Lots and lots of birds - 1

One of the biggest differences I've noticed between Australia and the US is the massive number of birds they have here. It isn't that we don't have birds in the US, it's just that the birds native to Australia are completely different than North America.

This is a rubbish photo of a Galah.  There was a whole flock of them just hanging out on the sidewalk, but I ran out of batteries and didn't do a wonderful job of getting the one shot I did take.

Here's an Ibis hanging out in a park in downtown Sydney.  I got to see more of these at the Healesville Sanctuary down near Melbourne, which is where most of the rest of these photos are from.

Here's a photo from my last day in Sydney:

I saw this Rainbow Lorikeet hanging out at the restaurant where I got breakfast.  I think it's playing with a sugar packet.  There were a couple others, but they didn't stick around long enough to get any more photos.

Here are some photos from Melbourne:

bird's eye view of a bird (see what I did there!?)

a Yellow-Crested Cockatoo

a Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo

A Barking Owl

Two very blurry photos of a female Eclectus Parrot,

and a very blurry photo of a male Eclectus Parrot.

The females are colored to camouflage themselves when hiding in shadows in the rainforest, while the males are colored green because they fly around through the trees and bring food back to the females to try to impress them.