The House(s) of Fran_mart

Our location on the 13th floor of a building in Civic gives us good views of clouds.  I have put up a few, in the context of sunsets, already.  This post will be more about the daytime clouds.  The first three photos are of cumulus clouds associated with a set of large thunderstorms to the East of Canberra on 29 January 2019. This one was pretty close to sunset, but is to the East, so the low part of the cloud is already shaded by the curvature of the Earth.  In the late afternoon of the 30th there were a few small storms around the Canberra area but most of the action was in the West of Victoria and NSW - or, of more interest to me, Mallacoota (which had scored 17.4mm by 16:40).

Our apartment overlooks the Target car park.  The occupancy of the roof top is an interesting pattern through the day.  The following series of photos were taken on 29 January - the first day after the Australia Day public holiday. 0604  0725  0809  1102 I'll do another series this afternoon (30 January) to show the outflow! 15:42  16:35  17:07  18:41 I'm not sure this adds greatly to knowledge of Canberra society, other than showing many Civic workers are willing to pay for roof top parking and go home between 4 and 5pm! This morning (31 January) some of those going to work at Russell or the airport had their morning enlivened by a plodmobile driving down the grass reservation on Parkes Way from the Tunnel to the first roundabout with his lights and siren going.  He earned a few  - say 6 - Emergency Vehicle Points for this.  Very few 10s have been given: I recall a cop in Brussels going thro...

Every morning we go for a walk around Nerang Pool.  We actually walk from our apartment but I only start recording birds once we've crossed Parkes Way.  In the first week I have recorded 40 species on these walks, including Pied Cormorant, Latham's Snipe and (this morning) Superb Parrots.  8 Superbs flew over from the direction of City Hill - quite possibly some of the ANU flock - heading towards NGA. A point of interest on the walks is a conifer for which we have no idea of the species.  However a friend with more knowledge of exotic tree species than us (not hard to improve on zero) has suggested Dawn Redwood as a possibility After crossing the footbridge we went to check this puddle for signs of the large carp we noticed there on the 27th.  It was almost out of water but we couldn't see it this morning. Perhaps: it had burrowed down into the mud?   the RSPCA had rescued it? someone had carp'n'chips for tea last night? a predator...

These are some interesting cloud patterns which I am including here for folk who aren't on Facebook. About 5 pm the sky was pretty monochrome, but with interesting light patters.  By 2030 the colour had arrived.  This image looks back towards Carwoola.  This one faces Mt Coree.

I went for another wander to the H C Coombs building in ANU this morning to see what the Superb Parrot situation was like.  (I wondered if it would be superber or more superb - but not having a linguist on hand this visit decided to avoid comparative forms.) As I left the Manhattan I noticed a large exercise class going on in Glebe Park.  Whether this is some community activity or a personal trainer with a huge following I have no idea. Turning the corner I noticed these signs outside the Casino.  I feel sorry for the Casino as they would desperately like to run the Government (so they could introduce poker machines and rip off the citizens even more) but are currently at best 4th in line, after the Airport, Icon Water and the CFMEU. But well in front of the general citizenry.  What struck me was the word "Gaming".  I'm sure that is used as carrying less negative baggage than is achieved by adding 'bl' to get "gambling". On getting to my targ...

A birding friend from ANU recently posted about seeing a large number of Superb Parrots on campus near the Coombs Building.  Although I had already written down this species for my bird-a-day effort for 2019 one can never see too many Superb Parrots so I wandered across to his office for a guided tour! There were a few moments of interest on the way, and I will get to ranting about them later in this post, but here are some comments about, and photos of, the parrots. Pretty much as soon as we walked in to the area a flock of 15 birds flew by.  At point 1 ... ... we could hear the sound of a young, begging bird.  It is the lower of the two in this image, with its pesteree being an adult male.  A bit further along at least 5 Superb Parrots were feeding on the ground.  I found this a little surprising, as nearly all my previous sightings have been of birds in trees,.but Joe Forshaw in his magnum opus "Australian Parrots" shows that this is common.  I...

On the evening of the 22nd - the frabjous day of settling on our property at Carwoola - it looked as though a storm was heading from the West towards Canberra.  Looking to the East - the range of hills are on Taliesin, behind our former home - and things appeared quite clear.  (As an incidental for those readers not from Canberra the tall column is the Australian-American War Memorial.  It is capped by a rampant Bald Eagle, but from a front on view it looks more like a Wascally Wabbit, and is thus known widely as the Bugs Bunny War Memorial.) Looking to the North the leading cumulus look a bit like the advance guard of a fleet of Vogon spaceships.  Fortunately no-one appeared to read poetry to us. Although there were quite a few flashes of lightning no significant rain came from this storm. Taking the small dog for her walk on the warm morning of 23 January when we got to Commonwealth Park the fruit bats were very noisy.  Then they erupted from the tr...