A male Crimson Chat working very hard to feed his hungry fledglings.  It has been a good year for these beautiful birds.  The extra wet winter has meant an abundance of vegetation and invertebrates which of course has been very good for seed and insect eaters.  Several pairs of Crimson Chats had nested on a narrow verge in the wheatbelt, a thin strip of land between the gravel road and a farmers paddock cropped with Canola.  The verge had virtually no native vegetation and was mostly dead weeds and dried Canola but it provided protection for nests and young.  These babies were fledging when I photographed their Dad.  Little ones, still slightly fluffy making small forays out of the undergrowth, perching on dead stalks and calling incessantly for food.  Mum and Dad spent a lot of time in the adjacent paddock where the crop was still green and I am guessing crawling with caterpillars because each time they returned to feed a hungry baby their beak was full!!  Somehow they were managing to catch an entire mouthful of squishy green caterpillars?  I wondered how they caught each subsequent crawler and not let the previous ones fall or escape?  Hard to count but I reckon there are at least six in this clever little fellas beak!!!