The House(s) of Fran_mart

We got out and about a little in the ACT.  Here some snaps of some of the natural history we saw. The first image is some habitat on Aranda Hill we visited with orchid experts on 15 March.  The first orchid seen was Corunastylis clivicola .  We then moved on to C. cornuta.  A single Eriochilus cucullatus was also found ...  ... and Speculantha rubescens. There were also some interesting birds around.  Slightly outside the ACT, on a brief visit to Bungendore, I found 16 Plumed Whistling Ducks at the usual site on Trucking Yard Lane.  The dam has been cleaned out so it wasn't so easy to see them but good enough views were had.  Visiting Jerrabomberra Wetlands I recorded a fair diversity.  The most photographically obliging bird was a Darter seen from Fulica hide. After the orchid expedition we were treated to tea and cake.  Also a visit from an Australian King Parrot  which happily scoffed seed from my hand. 

I recently showed the cranes by night .  This morning I took a couple of dawn shots.  Not greatly colourful but I thought the silhouettes of the trees on Mount Ainslie looked good.  One day recently Frances was astonished to see a ghost of Black Mountain Tower hovering over Ainslie.  It turns out to be reflection through various windows ending up with internal reflection of our North facing window.  Another ghost of BMT appears in my bedroom.  That is a reflection in a mirror door on my wardrobe.  THe Target carpark is real!

24 members and guests gathered, at social distances, on Urriara Rd on a fine and mild morning. Thank you to Jean Casburn for leading this walk through a very interesting patch of bush.  Our route is shown here (although it actually finished back at the start - my phone ran out of electrons at the empty circle!). Those with long memories will recall it being threatened with conversion to a motocross track but saved by lobbying from COG and other groups concerned with conserving what remained of the Bush Capital.  The list of species seen on this walk justifies the conservation effort. Not far into the walk we came across a nice little clump of orchids: I will establish the species when I get back to my books tomorrow.  This is a rather bland image of the habitat for much of the walk. At the highpoint of the walk - near the loop in the map above, some were interested to see a pair of mating Vine Months  Phalaenoides glycinae   The avian highlights were Speckled Warble

I realise that we should support the Mallacoota retailers but there are things that we can't buy there (eg the 2.7% alcohol beer I usually drink) or are just unrealistically priced at Mallacoota (diesel at Mallacoota was 155c/l last Friday - it was 123.7 c/l at Costco).  So we do buy stuff in Canberra. Today we went to COSTCO and Aldi at the Airport.  (As an aside: another breach of ethics in indirectly supporting the Snow family enterprises.) The shape of things to come was revealed by a queue to get in the door! Possibly part of the reason for the queue backing up was 2 staffers spraying sanitiser on the handles of the trolleys.   Haven't seen that at any other stores, but it seems like a good idea.  The crowd inside was enormous.  I'm sure there were more than 500 people in there! Some of the shelves were empty.  This one was an aisle for flour. This is one of the queues for the checkout.  It actually goes right to the end of the aisle and round the corne

The evening began with a pretty good sunset over the Brindabellas.  As it got dark it appeared that Geocon have decided that pretty lights are needed on the cranes.  Having got the preceding photo I thought I'd have a go at Black Mountain Tower.

The Variety club is a showbiz oriented group that raises funds through fun events, including old car rallies.  They decided it would be good to organise one of these to help out Mallacoota .  Here are a few photos from the breakfast get-together at the Muddie. I couldn't spot any folk in orange robes (or ringing cymbals) but as the Krishnas do a fine line of restaurants they may have been making the breakfast.  See below  The crowd was about 50:50 residents and locals!  I don't normally take photos of people in the street, but if you dress like at least three of these folk I guess you are doing so because you want to be photographed  I could guess which car the guy closest to the camera was driving: #529.  I asked if his co-driver was General Jake Ellwood who was in charge of the military element of the fire support exercise. I asked if they were going to be leaving in convoy but apparently not.  Some folk were staying on for an extra day, which is ni