Punk’s not dead!

 

POTD 11Feb11, originally uploaded by andyskelton-a Blog a day http://andrewskelton.net.

This attractive bird is a Great Blue Turaco (Corythaeola cristata) the largest of the Turaco family, and hails from Africa. A forest dweller, the bird lives on fruit and foliage and tends to hop from tree branch to tree branch, it having short rounded wings disproportion for it’s size making flying difficult.

This bird was very wary as I was taking it’s picture, watching me all the time. Despite applying some of the techniques I mentioned several blogs ago,it was still not at ease with my presence and as such I took a couple of photos and quickly left.

A golden rule with wildlife, you are there observing the animal or bird, and it’s welfare is more important than that special (or not so special) photo. You will also find that an animal or bird that is relaxed in your presence will allow you far more opportunities to take that killer image than one that is stressed by your presence and so moves on more rapidly.

Whilst the creatures in zoos and wildlife parks are more used to human presence, they can still become stressed when people are about. Not all though, there were four Kea‘s (New Zealand Parrots) at the Cotswold zoo, and they were more than keen to approach the bars next to me. Now I have a soft spot for Kea’s, they’re very intelligent birds, and they are well known around Mount Cook resort for opening bins and boxes with their large strong bill. Unfortunately, there weren’t any present the day we were there, and so I’m always pleased to see them in a zoo. In fact I spent 15 minutes conversing with them (Johnny Morris style) without even taking my camera out of it’s bag. Now if there’s a parrot with a punk attitude, it’s the Kea, and I’m sure it would like this song !*

*tenuous link, this is my 101st blog.  Winston Smith was tortured in Room 101 in the book 1984, his worst fear, Rats, were used on him which links nicely to The Stranglers (the song link) who’s first album was called… Rattus Norvegicus, the latin name for .. the brown rat! (the Damned also had a drummer called Rat!).  I said it was tenuous!

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