These were taken on Magnetic Island, just off the north-east Australian coast at Townsville (19 degrees S). About 2/3 of the island is National Park, and the bid and animal life is quite spectacular and easily accessible. D7000 with the 55-200 VR, which I often use when travelling because of its very low weight. Australian birds are, by European standards, big and many are relatively unafraid of humans, so a short telephoto can get quite reasonable images. One reason the birds are large is that flowering and fruiting among Australian forest trees occurs randomly throughout the year, so that birds (and mammals) can live on can fruit and nectar all year round.
The Blue-Winged Kookaburra is a tropical bird, smaller than the ubiquitous standard kookaburra. The Pretty-Faced Rock Wallaby, also called Agile Rock Wallaby, is about 10kg in weight; although the ones on the island are wild they have been fed (the national park authorities tried to stop the practice but have had to settle for getting people to provide appropriate food) and are used to humans. The Bush Stone-Curlew is a ground-dwelling mainly nocturnal bird, which happily wanders around and into houses in search of food - lizards and large insects. I got a little to close to these two: when threatened they crouch down like this; unfortunately that does not fool foxes and cats, so they are threatened in a lot of mainland Australia but still common on the island.
