closing off in Canberra

 This is a continuation of my previous post about our trip to Canberra.  I'll include any snaps from the drive back to Mallacoota.

Dawn on the 12th had a nice cloud layer rising in front of Black Mountain Tower.

As I went to the library about 1000hrs the Chief Minister was unveiling some new plaques on the Canberra walk of honour (or whatever it is called) in Ainslie Avenue.  I didn't hang around but he seemed to be talking pretty well.  I was surprised that there was no coverage of this on the ABC News in the evening nor the Canberra Behind (the Times) on the 13th.
Then over to the trash playground in Glebe Park where Small Persons 1 nd 2 hit the craft tables rather than the play items.
Having returned the SPs to their parents we headed off to the AIS car park at Bruce  to try to spot a Superb Parrot.  Parked car, got out, looked into nearest gum tree.  Took some photos   The first two are a male....

.. and these a female.

My guess is that there were at least 15 of them in the area.  Presumably spilt grain supplies have dried up around Binalong.

Sunset was interesting with a layer of vapour coming from the West.  It turns out the Sparks and Wildfires folk have lit up 1,000 hectares in the foothills (despite their years of such activities not slowing up the big fire in 2020 at all).  At least this one hasn't got away from them (yet).  The first image is using Vivid Sunset Glow setting on my camera ...
.. while this is the Romantic Sunset Glow.
I think the Vivid is closer to the true colour.
\
Here is a romantic close up.  I didn't submit any of these to ABC TV.


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

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more