What’s with all the fucking bird pictures?

What?

Me a twitcher? Didn’t see that coming? That’s OK, neither did I. Much like people don’t see me coming now my idea of high fashion is dressing like a shrub.

And like most things I’ve done in my life, there was no real plan it just sort of… happened. One day you’re a perfectly normal member of society, next thing you know, you wake up and you own a pair of binoculars and more camo than the US Marines.

In my defence, not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with socks and sandals except, maybe absolutely fucking everything, I’m possibly not your run of the mill bird nerd. For starters, I know pretty much fuck all about birds. And I’m not overly interested in being able to identify every bird ever invented by call. Or know their scientific names because honestly, who gives a fuck? Unless you’re a bird scientist type person. That’s just fucking weird. Except for the Australian Hobby. Because it’s scientific name is ‘Falco Longipennis’ and come. on. <insert beavis and butthead type snigger here> Surely they were just taking the piss with that one?

Anyway: Birds. Me. Let’s go.

When I was a kidlet, my older brother and I were quite into birds. Him mostly, and I probably just went along for the ride. He was into parrots and rosellas and lorikeets and cockatoos so in an effort to be a bit different and blaze my own bird trail, I chose… finches. This may or may not have had anything to do with the fact the birds he was into were quite expensive, and you could buy a pair of zebra finches for about the same amount as a Razz from the local Deli. Even better, they bred like, well, finches, so I could then cash out at the local pet store and make some serious cash by selling them for about one cent each. Eventually I upgraded to fancy finches and was pretty disappointed when not only didn’t they breed, but they all died and hey, this ain’t Hollywood folks and not all stories are like those dodgy massage places that have happy endings.

A zebra finch. In Central Australia. Not my backyard.

So fucked if I know how old I was back then. Probably 10 or 12 maybe? Literally no idea. And we always had a bird or two flying around the house. There was Gonzo the peach faced lovebird, Oscar the Galah, and Max the rescue rainbow lorikeet. And probably a few others as well at various times. So yeah, I quite liked birds.

But then, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll – or at least new romantic pop music and guyliner and work and… stuff. Fast forward about 30 plus years and a career that included writing, filming and editing TV commercials and videos and short films and stuff, and I thought I’d have a little dabble with photo-ing.

Not really sure what I started with. Probably just travel photos. And at some point I tried taking some pics of birds. Which if you’ve ever tried doing it on a regular camera you’ll know it’s pretty fucking pointless unless they come and land on your face. You pretty much end up with a teeny tiny little fucking dot that you have to say “oh that’s a so and so” and seriously, there’s not much point.

So I bought my first 70-200mm lens, which lets you zoom in a bit, and then, hello addiction. For those of you who don’t know, I’m an addict. It’s why I don’t drink anymore. It’s much less weird and uncomfortable to just say “I have an addictive personality” cause that sounds kinda cool, but let’s call a spade a fucking shovel, I’m an addict. One of the lessons I’ve learned in life then, is to channel that tendency intro constructive things instead of destructive ones. Like running. And now, birds. And running.

One of the first pics I took with the SONY A6500 + 70-200mm. And it was on.

For those of you not familiar with addiction, no amount of anything is ever enough. so 70-200mm turned into 100-400mm turned into 200-600mm turned into 400-1200mm thanks to a 2x teleconverter (ie a thing that doubles the range of a long range lens). I currently have my eye on the Hubble telescope…

And seeing regular, local birds wasn’t enough. Suddenly I was driving down south, up north, booking guides in places like Cambodia and Java and seeing things I’d never seen before – even in places I’d lived! It was literally like discovering a whole new world. Stuff that had been there the whole fucking time but I’d just never noticed. Or never slowed down enough to notice. Or something.

I’d always noticed some birds of course. And even now when I go through my old travel photos there’s a shit shot or two of hummingbirds in America, a Kea in New Zealand, that sort of thing. But when you take your blinkers off there’s fucking stupidly incredibly beautiful and amazing shit everywhere! Even more so when you add a macro lens to your kit so that when there’s no regular cool shit to see along way away, there’s potentially cool shit super dooper close and you can see itsy bitsy stuff you wouldn’t otherwise see. Spiders. Bugs. Details on flowers. It’s actually pretty fucking epic.

Close up stuff is also cool for when there’s fuck all birds around.

And that’s, give or take, how we ended up here. I have literally zero idea how many birds I’ve seen, I don’t count them. I still have no idea what lots of birds are. And I’m still not overly impressed with SBB – Shit Brown Birds – but I’m learning to notice the beauty in them also.

As for whether or not I have a favourite bird? I always bail when it comes to answering “Whats your favourite…” questions because I’m just rubbish at it. Films. Bands. Whatever. Can’t do it. Because it depends. But I still really like finches. Kingfishers are up there. Bee eaters are amazing. I fucking love Hornbills. Parrots of all sorts of course. And I suppose I do have some ‘target species’ as we like to say in birdnerdland – specific birds I’d really like to see. A Fiery Throated Hummingbird. A Quetzl. And, ah, a Cock of the Rock. Yes, it’s a real thing. And come on, as if that wasn’t gonna be on my list. Closer to home I’d like to see a Buff Breasted Paradise Kingfisher, a Palm Cockatoo, and pretty much every finch ever invented, but especially Gouldian Finches!

The. End.