Website Banner:

Jan Tilden, a graphics artist at the Coastal CRC, designed the banner.

They are all Jack’s shots, the birds all involving a high-speed flash unit originally designed for “stopping” hummingbirds in flight.

The birds on the left are letterwinged-kites.

The adult bird is carrying a long haired rat (Rattus villossissimus) back to the nest in a coolabah tree (Eucalyptus microtheca) on Kunjamara Creek, a tributary of the Diamantina R. in W. Queensland . The nest tree had to be “sculpted” with flashguns mounted at various points on it. The camera’s 300 lens was prefocussed from a good distance and triggered remotely when the silhouette of the bird was seen, returning to the nest, through binoculars mounted to cover the camera’s field of view .

The birds with orange bibs are juvenile letterwings that were brought back to Brisbane for study. They can now be seen at Eagle’s Heritage in Margaret River, WA, where they have a spacious aviary.

The photos of JDP were taken in ~1965, ~1985, ~2001.

The owl on the right is Bertie the Boobook, about whom more details can be learned at www.vthrc.uq.edu.au/logo.html