Again, nice pic.  What is this one called?

Nice pic, and nice bird.  Wish I had birds around here like that.

Arrgh! I should have included the name: Rainbow Lorikeet.

We get lots of them around when those red flowers bloom, I assume they go for the nectar.

gotta love the parrots. I like Eastern Rosellas, too. 

Check out the lighting and shading on the bird and tree branches. It looks like a painting, almost. Very nice, Bob!

See, this is what I mean. Here's the proper URL. Look how much better the detail is on this one, because it's not scaled and re-compressed.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/sites/www.rationalresponders.com/files/images/Lorikeet1_8766.jpg

Oh man this bird takes me back.  Sitting on the patio at Avalon beach hostil in Auz, they were everywhere, them and the full white cockateil parrots everywhere, awesome.

OK, not my pics but we have some great birds around here as well.

The Blue Jay:

The Cardinal:

Male and female Mallard ducks:

We have a lot of those ducks around here too. Probably introduced. Although they could have flown here, of course.

I have similar photos of them, plus some escorting their young'uns.

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OK Bob, I pulled the wikipedia page. For you they are introduced. However, they are also the ancestral species for all other modern ducks. They can freely interbreed with other ducks. So we have a living example of a transitional species going on here.

Past that, I really must point out that, much to Kirk Cameron's chagrin, it weighs the same as a witch.

When I was a kid, there was a mallard missing half a wing that hung out at the docks where my parents kept their boat. The marina gave him the nickname  Honker, because his quack sounded more like a honk. He was the village pet. Everyone loved him and fed him. I am sure someone who lived near the marina kept him as a pet considering he could not fly. But he was a happy duck and loved humans.

What I hate about myself is that I love ducks but I also love to eat them. Pretty in nature, but also tasty.

 These bird are colored like harlequin, they're beautiful. But aren't they like the classic australian species that can kill you in 1 millisec with their neurotoxin? Australia is dangerous like joining a quake 3 arena in nightmare difficulty...

I don't think we have any birds like that. 

We do have some nasty spiders and snakes though.

Even our unique platypus has a poison 'spur' on its leg, in the male anyway.

Quakes we are relatively safe from, not being close to any major plate boundaries, except in the far north, which is not so populated.

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Umm, Bob, Quake is a video game franchise.

Quake 3 arena is specifically an on-line multi-player version Where you shoot anything that moves. Also, nightmare is a hidden difficulty level with all of the weapons fully enabled and no safety controls at all.

Past that, a google search for venomous birds tells me that none are currently known. However, several birds are known to eat things which are toxic to humans and as such, they can be poisonous. As far as I can determine, they are all in New Guinea. And as long as you don't eat them, the worst that happens is that you get a beak scratch. When you put the affected finger in your mouth, you get numbness and tingling in your lips and tongue. The specific toxins seem to be more or less identical to that od the south American dart frogs.

Also, I doubt that any toxin could kill in milliseconds as it would have to take time to reach whatever the target tissue is.

Aaargh! Missed that Quake game reference.

I think I have been too primed by events this year, including in Australia which only rarely experiences Earthquakes, that I missed that. Add to that I have never been much into those games. 'Quake' just triggers 'Earthquake' way before any other interpretation, especially when I'm just skimming over it.

Although looking back at that post, it is now glaringly obvious what was being referred to.

Is the fact that I posted that at 5am here, after getting up too early and not quite enough sleep an excuse??

And of course, '1 millisecond' has to be rhetorical for 'damn quick'.

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Ah, don't worry about the late night thing Bob. I went to a “Secret Wes Craven Double feature” and I have yet to go to bed. It is almost 6:30 here and I am still up. I am thinking of just staying up all day at this point.

BTW: It turned out to be “Last house on the left” and “the hills have eyes”.

No worries, Bob. Pobody's nerfect.

We have a family or two of these where I live. They are stunning to see and I love their calls.

Not my picture, just off the internet.

Around here, it is usually the red-shafted flicker.

I had to really hunt to find a picture where you can see the under wing color.  They look to be a small speckled bird mostly tree colored except for a red patch on their head.  And then they fly off.  This picture doesn't do justice to the startle reflex you have to all that sudden color.  They are mostly yellow in the Midwest and Eastern US.  They summer in Canada, winter in Southern Arizona.  Otherwise, they are year round, even in Mexico.

In my neighborhood, one of them figured out street lights.  Not the old fashioned lights, but the new ones that have a metal cap.  Amazing echo as he rat-a-tat-tat-ed.

And I am sure everyone knows what a peacock looks like.  We have a few someone turned loose.  They are not very bright birds.  And when their population looks like it is getting low in numbers, someone will release a few more.  They do have chicks every spring, but very few - less than one a year - make it to adulthood.  They are really stupid, even more so than chickens.  They get up on the roofs and yell their mating call in the spring.  It is a loud squawk, not at all melodious.  Two-three days of it and I'm ready for the population to finish dieing off.

Well guys I admit I have my problems but you don't seem to cope very well with your brains too. Just sayin'.

 How about some sound?

Below the link is another one where a Pileated has a spat with a green snake. Everybody lives, but I couldn't believe the bird kept coming back for more. There must have been some real tasty bugs there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opPf1PMOYVg&feature=related

## edit ## just a clean up of what I wrote for clarity.

That's neat Bob!  We have some nice yellow headed birds, some owls and some hawks, in addition to the common bird.  I'll see if I can dig up some pics, I know my wife has some neaat shots of our owls.

Even as I sit here typing on my computer, I hear many bird calls. As I do every day. What I have posted so far are among the most common.

I have some more I think deserve to be shown, I'll pt them up soon.

Oh, and welcome back, I don't recall seeing you here for a while.

Australian Magpie: 

And now, an Australian icon, the Kookaburra, or Laughing Jackass:

Love the kookaburra shot! Geez, Bob, do the birds freaking pose for you or something???

"Hey, look, it's Bob with the camera! Over here, Bob! Get my face from the right, that's my good side."