honeyeater-shaped objects moving erratically like electrons in an atom -- for the life of me, I could not get a good look at them. I sat down and waited for the right moment to appear, and finally concluded that they were (probably) White-naped Honeyeaters, which are closely related to Blue-faced Honeyeaters. They have a similar body plan (perhaps I should say plumage plan to be more specific), only they are ~3x smaller and have just a small patch of colored facial skin behind the eye. The process of identifying a bird in the field, especially when hard-won, is so satisfying!
On a side note, I have realized that one of the joys of having an online writing space that I never tell anyone about is that I can write with more sincerity. I am being myself, I hope, and writing what I think and feel. I have always hated the trap of posting publicly on social media. It could be my own shortcoming that anything I post feels influenced by an all-too-strong awareness of the digital reactions it receives. But here, I am free. And perhaps a kindred spirit will happen upon my musings occasionally, just by chance. Such an encounter is more meaningful, I think, perhaps because I love messages in bottles.
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