angry birds, friendly birds, ugly birds and pretty birds

[Michele] A theme of our holiday in Victoria was birds. We saw lots of birds and had a variety of encounters with birds...

Angry Birds: OK here is the deal.  We were driving through the amazingly picturesque Strzeleki ranges and I wanted a picture.  I walked down the road a bit to better frame my hot and a magpie flies up from besides the road and tries to poop on me.  Fortunately, I saw the poop incoming and ducked out of harms way.  Ignoring Gavin laughing at me, I kept going for my picture.  But the bird wasn't done with me yet.  The magpie proceeded to dive bomb me repeatedly. Ughh!

I ran to the car and Gavin contained his laughter enough to drive just a little  bit farther for another attempt at a photo.   I got out and managed to get a few photos till you-know-who found me again!   In this photo you can see the magpie flying right at me.  Yes, I high-tailed it back to the car where Gavin was pretty much having conniption fits of laughter.

Friendly Birds:  Parrots outside our cottage in Don Valley were beautiful and friendly.  We had a blast feeding them each day and went through a hefty amount of birdseed.

Will feeds Lorikeets at the Healesville.  These birds were
in an aviary so it wasn't as cool as feeding the wild parrots.

Ugly Birds: Emus are ugly - it is true.  One of Gavin's earliest memories is being harassed by an emu at Healesville Sanctuary. So of course when we visited we had to make him reenact the scene.

Gavin shows some reluctance to see the emus.

Gavin reenacts the scene by regarding the emu from the
perspective of a a five year old.
At the time of the incident, people wandered
through the paddock so there wouldn't have been a fence.

Gavin has conquered his fear. Meanwhile,
the emu has lost interest and has wandered off.

Pretty Birds:  Without a doubt the  prettiest bird that I've ever seen is the Lyrebird.  Their tail resembles a lyre -- hence the name.  They are also amazing mimickers though we didn't hear them call... well we didn't think that we heard them call.  This picture is from the Healesville Sanctuary but we were lucky enough to see three Lyrebirds in the wild over a couple days.  Very cool!