The House(s) of Fran_mart

This blog has been rather quiet recently as we have been off on a trip West.  The main destination was Lower Eyre Peninsula and all is contained in the pages of the Tick Magnet blog . The main thrusts are birds, plants (including some nifty orchids) and old buildings. A few days are yet to be finalised, and will be updated in the next day or so, but by and large it is done and dusted.

I recently posted about some strange scats I found in a grove of pine trees.  I left a sheet of cardboard under the trees to see if I could pick up any later donations.  Nothing had appeared until this morning (2 weeks later).  I then noticed as we passed on our dog exercise that the cardboard was decorated. The most interesting aspect of this is that there have not been any Yellow-tailed black-cockatoos in the area for several days as far as I am aware - and they are not a surreptitious species!  So: if it wasn't YTBC what was it?  Crimson Rosellas have been around a lot and they might be doing it dry?  Certainly the following morning there were 4 vocal Rosellas sitting near the pines. Being around with my camera I thought I would snap a few other things.  This moss was attractive in presenting a range of shades of green.  As usual at this time of year close inspection shows that plants are starting to get ready for the new season.  (Such news is necessary to get through

This is nothing to do with a British TV series but more a reflection that on the Monaro at present it isn't even one-tenth hot.   Here are our (OK, Canberra Airport BoM ) recent minimum temperatures: note especially the last week! According to the Canberra Times 9 July was also cold at -4.9!   This shot over the Hoskinstown Plain from our dog-exercise this morning (8 July) shows the mist rising at about 8:45, with the temperature around zero centigrade.  When we got home I was very surprised to find our closest dam was iced over (except where the drips of water off the trees had kept it open).  Here are some impressionistic shots of ice crystals on leaves and such like.  I'll have to do some more work to focus on transparent objects!  Of course if you have a nice fur coat ...  ... or a friend with feathers  ... you don't notice the cold so much. Nearby these buds on a Eucalyptus mannifera suggest that it will eventually get warm again!

I found I was going to have some time on my hands in Civic this morning so decided to take some photos of the street art scene.  A few other items suggested themselves along the way and could be tortured to fit a narrative so here we go. The first image is near the start of the outing showing the descent into Queanbeyan.  It is mainly here because I finally had the camera on hand, and Frances poised to use it! Further along the road we go past Canberra Airport which has erected this to distract motorists who are rude (their view) or sensible (my view) enough to ignore this place.  It does seem to be mobile and suggests to me the business plan of a pyramid sales organisation. In Civic there is quite a bit of official art here and there.  This first one is on London Circuit, near where we parked. In so far as Civic has a centre it is probably Civic Square which includes the Canberra Theatre, the Canberra Museum and Gallery and the ACT House of Assembly.  The forecourt of these

I will offer the caution that this post includes about 30 images so beware of load times!   The ANPS outing today was to Bango Nature Reserve about 12km North of Yass.  It is the patch of green under the 'ngo' of "Bango".  Our activities were in the NW element of the Reserve and thus out of the COG area of interest shown by the grid.  This was a new area for the group, and myself having done a brief foray in the past I was a little worried that it wouldn't be too exciting.  I think I was wrong. Not far into the Reserve we found a colony of greenhood orchids - perhaps 30 flowers.  They were put into the genus Diplodium fairly quickly and after much consulting of The Book a tentative ID of D.  fischii was arrived at.  This is rather late flowering (cited as February to May) but nothing else seemed to match.  Comments and alternatives welcome.  Tony Wood from the ACT orchid group has endorsed this ID commenting that " D. fischii with its tall flower, n