Bin chicken bonanza

Click here for majestic plumage

Against all advice to find an identifiable visual style and stick with it, I’ve been oscillating between colour and black and white in recent months.

It all comes down to what I’m shooting. And one subject that screams for the monocrome treatment is Threskiornis molucca, the Australian white ibis.

I’ve always been drawn to the dishevelled birds that make their homes in our cities - I remember visiting Austin, Texas, and marvelling that their pest bird wasn’t the drab pigeon or the squawking gull, but the lusciously blue-black grackle, something like a cross between a crow and a starling.

So I can only imagine how visitors to Sydney feel when they first encounter these peculiar wading birds far from the water, strutting about like catwalk models.

For our part, Sydneysiders have embraced the ibis in the last decade. These days you can hardly leave the house without stubbing your toe on a bin chicken mural. Perhaps the native ibis - squeezed out of the wetland housing market and forced to try and make it in a city that seems actively hostile to its presence, is the perfect mascot for many of us.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into it and I should get back to the pictures. I took these snaps of an extremely unkempt ibis preening under the Commercial Travellers Club in Martin Place yesterday.

I can’t quite make up my mind about which version I like the best. I think all of them capture the contrast between the ibis’ natural majesty (Threskiornis derives from “sacred bird” in Ancient Greek) and its reduced circumstances. Which is your favourite?

If you’d like to buy into the ibissaince and get a limited edition print for your wall, just reply to this email. Otherwise I’ll catch you next time.

PS: Check out some street audio

Last night I went and saw Mike Williams’ awesome live audio documentary Wide World of Marrickville at Erskineville Town Hall as part of the Sydney Fringe. It’s full of local lore and idiosyncratic characters, and packs a surprising emotional punch. His approach has a lot in common with street photography, only his tool is the mic rather than the camera. If you’ve ever had anything to do with postcode 2204, I’d snag one of the last few tickets for Saturday’s show while you can.