Olive Whistler
on track to Frenchmans Cap

by Craig
(Melbourne, VIC, Australia)

I was walking around the start of the trail to Frenchmans Cap. I was lagging behind my friends. This little bird was whistling and I thought I'll try and get a photo.

I just heard the bird call, I didn't actually see it. I whistled back to it and it came towards me. It seemed to be interested in what the other thing was that was whistling back at it.

I basically stood still. I had to guess where it was. I just raised the camera over my shoulder and took a snap. I knew it was there somewhere and that it was close to me so I didn't actually dare turn around.

Obviously it never really has had much contact with humans and it didn't seem to have the inbuilt fear that most other animals do.

I would say between 5 and 10 min of whistling brought it in. I just kept whistling till it came in. It was doing little flights and hops towards me.

I tried to take a few photos of it - most of them were either blurry or out of focus or the bird was not in shot but again I was trying to do it blind.

This is one of the beauties of having a digital camera - you can take as many photos as you like. At least one's going to come out sooner or later.

This one was a particularly good shot. You can still see there's a little bit of blur in there but the bird came up pretty well. You can even make out what looks like webbing between its toes.

Karen's response:

Thanks for this great photo and for providing the details on how you came across the bird and then got the photo.

From what I can tell, the Olive Whistler is not easy to find. So you've done really well with not only spotting it but managing to get this photo too. Sharp eyes!