Some elite and earnest Canberra bird watchers who would never dream of taking part in the running of the bulls at Pamplona are presently plucking up the courage to encounter scary cattle. The moody brutes must be negotiated with so that they, the twitchers, can try to get a glimpse of an Azure Kingfisher.
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The indescribably lovely little bird is sometimes popping up at a hard-to-reach ACT place that can only be reached by trespassing across paddocks roamed by grazing but capricious cattle. The bird watchers are sharing their sometimes hair-raising (but amusing) experiences in the Canberra Ornithologists Group website chat room.
"I ran the gauntlet of the first 20 or so cows and calves," one cowardy custard reports, "but the other 30 were densely crowded on the track. The cows seemed relaxed but the calves were spooking - so I abandoned the venture."
COG's Geoffrey Dabb, one of those braving the cattle, has captured the drama of it all in this picture. The kingfisher is aloof from the action.
Meanwhile those of you who love birdwatching but who don't want to run risks (or even to go outdoors) to do it should flutter across to your computers and go to Sea-EagleCAM. There (at the time of writing) you will see, live, 24 hours of the day and night, a magnificent White-bellied Sea-Eagle , the breeze ruffling her snow-white feathers as she sits in the species' gigantic nest and tends to two eggs. Sometimes she rearranges the eggs with her awesome black beak.
This is so eerily hypnotic that we can't really recommend it for those of you lucky enough to have jobs and so required to tear yourself away from your laptops to go to work. But it is the perfect entertainment for the retired and for the deserving unemployed (a species the Abbott government doesn't recognise). As a restful reality TV show (no music, no ads) it will get even better when/if there are fluffy white hatchlings to see and when the parents bring in grisly feeds for them.
These are NSW not ACT eagles (we apologise for breaking out of our parochial bonds for a moment) but our region is blessed with this spectacular species because in spite of the word "sea" in their name they do loiter and nest not only at the coast but near inland lakes and rivers and have even been seen at Lake Burley Griffin.
In one of the highlights of my otherwise largely wasted life once upon a time a responsible raptor expert took your columnist right up to a local, in-use-at-the-time sea-eagles' nest (with a fluffy buzzard of a nestling in it) not a million miles from Queanbeyan.
Meanwhile, bird lovers, the Best Show In Town (now that there are no more CBR Brave home matches) is the Ranamok Glass Prize 2014 exhibition at the Canberra Glassworks. If you love magpies (and if you don't you should seek professional help) then Mark Eliot's Magpies, a group of six of them (look closely and you'll see a glass worm wriggling in one magpie's glass beak) will charm thy socks off.
The bra-rich First World
Tuesday's item about the inspiring contribution of female employees of ACTEW Water to the Uplift Project was blush-makingly illustrated with a photograph of the 84 bras (surplus to their requirements) they'd donated to the great charity.
Thus we had no space for the Projects' clever and beautiful logo*. So here it is today (note the suffragette colours!). It is so fetching we wish room could be found for it on the national flag. The green bra is supporting the region of the world where the donated bras are collected and then distributed to poor and underprivileged women who can never afford bras of their own. In the five years of the charity more than one million donated Australian bras have gone, with assistance from Intimo and Rotary Australia World Community Service, to Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Solomon Islands, the Philippines, Bali, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, the Northern Territory and the Kimberley region in Australia.
We made the point on Tuesday that First World women are so very bra-rich (on average they have 16 of them and buy four new ones every year) that they can afford to send some to those in need. And ACTEW Water's Angie Drake found this hidden bra-abundance when she asked female colleagues to donate.
One colleague said "We don’t realise how fortunate we are, to have so many options and styles of bras so easily accessible – sports, swimwear, crop tops, strapless, fancy straps, lace, underwire, mastectomy, padded, and in all sizes.”
Another reflected that “I think many of us who participated underestimated how many bras we had hidden around our place. Once we got down to it and started to really looking the bag started to fill up. Makes you realise how we tend to take them for granted.”
Yet another urged "An important reminder for women out there – go and have a look at what you’re not using – you might be able to provide some additional support and comfort for another woman living far, far away.”
To find out how to donate the unemployed bras hitherto hidden around your place go to upliftbras.org.
*the logo is by Buzz Web Media
