Border Ranges National Park

CabanSail

Finally blew the dust off the Camera & took it for an outing into one of the National Parks close to home. Packed up a few lenses, including the 105mm f2.8 Macro along with the Ring Flash I picked up in Hong Kong.

First stop was at Brindle Creek where we did a couple of short walks.

These are a couple of Macro shots of a branch of Stinging Tree. These are nasty plants, Stinging Nettles dream of being these bad boys when they grow up. I was very careful to keep clear even though I had to get close with the Macro. You can see the Venom on those barbs.





On the second walk there was a dead tree with a great collection of Fungi. So shot a few too many frames here. Hard to get scale here. The Brown ones were about 5cm across but the White ones were less than 1cm.









We move along to The Pinnicle which is a lookout which juts out from the basin on the old volcano & has amazing views. There has been a fire through there recently, probably last summer, so there was regrowth. The Grass Trees or Blackboys were in flower. This seemed to attract a few birds. I was setting up for a landscape shot when one of the birds landed briefly. I zoomed in & got a couple of shots before it was gone. I am told it was an Eastern Spinebill and not too common. Later a more common Honeyeater came along & it was a bit more of an attention seeker.





Alli in all a good day out. A few more shots are on my Pix.ie account.

oshead

Nice shots. The animals and fauna sound truly alien compared to what were use to this side of the world. Those nettles do look nasty. I could imagine getting raked on the leg by one of them. I like the first bird shot, the Eastern Sicklebill best.

CabanSail

I have just looked it up in Google and the bird is an Eastern Spinebill.

The Stinging Tree was about 10 feet tall, so a bit taller than nettles. I have looked ups some information on Dendrocnide moroides which is the variety I was photographing.

LeoB

Last 2 are superb.