The House(s) of Fran_mart

On 21 March - happy Equinox, even thought the daylight length appeared to be slightly over 12 hours  - the COG Wednesday walkers visited the Southern part of Mulligan's Flat.  It was quite good birding - 43 species even missing a raft of regulars such as Superb Fairy Wren. I was in retrospect very surprised at the paucity of fungi compared to Carwoola, and even the Northern part of Mulligan's which ANPS traversed recently . There were a few specimens which resembled Russula rosea but nothing interesting until this was noticed by Sandra, close to the end of the walk. From a squizz through Fuhrer it appears to be Clavulina cinerea : described as "Found on the ground in eucalypt forest where fairly common."  I have consulted the Australian Fungi blog and the Sydney Fungal Studies group website and neither list this species.  Is this because it isn't quite as commonas Furhere suggest or have the forces of evil (aka taxonomists!) just renamed the species? ...

This post will contain a few odds and ends that I see around the place. I will begin with some fungi seen ascending the bark of a Red Box ( Eucalyptus polyanthemos ) in our top paddock.  They went at about this density from near Ground level to the top of the fibrous bark (say 2,5m up). What has caused (and is still causing) me difficulty in identifying the beastie is that it clearly has gills (so not a typical bracket fungus) but doesn't seem to have a stem (so not like any of the bark dwelling agarics).  These features show up better in this close up. This next fungus fits reasonably well to Coltricia cinnamomea .  Judging by its appearance in mossy sites it appreciates the current soggy conditions. The next one has defeated my ID skills completely! It did have a very keen looking fly perched on top of it! Some ants were busy tidying up around scale insects. My expectation is that ants would also be pleased to see the colony of Eurymeloides pulchra...

To my great pleasure and surprise Joy from A-Roving I will go emailed me to announce that I had been awarded a Liebster award. Many thanks Joy! This is a German word, which my online searches translate as 'Sweetheart"   A better idiomatic translation would seem to be  “favourite".   I have enquired of a German friend who has responded that as an adjective 'favourite' is a good translation (literally 'lieb' = like and the suffix 'ster' = most, so the whole word becomes "most liked").  As a free standing noun it indeed is an old fashioned term to refer to a person you are emotionally very close so 'sweetheart is a pretty good match. Receiving the award involves certain obligations: I had to decide on five blogs, each with fewer than 220 followers , to pass it on to. The idea is to bring attention to these small blogs who deserve more notice.   Rules for giving the award Thank the giver and link back to the blo...

I have previously mentioned that I am intending to run the Melbourne Marathon in October 2012.  I have thus started a training programme, based on the model employed in New York 2006 and for the Melbourne marathon 2007.  A key feature of this is doing some half-marathon distance runs at a fair pace - using races where possible. The Weston Creek Half is the first of these races.  It is organised by the Weston Creek Athletics Club and raises money for two charities, of which I am familiar with Hartley Lifecare who provide support for disabled folk so give them a plug here.  The entry fee was a very reasonable $35: I shall return to race fees, and where they seem to go, towards the end of this post. After a very soggy previous day, the 18th of March appeared to be fine when I got up at 5:15 and looked at the sky.  I headed off at 5:15 still in darkness and being very alert for wildlife.  I only saw one kangaroo on the way in, and that stayed a good dista...

Here in Carwoola we didn't get quite the vicious storms described by Denis.   Driving home from Canberra in mid-afternoon we passed through about 3 line squalls in 30km and then scored 10mm in two periods before we retired for the night.  Another 10.5mm came overnight. As a result of this we are now up to 193mm for the month of March which is only half over!  On 17 March we had about 3 hours of steady rain for 9mm and a total of 202mm for the month.   Before this year the most rain we had recorded in a month was 158mm  in February 2010, with the current record (198mm) occurring this February The very heavy falls in the first week of this month have done a good job of water-logging our soil, with bad effects on the vegetables.  The tomatoes look as though they have received a good frost as do the pumpkin vines (the fruit are quite OK). Amongst our exotic trees the Pin Oak has developed quite a lot of colour - usually I'd rate this an effect ...

Today, 14 March, the ANPS visited O'Connor Ridge.  While the traffic wasn't as bad as getting into Tallong from the Hume Hwy it was rather horrendous but we seemed to have all made it.  Here is my take on the event. Proving that Summer didn't happen, but we shifted from Spring directly to Winter here is an image of Acacia genistifolia flowering IN MARCH!!  I am not sure of the seasonality of Astroloma flowering, but it is rather snazzy!  This is probably the first ever photograph of Ent alyptus rossii . Also new to science, at the sub-specific level, is this orchid.  It is obviously Eriochilus cucculatus but from its proximity to the GDE (Gunghastly Dumb Extension) I have decided it is E. c. dieseliphilia .  (I did wonder if it was E. c. petroleumhead but concluded that would be found in rockier areas.) Let us have a squizz at some fungi.  The first is totally unknown to me. So is the second, but I thought that growing in bark in E...

In the initial version of this post all my images came up as black and white!  Somehow or another  my basic image editor (IRFANVIEW) had decided to set all JPEG files to save as grayscale.  It only took me about 90 minutes to work that out!  And of course another 30 minutes to relace all the images! Today we were supposed to go to Tallong to look at lovely little orchids but the nefarious activities of the NSW RTA digging up the Hume Highway got in the way. {expletive deleted} But we had an alternative!  From time to time we think about El Camino de Santiago de Compostela .  And then walkng 732km gets to look a bit difficult and we have a small dog to care for (and she wouldn't be able to come with us, much as she'd enjoy it). So instead, today we went for a 16km walk around the West basin of Lake Burley Griffin, taking the small dog. We parked at the Yarralumla Nursery and headed towards Scrivener Dam.  As we crossed Dunrossil Drive near ...