Parking is free on the weekend!

This was a constant theme on our travels around Canberra today.  (I was initially fiddling with a title full of silent pees (contra-porcelain perhaps) along the lines of Psegways, Psittacoids ...  But then Frances suggested the parking issue and it was Good!)

We started off at the National Library where I became fascinated by a Segway School going on before we entered.  The initial view was very like an Anthony Gormley art work but by the time I got back with my camera everything had sorted out as they moved on.

Keeping to the idea of silent pee, perhaps this is a Psegway Pscrum?
This combines Psegways and Psittaccidae (I'm not sure if I have the name of the Parrot and Cockatoo family correctly up to date, but apparently there are rules to taxonomy so I'm sure everything will be OK in the long run).

 Our next stop was the Drill Hall Gallery and thanks to it being the weekend we were able to get a park without invading Toad Hall.  An oak outside the Gallery was attractive to Little Corellas ....
 While another, closer to the main campus was getting attention from Australian King Parrots.

The next image is definitely a male adult!
I said they into the oak trees.  Here s an acorn taking some punishment from (I think) a female..
 After a most interesting visit to the Chifley Library we explored the rear of the Student Union.  The next few images are of the graffiti.   Clearly the site is not far from the School of Art.




Back by the Drill Hall the Corellas had decided to vary their diet by adding some weather seal.  (I'm sure this image could prove fertile soil for a caption competition.)
Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Chloe the Wonder Cat was tolerating a compact camera being pointed in her direction.  I suspect another caption comp, perhaps based around a Rolling Stones album, might be in the offing.
Personally I reckon she looks more Psatanic than any of the Stones, except possibly Keith after a hard days night.

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