Wattle

For an earlier blip I photographed flowers of a wattle tree barely more than the height of a large shrub... the earlier blip here.

This image is of the lowest wattle branch on a specimen likely as tall as a wattle tree grows.

Here again is the link to a wikipedia description of Acacia pycnantha - wattle tree said to grow between 2 and 8 metres.

The image is squared up for the Square September Challenge hosted by Ambling Camera.

I managed to get a reasonable image of a noisy miner in the wattle tree.

Soon I realised the bird was progressing with intention to higher levels in the tree, way beyond my capacity to zoom, from one branch to the next and on each pausing to utter a demanding call...until reaching the highest branch that allowed no impediment let a call rip insistently - Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!

I recognised it and alarm body language. Yes, the insistent harping Cheep! Cheep! Cheep! is forerunner to my methodically ducking my way out of the range of bombers - a small army. Other species of birds had joined in on previous occasions I had thought as well, not that I was standing around gazing upwards. Today was definitive because I saw the ring leader and watched the tactics.

Quoting from the wikipedia article on the Noisy Miner - 'As the common name suggests, the Noisy Miner is a vocal species with a large range of songs, calls, scoldings and alarms, and almost constant vocalizations particularly from young birds'.

Reading on, my suspicion is confirmed that the Noisy Miner is territorial ('they' don't reckon!) and hangs out in flocks...including communally defending territory and (gulp!) these colonies can be comprised of several HUNDRED birds!?

:)