Eastern Yellow Robin by RobGeraghty, on Flickr

This friendly guy followed me along the trail for a while.

[RobG]

Really nice

Thanks!

Excellent photo sir . Is that perch a bit charred? We hope the fires are gone by now but the US news is very piecemeal .

Thank you! I just checked and there's some fires still burning, especially in Victoria. Most of the fires in Nsw South Wales and Queensland are out. According to Wikipedia, the area burned this season is about 18.6 million hectares or 72,000 square miles which is almost half the size of California, or more than half the land area of Japan, or 77% of the land area of the UK. While the land area of Queensland, NSW and Victoria are much much bigger, the proportion of forested area which has burned is very high. This particular area of New South Wales didn't burn, which is wonderful because it also protects at least one very rare bird species; the Eastern Bristlebird, which I saw on this walk. On the drive back to Canberra, we drove for a couple of hours through burned forest. Thanks for asking!

was this at a feeder?

No, it was in natural forest in an open nature reserve.

What a pretty bird. I'm impressed with the shutter speed. Those small birds move and twitch about so fast. Well done.

Thanks Susan! It was hard to catch him in the field of view and focus when he was so close.

---------- Post added 20-03-20 at 11:59 PM ----------

This is part of the burned area we drove through. I had never seen these cliffs before, because normally they are hidden in the forest.


Burned forest in NSW by RobGeraghty, on Flickr

---------- Post added 21-03-20 at 12:02 AM ----------


Epicormic growth by RobGeraghty, on Flickr

Some species of trees, especially the Eucalypts, are able to make epicormic growths to recover after fires, but if the fires are too hot, they will die. Most of the shrubs have died, and the only animals I saw were ants. Vast numbers of marsupials were incinerated along with millions of birds, and they may never recover.