Kakadu’s Yellow water boat tours in ‘Yegge’, the first of the 3 Bininj dry seasons

Kakadu magic - a late wet season topped up the wetlands, as waters drop the reveal upstream on river right is an ongoing festival of flowers! Thousands of ‘Andem’ water lilies - white and purple, some Lotus lilies about.

Downstream on river left the floodplain is kinda a huge rice paddy! A green crop with feathery yellow seed heads. Yes Australia has 4 species of rice - Australian rice! Rice soon to be food for young magpie geese - ‘bamaru’. Amid this rice paddy is a feeding frenzy of egret, ibis, spoonbill, heron and ‘big bird’ the Jabiru hunt fish, with a few crocs about.

The Jabiru… one awesome bigbird!

The Jabiru …. Well in Australia we don’t have a Jabiru… the actual Jabiru is a heavily built South American stork, with a very unflattering flabby fat neck lacking any feathers - . Our bird has a far prettier neck, when seen in ideal lighting a iridescent shimmering green and purplish sheen to quote Morcombe’s field guide. But alas in the distance in bright contrasting light this wonder appears as a black neck - hence the official name is the Black-necked stork. The South American Jabiru can be found here - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabiru I would love to know how our stork was named a Jabiru back in the day?