Feathered Friday - Woolly necked Stork vs Dachshund

As a bird lover, I've been spotting Hive account@keithboone's #FeatheredFriday all over Steemit lately so would love to be part of the action and share with you some of the birds we find here in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa.

Quoted by Hive account@keithboone:

To participate in #FeatheredFriday and receive an upvote & resteem, please follow these simple steps:

Make your own post and use the tag #featheredfriday

Comment below with a link to your post - This will get you a lot of extra exposure from the other participants. If you don't do this, I may accidentally miss your post because Feathered Friday is starting to get busy.

Consider using the #birding tag in order to connect to a wider community of bird fans.

Dove surveying the territory after feeding on wild bird seed.

We have attracted many feathered species over the years by planting indigenous trees that bear berries or fruit such as the wild plum tree, pigeon wood tree as well as papaya trees which we share with our feathered friends and the mischievous monkeys that travel through our garden daily.

A regular feathered visitor, the Knysna Loerie with its stunning crimson wings, is a rather shy bird that hops between the branches making quite a noise when it's calling its mate. We hear this bird more often than see it, so were real lucky getting this shot.

We put out wild bird seeds, fruit off-cuts plus we have a couple of bird baths in the garden. Weaver birds are the most common in our tranquil green valley with a stream flowing at the bottom.

But as my title suggests, I would like to share with you another feathered species, the Woolly necked Stork, and this pair are regular visitors at my brother's house, are quite tame but try their very best to look ominous when the dachshund gets too close to their food, with wings spreadeagled.

My brother took a video of the feathered action during our last visit, enjoy :)

I would also like to share a gorgeous piece of bird art I picked up just yesterday at our local SPCA (Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals); stunning work of Gail Dahl who donates some of her work to their charity shop. I was really fortunate as this just arrived, absolutely beautiful - painting as well as feathers used here.

Collage by Gail Dahl