 "Professor Polly" So what's going on here? We have a super-intelligent parrot - Polly to her friends, but Professor to her students - at home and trying to relax but the kids are testing out their camera skills. We've all been there... There's something about the aesthetic of old family photographs that I perversely love - the retro wallpapers, the jaunty angles and lack of focus, the look of terror on the poor victims, the fashion faux pas - and of course the memories - they're a delight to relive. And I found some wonderfully cringing examples in my old family photo archive to share so you can perhaps see where I'm coming from with lovely Polly.
Four kākā chicks in a wooden nestbox looking adorable. Their mum has stripped down the walls to create more nesting material.
And OMG - look at their little maroon pantaloons! 😍
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So what sorts of photos am I contributing? Well for every gorgeous fine-art-worthy shot I take (too few of them I fear!), there are probably a thousand more that hit the reject pile. Many are just not quite what I'm after for art purposes, but for education and advocacy purposes they're perfect, especially if they're of unique or hard-to-acquire subjects. How many of you have seen a vestigial kiwi wing? A Chatham-Island shag? A kākā's cloaca? You can now find all of the above on the Commons where none existed before and download and use them however you wish under a CC-BY-4.0 licence (attribution). If you can make money off a kākā's bum, knock yourself out! ?
And it's not just wildlife photos we need more of. Take a look in the Commons for some of your favourite hobbies, topics, people - are they well represented? Chances are you have something to add.
Photos can be donated under a variety of licences so it pays to check out the options first and find something that you're comfortable with. If you're not uploading your own work, then there are further considerations and you can find all about that on the Wikimedia help pages.
If you're not able to get to one of Mike's workshops, there is a wealth of information on how to get started on Wikimedia here. Mike's tenure ends in June 2019, and until then he's mostly based in the South Island - check out where he'll be on this Wikipedia page (where else!)
And if you're doing the 2019 Art of Birding Photo Challenge, check out Week 35 because your challenge is going to be to set one of your photos free!
All photos in this blog are by Judi Lapsley Miller, CC-BY-4.0 and are linked through to Wikimedia Commons.
 Contemplating the big wide world. The chick's coloured feathers are just starting to come in over the black down. Hannah Shand described it as if someone had started painting a watercolour picture.
 Orbell Takahē broke off a grass stalk and pulled out the fleshy base to feed to the chick.  Over by a dead fern, the chick was much more camouflaged.  A takahē chick's beak starts of white, then turns black, and eventually turns red. You can just see a tiny bit of white left on the tip of this 2.5 month old chick's beak.  The chick has started foraging for herself, holding grass with one foot to get easier access to the seeds and fleshy base.  Takahē might be flightless but they do have vestigial wings. Here the chick is excitedly waving her wings in the hope that Nio will feed her. Note the little claw at the end of the "elbow" (my bird anatomy is a bit shaky so feel free to comment if you know more about what this claw might have been for) Update 7 April 2019: after many requests, I've released two of these photos as fine-art prints - check out the Wildlife Photography category in my store.
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