The Rose Robin -Why all the fuss?

If you are a twitcher you’ll know why all the fuss.The Rose Robin is a stunning little ball of fluff coming in at a whopping 8 grams. Like most of the bird kingdom, the male bird is more stunning in color. What you are looking at is the female Rose Robin. So why all the fuss about this little bird?

This bird is epidemic to Australia and why in recents times a lot of fuss has been made over this tiny little bird when spotted in South Australia. This tiny little bird migrates to South Australia either from the east coast of Australia, or from Victoria or from Tasmania.Can you image this 8 gram bird flying across Bass Strait making its way to the mainland? Perhaps it hitches a ride on the Spirit of Tasmania. That’s a large ship that takes cars and passengers between Tasmania and Victoria.

It is only the female Rose Robin that does this epic journey.The male stays at home.

Every year at the same time, her body clock says it is time to take up flight and she will fly these enormous distances to arrive in the same area each time she makes the epic journey. This is just another stunning example of the wonder of nature. We humans still scratch our heads and say to ourselves.. Why?

This little fluff ball flies these massive distances to escape the cold to travel to the warmer climates. Once here, all she does is catch her food and rest, sleep and so on. She doesn’t come here to mate as the mate stays at home.

At some point while she is here, when the time is right, she will decide on the day that it is time to fly over 1000 kilometres back to where she came from.

Next year she will repeat the same process and get up and leave and make the long journey to South Australia. Their built in GPS tracking system must be amazing.

Can you image this little bird encountering massive strong head winds. You would think that this bird would be pushed backwards in her epic journey.

People will look at Vicki’s pictures here of the Rose Robin but they will never fully appreciate how hard this bird is to capture. The bird doesn’t really stay still for too long and where this bird was taken, there were so many branches , twigs, back lighting issues etc and Vicki had to really work hard to capture the images.She was determined to capture this little bird.

The bird is always on the move and being so tiny, the movements are always so quick. Have you ever tried photographing a small bird in the middle of a woodland area? It is extremely difficult and you don’t always get the success you are looking for.

Vicki’s patience paid off as Vicki was determined to get this little fluff ball. She would follow her through sight and then when the Rose Robin was out of sight, it was through listening to the Rose Robin calls.

Vicki knew what she wanted in capturing the Rose Robin on camera and kept going until she was happy with what she shot.

This is only a small selection of the Rose Robin images that Vicki captured. You look at these pictures and you think the Rose Robin just posed out in the open, free of branches, twigs crossing in front her , free of extreme back lighting and the shot was taken. Nope that wasn’t the case. 3 trips were made to the area. The first trip yielded no results. Do you give up after that? No way.

The next two trips were successful but it still took time, just over 6 hours each time, total of just over 13 hours to capture The Rose Robin.

Capturing The Rose Robin under tough photographic conditions was only possible because Vicki knew the camera, knew the settings in tricky light situations. I can’t stress enough, know your camera and how to use it in challenging situations.

The Rose Robin is one smart and gusty bird to make this massive long flight just to be able to enjoy some warmer weather. What blows me away is to know what goes through their mind when one day they wake up and decide,’ today is the day I begin my long flight back to where I have to meet up with my mate.”

Nature is amazing and there are so many amazing stories within nature that inspire us and this small story about the Rose Robin is just one more of those amazing moments in nature.