Paradise Riflebird.

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Reflex
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Paradise Riflebird.

Taken this morning at Mount Glorious SE QLD.

 Male.

 Female.

Wollemi
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Wow, such an interesting and pretty bird. Thanks for sharing your great photos!

Rick N
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Great shots Reflex, what a beak!!

WhistlingDuck

Excellent work Reflex - you deserve extra points for bagging the male and female !

Fantastic looking bird. You are finding all the spectacular looking birds these days.

Reflex
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Rick N wrote:

Great shots Reflex, what a beak!!

 I noiced the huge beak and after your comment I became curious...

"The Paradise Riflebird is an active feeder, foraging like a treecreeper up tree trunks and along branches for insects, spiders and centipedes. The long curved bill is used to pry off large pieces of bark, to chisel into dead branches and to probe into crevices and rotten logs and stumps on the forest floor. They also feed on fruit and often feed together with other fruit eaters such as bowerbirds".

Samford Valley Qld.

Reflex
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WhistlingDuck wrote:

Excellent work Reflex - you deserve extra points for bagging the male and female !

Fantastic looking bird. You are finding all the spectacular looking birds these days.

Thanks WD. If you ever come up this way, send me a message and I will be more than happy to show you around. 

Samford Valley Qld.

windshear
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Lovely photos, Reflex! smiley I've seen the females before, but never been lucky enough to catch sight of the male. Love the iridescent chest feathers. :)

timmo
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Gorgeous shots Reflex.

I've never been lucky enough to see one of these guys yet.

Cheers
Tim
Brisbane

pacman
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Great pics Reflex

I can see that I need a se Qld weekend and some location tips from you

Peter

Reflex
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Better photograph of the female.

Samford Valley Qld.

Annie W
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Oh you lucky duck Reflex!  Beautiful set of shots of one of my favourite showoff birds, the boys are spectacular too when displaying for their lady friends with that amazing blue contrasting with the black.  Of course I've only seen this in docos, sadly.  Agree with everyone, that is one impressive tool that beak, thanks for the extra info on them too!  Do you seen them often out and about at Mt Glorious?

West Coast Tasmania

Reflex
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It was just a case of beginner's luck Annie and being in the right place and at the right time of year when courting males fly between treetops, calling.

It was a first for me and I ought to post some of my earlier shots of this bird to show you just how frustrating it was to get the male especially. This is about my fifth or sixth visit to the same spot. The problem with rainforests is that even when the sun is up they can be very dark places in photographic terms and although we could hear the birds calling we couldn't always see them or we would get a tantalising glimpse of a bird flying from one tree to another with no chance at all of getting a shot. Since Sunday I have read that breeding takes place between September through to January and this area is just about smack bang in the middle of the range of where to find this particular species.

Needless to say I will be going back again soon.wink 

Samford Valley Qld.

Reflex
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Another shot showing off her significant beak.

Samford Valley Qld.

windshear
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Reflex wrote:

Another shot showing off her significant beak.

Just lovely. :)

Out of interest - Were these at Maiala? That's where I've seen them before.

Reflex
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Yes that's exactly where the female was but the male was about 200 metres further on, opposite the Western View point.

Samford Valley Qld.

windshear
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Reflex wrote:

Yes that's exactly where the female was but the male was about 200 metres further on, opposite the Western View point.

Cheers mate. smiley

Reflex
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Went back again this morning with Devster. No shortage of birds but they were more interested in their courting displays than obliging a photographer.  Straight from the memory card because my computer is running like treacle at the moment. 

This is the courtship display AnnieJ mentioned earlier on in the thread. The female was taking it all in and there were other male birds trying to take her attention off the display. At one stage we had four birds above us competing for attention.

Samford Valley Qld.

Reflex
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Another tease from this morning was a Regent Bowerbird that managed to stay just out of full view.

Samford Valley Qld.

Reflex
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Not all the birds were determined to avoid being photographed this morning. In fact this Eastern Yellow Robin was quite happy to pose for me.

Samford Valley Qld.

WhistlingDuck

Great work with the riflebird courting display Reflex, hope she appreciates all his hard work trying to impress her.

TwitchyGirl
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wonderful shots - makes me want to spend all day outside watching and snapping but the bills wont get paid....sigh:)

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