About Me

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Canberra-based naturalist, conservationist, educator since 1980. I’m passionate about the natural world (especially the southern hemisphere), and trying to understand it and to share such understandings. To that aim I’ve written several books (most recently 'Birds in Their Habitats' and 'Australian Bird Names; origins and meanings'), run tours all over Australia, and for the last decade to South America, done a lot of ABC radio work, chaired a government environmental advisory committee and taught many adult education classes – and of course presented this blog, since 2012. I am the recipient of the Australian Natural History Medallion, the Australian Plants Award and most recently a Medal of the Order of Australia for ‘services to conservation and the environment’. I live happily in suburban Duffy with my partner Louise surrounded by a dense native garden and lots of birds.

Thursday 27 September 2012

Bearded Mountaineer: BACK WEDNESDAY 3 OCTOBER

This bearded mountaineer is not what or who you may have expected. It is an uncommon hummingbird found only in the high Andes of southern Peru. This one surprised me by feeding on Tree Tobacco, Nicotiana glauca, which is a common weed in inland Australia, but native to that area. (Surprised only because of its Australian associations for me.)
Note the purplish 'beard' standing out from the breast.

As my other heading suggests, I'll be away now until next Wednesday. (We're driving up to Armidale, about 800km north on the New England plateau, to attend a wedding. While willingly fulfilling my responsibilities, I'll make a bit of time en route, and in Armidale pre-wedding, to do a bit of natural historising - I'm sure you'll hear about it.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

love this site – it's a great blog – may i suggest you get an rss feed.
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Ian Fraser said...

Hi and thanks for the feedback (for some reason your comment was consigned to Spam and I've only just seen it). I'm new at the blogging game, and while I've looked up a bit about RSS feeds, I'm still not clear as to what the advantage of them is to readers (eg you). If you felt like explaining it to me - or just referring me to some info - I'll be happy to take it on board. Reply directly if you like to calochilus51@internode.on.net.