Photo Friday - Bird Watching and More

Hello Friends, Thank You for the warm helpful comments on my previous post. It has truly helped and I appreciate it greatly! I'm just plogging along here, busying myself each day. This weekend is still going to be a tough one, but I will get through it.

I have still been taking some pics, so I figured I would share some here for a post...

With it being summer here, there have already been many bushfires burning across the country, and some still do! There is one burning about an hour away from us, out of town. Which Yesterday made for a very smokey smoggy haze over our town! It was pretty bad, and I had a sore throat from it, and was coughing. As were my parents. Can you imagine how bad it would be closer to the fires? When we are an hour away and we got just whatever the wind blew through? Just awful! 

Here is a photo of just up the road from our house, we live in a mountainous area, with lots of hills and valleys, here is a view down the valley looking across to some hills and mountains, where there is a small farm and house... it is usually beautiful and clear to look out at! But all you could see was the smoke;

 

Thankfully the smoke cleared yesterday afternoon.

With the season warming up, we're noticing lots of creepy crawleys about! Some not so nice (like spiders!) but some that are nice to see. We have noticed many Lady Bugs or Lady Beetles about the place lately...  When I picked some Frangipani (Plumeria) flowers, and some Gardenia's from our garden, there was a Lady Beetle on them, which made for some pretty photos:

 I just love ladybugs so much! When I was a little girl I remember often looking for them in our hedge that surrounded the childhood home, and often collecting them in a jar to watch for a little while, which I always released them back within an hour.. But I will never forget once I had a few collected in my bug jar, and came inside to show Mum, and fell over on the hard laundry tile... and yep, you guessed it! The jar broke and we had a dozen or more ladybugs loose, and we even had a few about the house for a few days after that, as well! LOL!!! 

Also through the week me and mum did a bit of shopping in the big Plaza Mall we have here, and also had a snack in the food court... What I really love about the food court is the fountain in the middle of it, with some wonderful statues of Brolga's an Australian Crane bird:

 

 

Speaking of birds, we have had more feathered visitors in our yard - 

This time some gorgeous Indian Myna Birds:

 

They were very inquisitive, even sitting on the window ledge where I was taking photos of them out of my window (that's why there's a bit of blur/ripple effect in these pics)

I just loved their beautiful yellow eye mask!

 and here is another beautiful specimen which is called a speckled drongo...

 

His wings really were a really shimmery green/blue, and his eyes were a piercing dark red, very stunning to see as he groomed himself on our fence!

I'm really loving that we are getting so much bird life about this year! We added in some native trees and a bird bath, plus not having the dog anymore (RIP) has probably also helped that.

Here is a type of bird that we see every day, just a common spotted dove, or sometimes called a pigeon... They are quite kind of coy, but make the cutest coo-coo sound, and bob their heads when they are trying to woo a lady friend ;-) 

Here is a pic of a Willy-Wag-Tail on our clothesline, too;

I hope you didn't mind seeing my bird pics, I do so love birds and especially love seeing the native wild ones popping in our yard!

I'll leave you with two arty pics I took, and wish you a grand weekend, and many thanks for stopping by and all your lovely comments and friendship!