Fauna, Photography

Spring babies

Plovers in the paddock, there were four chicks – now there are only two. Survival of the fittest, I suspect some Ravens hanging around picked off the weakest or most careless chicks that left their parents guard – and they are good guardians!

Masked Lapwing Plovers, chick disguised to the right.

They’re a great family to watch, sharing the same paddock with my ponies I walk past them every day and pause for a while to see what they’re up to.

It’s hard to see in these photos, but these birds have a sharp spur on the front of their wing and will aggressively dive bomb any perceived threat, they don’t seem to have any fear and will stand their ground. I’ve been lucky in that they seem to accept me – I was here before them!

The parents will also often split up to distract a predator from their chicks.

Walking along the road with camera at hand, I captured these Bennett’s Wallabies feeding at dusk. If you look closely (click to zoom), there’s an extra head – a young joey in the pouch!

Bennetts Wallaby with joey
Bennetts Wallaby with joey

Thanks for visiting, I hope you’ve enjoyed a small taste of spring-time in Tasmania!

Published by

TasView (Tone)

Tone Bacon - Tasmanian photographer. tasview.com

25 thoughts on “Spring babies”

    1. Thank you and it’s my pleasure! The Plovers are a protected “theatened” species here, though they aren’t uncommon, they can be noisy and annoying to some – that unfortunately might threaten them.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    1. Thanks, I guess they are a smaller cousin, though the Bennett’s can grow to around 5 ft tall. We only have one species of actual kangaroo in Tassie, the Forester which is protected and mostly lives up the North East of the island.

      Like

      Reply

  5. Too bad about the baby plovers. We have the same thing going on here in the spring with the crows and baby robins. But the whole spring thing – new babies and the life cycle getting into gear is so wonderful to see, especially as we, in the northern hemisphere, drop into freezing temperatures and the end of our growing season, with many birds leaving town for warmer climes. Lovely post!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. We were surprised to see four babies hatch 🐣 Too many of them to look after, they all wander off in different directions instead of sticking together. I think the last two have learnt a lesson on survival.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      4. We don’t have crows on the island and the ravens are very smart, though they can be cruel. I prefer the Currowongs as they are much friendlier and I think even smarter😀

        Liked by 1 person

  9. Pingback: Spring babies

    1. It’s fun all the unexpected things you learn on WordPress from other’s posts with such an international interaction of chance. Thanks for commenting, it’s great to know my little contributions are also educational 😀
      My grandmother was born in India (though of English heritage) so I have somewhat of a loose connection 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s