The Magpie Lark
The Magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca) is a very common bird throughout much of Australia as well as Timor and New Guinea. It is strangely absent from Tasmania. A few rare vagrants have made it down here, the most recent I'm aware of was back in 1980. The following photos and video were taken on various trips to the mainland, most recently just this week. It is a bird with an abundance of common names. When I was young we called them Mudlarks or Peewees. Another variation was Peewit. In some places they were called Murray Magpie, Little Magpie or Pugwall. Aboriginal names include Birrarik, Pattantjentja, Yerracolunjee, beelarl, koolootaroo and many many more.
Here are a few photos ...
...and a short video
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The Giant Tasmanian Cave Spider |
Those are great captures and the video is excellent! Do you use a dlsr to shoot the video? These birds remind me of the Black-billed Magpies here in the US. They look smaller though. The ones here are big 16 - 32 inches.
Thank you. I occasionally use my DSLR for video and should use it more often. This was taken with my Panasonic HC-VX870M video camera.
Fabulous pictures my friend!
The video is awesome.. and the sound.. love it :)
Very nice!