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Everyone knows budgies, the small “parakeets” that one sees for sale in pet stores. Budgerigars are native to Australia, but have been bred in captivity for 200 years and are essentially domesticated. While budgies in the pet stores come in myriad colors, wild budgies are green and yellow birds with black markings. Wild budgies (Melopsittacus undulatus) are well known for appearing in large numbers around waterholes. I was amazed and excited to see more than 1000 of these little parrots coming in to drink at a waterhole in the early morning. Photographing them was a bit of a challenge, low light, fast action, groups of birds which needed a wide depth of field, camera hunting for which bird to focus on. After failing the first morning, I did better the next morning by forgetting about ISO, shooting stoppped down to f/11 or f/13, and turning off subject detection. The budgies are at the bottom of the food chain and were very wary about coming in to drink. They would circle around the waterhole, gradually flying lower and lower, and then suddenly diving to the edge of the water, taking a drink for a few seconds, and then taking to the air again. Here are three images, the first taken as a flurry of budgies comes down to drink, the second of some drinking, and a third of a small group drinking. You will notice the red dirt, the reason the middle of Australia is called the "Red Center".
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