Black Breasted Buzzard and a photo Safari

A few weeks ago my two oldest kiddos and I went on a photo safari, looking for photos of Cotton, for a photo competition run by Cotton Australia. (Which had fantastic prizes BTW- a canon 1DX and a 5Dmk3 and other vouchers)

As we are living on the eastern edge of cotton country, we headed south down our very own road- towards some mountains/hills- it is very flat here at my house! There is dryland cotton somewhere on it.

This is evidenced by the bits of cotton on the side of the road.

We were looking and looking and losing all hope of finding any that had not been picked (hubby had warned me that there was none left on the plants!)

But the competition allowed for all sorts of categories, so we tried, even though my son kept on telling me they would laugh at the submission of a photo of cotton on the side of the road!

I was looking for cotton, he was looking in the trees.

Suddenly he yelled at me to stop, he had just seen a bald headed eagle.

He could barely get the words out!

I stopped and said rubbish, they live in America.

He insisted I turn back and take another look.

Back we went.

I think I may have got 100 shots of this bird. Which of course I have zoomed and cropped and I am going to share here....

He sat and looked at us and then took flight.

We snapped!!

And snapped!

Each movement seeming important.

And spectacular

We were truly amazed

I have never seen one of these before.

He was huge.

I asked my hubby what it was, we thought it was some sort of mutant Wedgetailed Eagle.

He said it's a vulture.

We laughed, again. 

He pulled up and then took off again.

The wingspan was huge.

And the way his feathers were spread or together amazing.

When we got home we looked it up in all of our bird encyclopedias and worked out that it was a Black Breasted Buzzard. Not being experts, this is of course open to suggestion!

Further down the road, the boy sitting next to me -now staring solidly at the sky and into the trees- and me with my cannon Camera and 70-300mm lens, firmly strapped around my neck- spotted all of these cockatoos screeching and circling

I think we have spotted almost every form of native wildlife, either alive or dead!

Thi spoor old wallaby barely moved away from the edge of the road.

I think he must have had a few close calls with shooters as his ear had lots of chunks out of it.

We spotted some tiny new lambs, they were terribly cute.

This creek bed had water well and truly over the top of our car in January, I think it was some huge height.

Theere had been a little bit of rain a few days before and it was gently going over this crossing.

We could see where the water height had left debris up in the trees in the flood in February.

There is also a substantial amount of olive trees up our road.

Quite a bit!

We came across a family of emus in a stubble paddock.

Check out their beady red/brown eyes!

But the purpose of the trip was pretty dismal.

The cotton had all been picked, then the remnants rained on!

Very sad!

Um, I don't think some spillage was going to cut it!

This was about all I could muster.

But the cotton still looked grotty.

About 6 hours after the competition had closed I worked out what the money shot would have been.

All of our jeans folded and stacked up against a wall

and the pile of grotty cotton on top.

We did get this pretty little reward on the way home.