Usually I write about large birds. They are easier to see, always majestic in their element – the various raptors easyriding the thermals, the pelicans gliding on the lagoon - & usually announce themselves. When a cockatoo lands in a tree / the branches bounce. They are easier to identify.

But there is pleasure in the small birds also. A joy of discovery, of the type that Denise Levertov writes about.

I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies

within something of another nature....

Often you will hear them first, with a voice that is larger than their frame. A song from within the leaves of a tree. & so you wait, & watch. If lucky, the first, perhaps the only, thing you see is a small flash of moving colour. Focus on that, watch the spaces nearby. Move quietly to obtain a better view.

Today a red-browed pardalote, Pardalotus rubricatus.

It nests at the end of a tunnel bored into an earth bank.

It doesn't like being photographed. This was one page I could find.