Last year I got a fleeting glimpse and bad images of the above. So this year I enlisted the help of locals to give me some "sure-fire" sites. Watti Creek was the place to go, I was told, so one morning I went at daybreak. I found a PCFW family in the pandanus/paperbark edges of the creek. The first image is a male in eclipse plumage with a grey head and a black eye-patch. There may be a trace of purple on each side of the top of his head. Note the off-white breast of this race coronatus.
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| Purple-crowned Fairy-wren Malurus coronatus |
The next day I walked from the Baptist Mission house where we were staying to the Kalkarindji Water Treatment Plant [sewage farm] at daybreak to see what birds were about. It is only 500 metres or so. On the way, guess what I saw? Yep, a family of PCFW. So I really didn't have to go searching much at all. They were on the doorstep.
Magic. f8 and be there!
Beautiful! I'm suitably envious.
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