#likoca

Photo taken at Olary, South Australia

Summer colors in the outback @ Appila Springs

‘Will the the last person to leave Facebook, Please turn off the lights…

Galahs are common enough across the Australian bush that it's easy to walk past them. Get close and the pink-and-grey is almost absurd in its intensity, especially against a muted scrubby background. This one was perched on a boulder and had the crest up, alert to something nearby but not alarmed enough to move. A clean side-on view with the whole bird sharp and the background well clear.

Perched on a rocky rise beside a barbed-wire fence, this small kangaroo held its ground and stared back. The overcast sky flattened the light and kept the background clean.

One flower open, one still closed tight in pink. The hairy green sepals and the way the stamens push forward suggest this is viper's bugloss or something close to it, a plant that regularly goes unnoticed until you get right down to it. The deep violet petals sit clean against a soft green background, the whole thing sharp where it counts and gone to blur where it doesn't.

A crested pigeon settled on a rusted barbed wire fence, the dark spike of its crest sharp against the soft green blur behind. Red eye bright, wings folded neat, it held its position long enough to fill the frame. The wire and post give it a rougher backdrop than you'd expect for a bird this tidy-looking.