Victoria had a cold blast of air today bringing widespread snowfalls to even low altitudes, a circumstance that only happens here once or twice a year.

As I had the day off, I decided to venture to central Victoria hoping to see some snow covered kangaroos but alas I chose poorly and whilst it did snow, not enough fell to leave a coverage on the ground – or on kangaroos.

I went to one of my favorite cold places and only a little snow on the ground with some light snow falling and as I walked in the 2degC air temperature and sub zero chill factor with the 35 knot westerlies blowing, a beautiful little and lively bird kept circling me as I walked.

I went back to the car and reached for … you guess it… that awesome Olympus mZD 300mm f/4 super telephoto lens with its 6 stops image stabilisation to counter my chilled and shaking fingers, and the Olympus weathersealing and freeze-proofing that the falling snow would not be an issue.

So here are a couple of hand held shots of this little fellow both shot hand held at f/5 to get a bit more depth of field on the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Micro Four Thirds camera  (please click on images to show in large size):

The above is not cropped and shows the lovely bokeh as well as across the frame, edge to edge sharpness.

This one has been cropped a touch, and shows the shallow depth of field at such close distances

I believe the bird is an Eastern Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis) which are lovely, friendly birds. They are curious and inquisitive and relatively easily photographed despite their small size of only around 19g.

And here is one of the last autumn leaves, before my fingers fell off in the cold, hand held again with the Olympus 300mm in very low light: