ANPS DAGs go to Sutton

In John O'Grady's usually invaluable lexicon "Aussie English" he defines 'Dag" in two ways:
  1. A bloke who likes practical jokes;
  2. Dried material hanging aft of a sheep.
He opines that both should be removed.  However he fails to note a third, more desirable definition of "ANPS Daytime Activities Group" which should not be removed!  On 16 June they, including us, met at Gail's place off Sutton road to look at the development of the property around the house and tour the general environment.  Of course being ANPS a meal was also on offer including excellent salads provided by attending members, Snags à la Ron; and Tarte du Pomme au Warwick.

This first image gives an idea of the general layout of the house.  It is totally off-grid and very energy efficient, which can be achieved if one has an electrical engineer in the house!
Engineering also extends to wallaby proofing the vegie garden.
 Here is one view of the general habitat.
In hindsight this doesn't do the place justice a it emphasises an area which got burnt out in 1983 (I think) and is still recovering.  Over the whole property there are many species of eucalypt and some are rather spiffy.  Dunno why I didn't take a better photo.

Here is the mighty Yass River, with nice reflections and a good flow after the weekend's rain.
 More nice reflections in the main dam.
 I tried to take a snap of a White-throated Treecreeper  but only caught its tushie.
The most exciting bird (not Bird of the Day - a week late for that buggrit) was a Chestnut-rumped Heathwren calling in the Kunzea.

The best flower was Styphelia triflora.  Here a long and fuzzy shot  ...
 .. and now a more in-focus detail.
 Melichrus urceolatus was doing its stuff.
 In the fungal department Omphalina chromacea was everywhere.
This was the most 'interesting' - read: so far unidentified - fungus.  I am waiting to get a spore print to try to identify it to Genus at least.
 Necklace fern - Asplenium flabellifolium  I had ncluded a really crappy image of the sporangium (for some reason my camera wouldn't focus.  But follow that link and you get a good veiw.
 Here we have Cheilanthes austrotenuifolia


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more