The House(s) of Fran_mart

In my posts about our recent trip to Mallacoota I mentioned the colony of Grey-headed Fruit Bats a few times.  Some close-up photos are in the later parts of an earlier post , while my best images of the flock in flight are here .  I thought it might be interesting to record what we observed, based around some images snipped from Google Earth. This first images shows the 'suburb' of Karbeethong - about 5 km along the Inlet from the town of Mallacoota, with the green dot giving the position of the bat colony. There are two clues to the existence of the colony shown below.  The first is the calls of the bats as they communicate with each other.  These are clearly audible to humans within the yellow lines.  That is what first alerted us to the existence of the colony.  A second clue is the sharp aroma of bat guano which can be detected by my crummy honker within the brown lines. When we first observed them, in early 2015, we saw them from the house, streaming out in the ev

I was a bit occupied in the evening of 27th so you have had to wait a day for this.  I'm sure you have all found good things to do while I get my act into gear. For a change the sky did not look to indicate a good day in the offing.  Despite this we did our 'usual'walk into the town and back.  No great excitements but some nice chats with locals and the view is always pleasant. We then took ourselves off to the Casuarina Walk on the edge of the town.  There were a few birds about (see below) but very little blossom.  Hence a snap of a Brachyscome (one of very few 'daisies') ...  .. and ditto Wahlenbergia.  The highlight was finding two flowers of Dipodium variegatum . Later in the day I went to the heathland in (unsuccessful) search of Emu-wren.  I did find some Hakea in flower.  I also had a chat with two women who had walked, carrying huge packs from Cape Conran.  This looks to be somewhere close to 100km and had taken them 5 days.  They seemed

Today is the Anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet, officially celebrated as Australia Day.  It is also known as Invasion Day to some proportion of the community and apparently as D**khead Day by the proprietors of a cafe in Bermagui . All of those seem a bit value ridden, whereas I think it is not possible to argue against per capita real economic output being rather higher in 2016 than it was on 25 January 1788. Whether that is a Good Thing is not a question I am going to debate. Whatever.  Let me begin with an update on an Australian icon, in the shape of the Teddy Bear or Koala.  Late last evening I could not spot the portly person covered in yesterday's post so assumed he'd climbed down and gone elsewhere.  However after we went to bed we could hear him roaring from the same tree, so assume he was just hidden by foliage.  Then this afternoon as we were driving home from the town we spotted a rather small Koala scrambling up a bank at Shady Guully - the first ti

This is not a new cooking show but recognising that I was joined today by a Koala, in the eucalypt next door.  We didn't get a look at its genitals but its generally chunky shape, and bad tempered roaring, suggest bloke rather than sheila. This was the position when first sighted.  It does look rather as though it has a hangover!  A couple of hours later it was very perky. Late in the afternoon it was sitting up again and roaring.  You will note that it has changed orientation: in my experience that counts as hyperactivity for a Koala! Sticking with mammals, I was keen to see the fruit bats fly out, from near the colony,  As it involves walking down the steep hill I kept an eye out from the deck and at 2033 saw a few flying out over the Inlet.  I grabbed the camera and headed off.  The sky was full of bats. I couldn't persuade my camera to take a really clear image - but it was close to dark and they were moving very quickly.  Within 10 minutes they had all gone: