The House(s) of Fran_mart

As it was a nice sunny day and there was no wind I thought I'd finish my birding for April with a look down into Foxlow Lagoon. There was quite a lot of water in the Lagoon (more than when I last looked, at the start of the month. There were also quite a few common waterbirds, but as the sunlight was reflecting off the water it was very hard to pick up detail.  So largely estimated numbers. Land birds were easier to get a good look at and also a little more exciting.  Bird of the Day was Southern Whiteface: not the most excitingly coloured bird (basically small and brown, with a dob of white on the face) but quite nusual in the Carwoola area.  There were at least four present muddled in with a mixed flock including Yellow-rumped Thornbill, Australasian Pipit, Diamond Firetail, Willie Wagtail  and Flame Robins. The only one of those I managed to get a snap of was a female Flame Robin.  There were a couple of the more spectacular (OK, simply spectacular) males present but th

I read on the ABC site today of the death of Robin Millhouse, sometime Attorney-General for South Australia and Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia. The obituary on the ABC site mentions quite a bit about him but doesn't make a few links between the different parts of his principles that tended to go against each other.  Before getting to those it should be noted that he did stick to what he believed in.  After the Liberal Movement (of which he and Steele Hall were founders) morphed into the Australian Democrats, Millhouse stuck with the Democrats whereas most others went back to the Liberals. The ABC mentions that he was a committed Christian so it wasn't that surprising that my first memory of him was when he led protests against the performance of Jesus Christ Superstar in Adelaide  in 1972.  This was during the Dunstan years so it also isn't surprising that a member of the Liberals wasn't well known to me. However it is unusual to find a person wi

This afternoon Frances noticed a bunch of tiny red spiders on the track heading further up our block.  I went to take some photos and eventually re-located them. I have included the more interesting images here in the hope that someone can identify them .- that has happened - see below. I'm reasonably sure they are spiders but they are very small - no more than 5mm across the legs, and some considerably smaller than that.  So are they mites?  Yes: my friend Penny has identified them as Red Velvet Mites .  I wondered if that big red blob was a coloured pebble  But here the blob is clearly another arachnid.  Possibly a gravid female?  An ant eventually wandered by and seemed to ignore most of the arachnids.  However this one got in the way and was attacked. It didn't lookwell afterwards, but to my surprise the ant didn't take the corpse away for eating but just went on its way.

The first purpose, in the sense of the one I thought of first, is actually the second one covered in this post.  That because it suited me to go to Yerrabi Pond at Gungahlinand then come back to Lyons for a run, rather than vice versa. The reason for going to Yerrabi was to tick the Great Crested Grebe which has been hanging out there for several days (if not weeks by now).  Fortunately the viewing point - Soroptimist Point - was well defined.  There were quite a few waterbirds around but initially no sign of the Grebe. So I scanned the Pond through my telescope and soon spotted the required bird. I'm sorry that is such a crappy photo, but the light was very poor and the bird was on the far side of the Pond.  I had forgotten to take my scope/phone adapter!  The red arrow indicates the Grebe in this un-zoomed image The grebe seemed to coexist peacefully with the various other fowl around the place.  Perhaps it took the hint after getting a stern talking to by a Dusky Moorhen

This extract from a Bloom County cartoon gives the background to the title.  Such instruction is of course meat and potatoes to Ikea shoppers.  I recall spending a morning in New York building furniture from flatpacks until the person in the apartment below objected - quite reasonably - to the constant tapping of the hammer.  The item covered by this post was from Aldi rather than Ikea, and came in a cuboid rather than flatpack.  Here is the list of parts! Here they are out of the pack and ready for assembly.  It was a bit of a surprise to find them to be plastic rather than metal but it seems to work OK  Halfway there!  Given that I have 5 (~85%) of the 6 surfaces complete an inexperienced assembler might wonder about the use of the word 'half'.  Building the doors was a major task, not least because each of the 4 panels had two hinges with two screws.  Because the basic material is plastic the instructions prohibit use of drills to drive them - I ended with a n

For readers in North America: we haven't invented a 21 st month. it's still April. From looking out my study window and spotting the colour of the sky to everthing washingout was no more that 5 minutes.

The COG Wednesday Walk for April 2017 was to Gigerline Nature Reserve at Williamsdale.   30 members and guests gathered on a brilliant Autumn day. Pleasantly warm, no wind and bright sunshine.  We started from the highway, recently a site of sadness as a competitor in a bike race from Perth to Sydney died near our meeting point.  The circumstances around the death are still subject to investigation, but it was notable that a few days later the Australian commentators on the Tour of Flanders were advocating for rules to ensure people in such events got at least some sleep.  There is a small roadside memorial. We meet at the site of a former service station (a 'servo' in Strine) where a solar farm has been constructed in the 2 years since we were last there.  We moved about 1km up the highway and queued politely to cross a fence or two.  I have done a little obfuscation to prevent face recognition (although I don't think anyone present was wagging work). Throughou

I have banged on a bit about the epicormic growth on the Eucalypts in our area since the fire. However this afternoon I noticed what seems to be epicormic growth on some Acacias which surprises me more than somewhat. It doesn't seem to be as high a proportion of trees/shrubs as with the eucs but (assuming I have understood what is going on correctly) it is evident in at least 4 species. I am now even less confident that this is epicormic growth.  On looking closely at an Acacia dealbata  it appeared that all the sprouts were coming out of axils (ie where twigs join branches) rather than free-standing buds as is the case with epicormic growth,  It is currently raining, but when it stops I will revisit the sprouts. The images are:  A. dealbata;  A. pravissima   A. falicformis.   and A. rubida  Not all Acacias are sprouting.  A row of Acacia pravissima beside our drive took the full brunt of the fire and were incinerated.  No epicormi

Part of my efforts yesterday concluded with a large pile of brush beside the drive.  It was to say the least unsightly and inconvenient so job #1 today was to remove it.  Here is the first load ready to roll.  Rather than go to the tip at Bungendore  I decided to go a somewhat shorter distance to an erosion gully in the top of the block.  The trailer is empty, the gully less so.  After 3 loads the gully is rather more full.  This will hopefully reduce erosion and provide some nice habitat for resting reptiles and possibly little birds (to the extent that they compatible). A Pajero is useful for things other than towing a trailer.  Some of the Photinia look very unlikely to rejuvenate and would be a bugger to dig out.  A length of rope and steady acceleration do a better job.  (For subsequent efforts 4WD prevented the wheelspin!)  This also gave a nice hole ...  .. into which a Callistemon (I think) fitted nicely. Other holes were created down the drive and filled wit