Wild Type

Exploring Earth with Science Writer J.K. Ullrich

Photo Gallery: Birds

My childhood dinosaur obsession never really left; it just evolved, like the creatures themselves, into a fascination with their modern-day decedents.

Check out the Adventures category on my blog for additional photographs, and the stories behind the shots.

Portrait of an azure kingfisher: a bird with a cobalt head and wings, orange breast, and thick dark bill. Vermillion feet grip a stubby grey tree branch. Bokeh blurs the background into a watercolor palette of swampy greens.

A pair of tiny, colorful rainbow bee-eater birds perch close together on a branch.

A close-up of a cassowary's face through blurred jungle foliage. An intelligenct amber eye, offset against the bird's blue facial skin, stares directly at the viewer. The bony casque gleams like a fossil, lending the creature a distinctly dinosaurian aspect.

Close-up of an emu. Its shaggy brown neck curves up from right to left. Keen orange eyes gaze directly at the viewer, almost matching the mottled yellow and pink rock face behind the bird.

Gang-gang cockatoo siblings--the sister with her head tucked beneath her brother's chin--peer from their nest cavity.

An Australian ibis perches on an upright log in a lake. Indigo water fills two-thirds of the background; the top third is tawny grass on the far bank. A cross-hatching effect from blowing foreground grass gives the image a dreamy, impressionistic quality.

Frozen in action against a pale blue sky, a crested tern flies with a silver fish clasped in its beak.

A pair of kookaburras sits on a broken tree branch, against a cloud-dappled blue sky. One has its back to the viewer, showcasing azure accent feathers as it looks toward its companion. The second faces forward, fanned tail almost transparent and beak open in a laughing call.

A kestrel takes off, glancing over her shoulder at the viewer. The forest around her blurs into a bokeh patchwork of green and grey, implying smoothness and speed.

A smug-looking Australian pelican swims with its black-and-white wings slightly uplisted. Fish scraps, so freshly scooped that there's a silver arc of water beads hanngin in midair, distend its pouch and dangle from the sides of its bill.

Two saffron-and-grey silvereye birds perch among a shrub's pink blosoms.

A red-capped plover darts between heavy footprints in the sand, each one wide enough to swallow the tiny bird.

A royal spoonbill preens his white breeding plumage. A lush nuchal crest blows back from his head, and a bright yellow patch evokes eyeshadow over his deep amber eye.

Close-up of a male red-rumped parrot, capturing the detail of his feathers, which shift color from aqua around the beak and face to lime-green on his head, blue and lavender on his back, and a banana-yellow chest. He holds a seedy grass head close to his beak, ready to nibble.

A male eastern spinebill in full glory: rusty breast, slate-blue back and wings, white throat, and gleaming brown eye, perched against a lush bokeh background of pale olive-green.

An osprey flies across a beach with a large fish in its talons, heading toward the viewer. Fierce eyes flash, and its beak is slightly open in a triumphant expression. In the background, a soft-focused sailboat cruises on blue water.

A black swan, seen from the back. Its neck bends around in almost a figure eight toward the viewer to tuck beak beneath wing. A bright garnet eye gazes out from a tuft of down.

A welcome swallow hangs in midair, wings spread and forked tail pointing straight down, to feed its three hungry chicks, clustered atop a weathered pylon. Its beak disappeares down the throat of the frontmost chick while its siblings clamor for their turn.

A crested tern chick huddles under its parent's white breast. The parent bows its yellow beak over the chick and flanks it with half-folded wings, creating a protective enclosure for its young one.

A pacific gull stands on a glistening sandbar, with a small octopus dangling from its orange bill.

A pair of white terns hover in front of their fledgling chick, who sits moodily in a pine tree and shows no interest in the demonstration.

A Pacific black duck drifts on vivid sapphire water strewn with green and yellow leaves.

A sulfur-crested cockatoo, crest fully erect, perches on the edge of a tree cavity. It stares into the hole, beak agape as if yelling into the hollow.

Dozens of crested terns, adults and their chicks, cluster on grey rock streaked white with guano. Overhead, five more terns swoop against the pale blue sky.

A black swan sails elegantly off with a cygnet nestled between its wings. Two fuzzy grey siblings paddle in their parent's wake, trying to catch up with their ride.

Perched in a pine tree, a white tern bends over its fuzzy grey chick, holding a silver fish in its beak,

A galah perches atop a snag, using its beak to zip a feather from its fanned tail. The bird's pink and grey plumage stands out bold against a rich blue sky.

Fluffy wood ducklings collide and jostle for shelter beneath the wings of their serenely seated mother at a pond's edge.

Amid a coral-colored profusion of kangaroo paw flowers--blurred and transparent in the foreground, sharper and haloed with backlight in the midfield--an eastern spinebill bird perches on an upright stem.

A kookaburra shoots out of a tree cavity, wings fully extended downwards to show off the lovely brown and white feathers, speckled with blue. Its thick beak points arrow-straight ahead.

Three juvenile kestrels, still sporting some chick fluff, perch on a large broken tree branch. Their parent has just landed on the branch's underside, dappled brown wings spread wide.

A tawny frogmouth and its fluffy chick, snuggled in their simple stick nest in a eucalyptus tree.

A male superb fairy-wren perches at the apex of a seedy stalk, which is bent to form a triangle. A spiderweb is strung between the sides. Bokeh dapples the background green and pink.

An Australian ibis prepared to land on a log, white wings spread wide to reveal the scarlet stripes along the inner wing bone.

A black swan dabbles through a pea-green mat of duckweed that fills the frame. Its wake leaves a squiggly black inkstroke of cleared water.

A pair of curlews hunt in glittery shallow water, long bills wet and glistening. The foreground bird is in sharp focus, one foot raised, poised to strike. The midground bird is a blurred, flipped impression of the first.

A lone duckling carves ripples through green lilypads. Strong lighting makes the water look black, almost as if the tiny bird were moving through deep space.

Five juvenile emus crowd around a puddle on a dirt track. Two lower themselves to drink, while the other three wait for access. Shrubbery frames the scene.

An adult cassowary strolls along a jungle verge, shepherding his tawny striped chick ahead of him.

A pair of pied cormorants face one another on a log streaked with guano. Poised in a bickering attitude, their beaks almost interlock.

Four chestnut-breasted manakins perch in a row on a sugarcane stalk.

A tiny golden-headed cisticola perches in the tawny fluff atop a stalk of grass.

A sulfur-crested cockatoo perches amid the pink flowering branches of a cherry tree, looking cheeky as it dangles a blossom from its beak.

A trio of young Capsian terns take off from a shallow lake edge, displaying three different flight attitudes: wings vertical, horizontal, and folded back.

A small, tawny cisticola bird perches on a dried grass stem, beak open to call.