Blackfaced Cuckoo Shrike

How I admire Wildlife photographers! When I went to feed my three chooks just now, there was a baby bird sitting on the ground, not far from the chookyard. So went back and got my camera, put on a long sleeved shirt so I could lie down on the ground for a steady aim. As I was taking shots a myriad of little black ants decided I was a corps and needed to be removed! Well they succeeded after a while but I did get a reasonable shot of the Black faced cuckoo shrike chick. Its parent was coming back but would not come down to feed it so I removed myself (with some ants still in attendance) behind the ash tree hoping I might get a shot of the parent feeding its chick. No way was that going to happen anytime soon.I did get a picture of the adult sitting in the gum tree.Reading about the cuckoo shrike, apparently it is not a cuckoo at all as it rears its own young after all and cuckoos are those sneaky birds that lay an egg in other bird's nests which then hatch and raise their stranger at the detriment of their own offspring.I remember this when I was living in Inman Valley. We had blue wrens and I found this fat, demanding chick in their nest and they were frantically trying to satisfy its voracious appetite.
The other thing I did today was take a photo of the white waterlilly. The goldfish were also in there but I will need to put a filter on my Nikon 860 to get a good picture of them in the water. We also have a pink waterlilly but it is not out at present.

A pond is quite a high maintenance project. I had intended to have some sort of filter system but my friend said all you needed was a pump to aerate the water.We do have that but the algae still builds up and I have to physically remove it and put it on the mulch where it dries out. It would be excellent for paper making as the fibres are very tough. It looses its green colour of course and is quite dull when dry. It is supposed to be 40C today so have watered the pots early and given the young Holm Oaks a good soak.