Gang-gang. Peregrinations around the Bush Capital

Here, lest you think your columnist is fibbing, is a photograph of the downy threesome. Here, too, lest you think this column is only interested in the ACT's birds, is John Bundock's photograph of a male Arrowhead Rockmaster Damselfly. It is living up to its name by mastering rocks of Red Rocks Gorge on the Murrumbidgee, not a million miles from the famous Kambah Pool swimming hole, bogan nudist retreat and trysting place.

But enough of yukky nudists. Back to our birds. And Christmas Eve's unforgettable column sported a Christmassy photograph of a peregrine falcon in a Duffy driveway, dismembering a galah it had just biffed out of the Duffy skies.

Now it comes to pass that this noble adult may belong to a nesting pair quite well known to and quite well monitored by some intrepid members of the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG). These particular peregrines have just been the subject of a detailed presentation at a COG monthly meeting.

The ACT's peregrines nest on ledges on cliffs (famously, some of the world's urban peregrines nest on the ledges and windowsills of the pseudocliffs of tall buildings). Here are three fluffy white chicks in an ACT nest in a remote and precipitous place, the location of which I will (he wrote, melodramatically) take to the grave.

Sandra Henderson discreetly monitored "the whole process" at this site, from the nest-building by the adults to the time when the youngsters took to the air. She went out to the remote spot once or twice a week. She kept her distance not only because geography and topography demanded it, but also because she had taken expert advice about how far one must keep from the fowls to avoid alarming them.

The monitored baby peregrines "grew amazing quickly ... from fluffy white chicks in mid October [our picture was taken on 25 October] to flying magnificently by November 25".

If we seem, here, to harp on birds a great deal it is largely because this column is its readers' humble servant and because so many of you tell us how much you like avifaunal items.

What's more you send us and we frequently publish your photographs. Excellent, accomplished bird photographer Geoffrey Dabb detects, here, a kind of social/technological phenomenon underway.

"The main thing is digital photography. Twenty years ago there might have been a dozen people in Canberra who seriously photographed birds. Now there are several thousands of them. I meet some who are excited by the pursuit but don't have any idea of the name of the bird or what 'it' is, but are keen to show you what they have got.

"A large lens gives the best results but you don't have to have one. Some compact cameras can produce a great image given the right light, and it's only a matter of being in the right place at the right time."

Some of his own fine photographs published here, including the recent beauty of one male Koel shirt-fronting another at Rocky Knob, are taken with compacts.

"It [the picture of the smaller male shirt-fronting the larger male] is not much of a photo, taken with a compact camera of all things, but if it wasn't a compact I wouldn't have been carrying a camera at all.

"And at the owl site in Turner [as reported here, a Powerful Owl in trees near the local bowling club has become the most-photographed owl in ACT history] one afternoon I had a [tele]scope on the bird . People were coming over from a Christmas party on the greens to have a look and say 'Wow! It's BIG.' One fellow took out his phone and snapped the owl through the scope. The pic was surprisingly good – better than some I've seen taken with a large lens. Perhaps we could have an informal competition for the best bird photo through a phone."

Thank you all of you who in 2014 sent us your pictures of the ACT's fauna (sometimes controversially engaged in R-rated sex and violence) captured on your peregrinations. Please keep up these entertaining and educational contributions that enables us to revel and rejoice in the Bush Capital's unique bushiness.