The House(s) of Fran_mart

Some of you will have read my  blog of our trip to Peru.  As you will realise - unless living in a rather deep cave - there have been a lot of floods in the area recently. Chris, the owner of the company which our leader (Ian Fraser) works for was leading a tour there at the time and managed to get his group on the last train out of Aguas Calientes to Cusco.  The following are some photos he took of the conditions there.  Apparently many people are living in tents (adobe houses do not last long when inundated by raging flood waters) and have lost all their crops.    

I spend a reasonable proportion of time looking for birds and plants in the Nature Reserves and Travelling Stock Reserves (TSRs)  in the Canberra Region.  Knowing how thirsty I used to get working with livestock it is not surprising that from time to time I come across the occasional beer bottle in these places.  What is surprising is that many - possibly most - of them date back to the 1950 and 1960s, when the bottle manufacturers used to 'cast' the year of manufacture in the base of the bottle.  Note that I'm using the term 'beer bottle' to refer to an honest 26 fluid ounce container not a stubbie. The question is why is there this strange distribution of ages? My original suggestions were: People stopped drinking in the 1970s Drinkers stopped going to TSRs in the 1970s On reflection I would add to that: changes in farming practices such that  TSRs stopped being used by drovers in the 1970s.  (This is an important point because it might add fuel to the c

We inherited a large sword when we moved here.  I presume this is some sort of reference to the SCA .   However we lost it for a while.  When it reappeared Frances suggested lobbing it in the dam as a "Lady of the Lake" allusion.  Done. Tonight I noticed that it made an image with the gibbous moon.   Here follows a couple of piccies: the first with flash and the second a Blair Witch hand-held effect.

This takes you to a photograph of a  cloud over the Tinderries on a birding walk.  It is the most spectacular example but they were everywhere that day. Many thanks to Julian Robinson (aka aadvaark) for this great image.

When I took Tammy out for her last toilet break on the evening of 15 January we found an ex-rabbit on the lawn.  Once I stopped cheering and shifted Tammy away I got a shovel and took it to dead-things central: our dam, where the yabbies deal with such things.  Lying on a fallen tree going into the dam was this: When I tried to get a different angle I kicked the end of the fallen tree and the dragon promptly dived off into the water!

This is probably a side-bar to the brickbats and bouquets theme.  As usual there are very few bouquets around in this. It seems that the major aspect of this is to follow Dave Allen 's advice "stop it or you'll go blind." One would have thought that in these times of economic crisis any business you called to sell you stuff would lean over backwards (and forwards and possibly, if they are athletic enough, sideways) to get your cash. Not so. It is well recognised that the professionals (doctors, lawyers etc) all shut up over Christmas but it no seems that other places do as well. I wanted to get a roo-bar for our car, since the macropods are getting very numerous around the area.  The initial proposal was a 2 week delay as they were running low on stock.  It now seems to be at least a 4 week delay since they have run out of a key part and the foundry doesn't reopen until 17 January!  This gets worse - here is an email from the company (after a phone call ta

Each year the New York Times runs a finals tipping competition for the NFL . The first year they ran it I finished 22nd out of 'several thousand'.  The company which ran it for them wouldn't say how many punters took part. The second year I can't remember how I went, but nowhere near as well.  I'd guess about 3,000 out of 8,000. So for this year I am having another effort and will see how we go. I n the first week of the finals I got 3 teams correct (Jets, Cowboys and Ravens and 1 wrong (picked the Packers who lost 45 - 51 (!!!  should have been an interesting game).  So after week 1, I am 1401st out of 8643! The mathematicians amongst you may wish to speculate why I got as high as 840th  at one point (after the results of the Packers - Cardinals game was known) and then dropped 600 places.  Of the four resulting games 95% of players picked the higher ranked team in three of the games.  The odd one is Cowboys against Vikings which the only 75% (including m

As well as the hordes of beetles we have had a bat flying around recently.  We often have them outside, flying around dining on insects but for several evenings recently have had one in the house.  This has happened on occasion in the past as pictured to the left.  That one was identified as a Gould's Long-eared bat, and this seemed identical. This has been seen as a gross invasion by the small dog and has led to a very interrupted sleep while herself rushes up and down and round and about trying to catch it.  The bat has been sensible and stayed in the air. We tried to trap it with a towel but that was totally ineffective, so I made myself a bat-net.  This consists of a scrap of bird netting hooked around some old fencing wire and lashed to a broom handle.  It looks completely naff but last night proved itself to be effective. The bat flew around a few times with dog in pursuit and then perched on a rough brick wall.  A quick swipe and I had it netted and took it outside wh

Frances has commented how different the bugs have been each year we have been here. The catalyst for that comment was the presence of a squillion (give or take a zillion) small (about 1cm long) beetles flying around the outside lights last evening.  The image to the left shows the paths left as they zoom through the light while I tried photographing them without flash.  I don't know what species they are and a poor image is to the right for anyone that would care to have a go at IDing the little beasts..  They were so numerous last night that after they had stunned themselves flying into the light they almost carpeted the ground. An entomologist friend has identified the beast.  His words " It is a small pasture chafer in the genus Phyllotoca.  The larva lives underground feeds on organic matter and roots like Christmas Beetles.  They pupate in mid-summer and  have a synchronised emergence at night over a few weeks and are attracted to light in their millions.  By day

3 Years of Birding in the Carwoola area This report is about birds so I will start with a couple of images of the birds of the area. Both are of large honeyeaters: a Red Wattlebird (a common resident) to the left and a Noisy Friarbird (a common breeding summer migrant)to the right.  Both are feeding on Callistemon sp. This is an informal report on the birds I have recorded in the Stoney Creek Gazette (hereafter ‘the Gazette’) since moving to the area in late January 2007. Since (for reasons that are not clear to me) I omitted to issue records for April 2007 the report is based upon observations for 34 months, concluding in December 2009.  A version of this epic will hopefully be published in the Palerang Bulletin. For most of 2007 the records are biased towards our home block. Since 2008 these records have been augmented by regular observations (over the whole area) from Julienne Kamprad of Quailrise in Hoskinstown. John Bisset of Widgiewa joined the systematic reporter