The House(s) of Fran_mart

This blog has been pretty quiet recently as we have been away in South Australia for a couple of weeks and my doings have been reported on another blog . We are now back and after spending Sunday recovering from a 13 hour drive I got stuck into a bit of gardening yesterday. Even though we are in the second worst spell of dry weather since 1993 I decided that the time has come to start doing some rehab on the vegie garden. The first step was dig over a patch used for spuds last season. Of course with spuds having been there last year a few got missed. I'm always happy to find a few more kipflers. I also dug up an amphibian. As I am not a frog-eating surrender-monkey (et c'est un Pobblebonk, pas du simplement 'grenouille') this fine specimen was released into the garden to munch a few more slugs'n'grubs.. Then on the Tuesday morning Frances found this beastie in the bathroom.  She found one in early April as well, when our friend Roger Farrow ...

With forecast overnight lows approaching zero, yesterday was the day to shift our more delicate container pots into the potting shed. For a fair proportion of the Fuchsias Frances had a strategy of putting their daggy plastic pots into good looking ceramic items. That way we don't have to schlep the heavy ceramic items around. In two cases when I lifted the plastic pot out I found a Perons Tree Frog in the bottom of the ceramic pot. The interesting question is, how did the frog get in there? For the smaller frog - perhaps 50mm long - the plastic pot fitted so tightly I had to grip the rim of the pot with pliers to get it out. There is a hole in the base of the ceramic pot, perhaps 10mm diameter which is a lot smaller than the amphibian. The larger frog - at least 75mm long - was in a less tight fitting pot but I'd still have thought it would have trouble fitting through the gap. Presumably they feed off insects and such like that decide to shelter in the ...

We have had a few visitors recently.  Normally hares are not welcome in the garden as they are great munchers of young trees.  In this case it seemed to be exploring the Hypericum, and it may eat as much of that as it wishes.  (Assuming that plant has similar pharmacological/herbal properties to its relative, St John's Wort, at least the hare won't be suffering from depression.)  Meanwhile Frances found a Peron's Tree Frog (check the iris) lurking in one of her pots.  I was interested to note the turquoise spots on the frogs back: I assume they are real and not an artifact of the camera/software.  This snap shows the 'suckers' on the toes rather well.  The yellow and black pattern on the thighs is also typical.

I found an unusual aspect of eBird yesterday in that the waters of Mallacoota Inlet are treated as part of the sea rather than East Gippsland Shire.  As I commented to my informant the current state of the entrance to the Inlet casts some doubt on that.  I'll cover this, with some evidence, below. However I will start with sunrise.  When I got up (as usual at 0530) there were some clouds around which seemed to offer promise of a spectacular sunrise.  The sun still wasn't really up at 0608  ..  but the mist further up the Inlet was looking quite interesting.  By 0623 things were quite colourful and the sun was above the horizon so that was about as good as it gets.  I think these were lenticular clouds not UFOs!  I was feeling a tad knackered this morning so we cut the dog walk short and after breakfast etc went for a stroll to Bastion Point.  I had heard rumours that the very expensive breakwater built to service the aba...

On 10 November the Australian Museum launched a FrogID app for iPhones.  This is described as being like Shazam for Frogs.  The big picture idea is that you record a frog call and the app identifies it for you.  I have long asked for something like that for birds but it seems to be too hard (mainly because the potential developers seem to insist on getting everything in there at once rather than doing the first few thousand calls and building up). Whatever: I downloaded the FrogID app yesterday and tried it last evening on our lawn.  There was the usual ruckus coming from our nearest dam, which probably made the test a bit hard.  The process was pretty easy: hit the 'record button' and let it run for at least 20 seconds; I then hit another button (can't remember what) and a list of 12 possible matches was presented; each possible has a box to check if you are sure and a sound sample to play for confirmation; the samples are excellent as you can listen t...

I will begin with some strange posturing by the male Tawny Frogmouth.  Yesterday it went into a very strange position:  After a while it returned to normal. A researcher who is studying the many pairs in the parks near central Canberra has advised that this is normal behaviour, letting the sunlight get into the feathers.  The next day 16 October it was doing some feather maintenance.  I think if you click on the image to expand it you can work out which bit of the bird is what.  This pin oak was being very late in dropping its leaves and was looking at bonsai time (without the spiffy pot).  Then Frances noticed the green shoots all over the upper parts.  I think we'll call it Quercus palustris lazarusii! After than good news I went out to tidy up a log heap.  Apart from anything else it was in a sump where water runs (if we ever get any rain).  In doing this I was very aware of a comment that reptiles like to hide in wood heaps...

The weather forecast for the evening of the 27th promised rain.  You may remember it - wet stuff that fell from the sky back in the day.  About 20:00 the radar looked promising:  By 2030 this had amounted to a massive 0.2mm!  There seemed to be steady rain later in the evening with 3mm to midnight and then another 6.4mm by 5am.  Well done that cloud. However as is often the case this attracted wildlife to my study window.  What first caught my attention was a Peron's tree frog sticking on to the glass at the bottom of the pane. This led me to look at the insects also there.  As well as the many small moths there was an array of other families.  I have tried to ID them using Insects of South Eastern Australia   and A Field Guide to Insects in Australia  I can't work out the first one at all. Fortunately Roger Farrow, author of the first book linked above has been able to do so - and both are in his book, as referenced belo...