The House(s) of Fran_mart

We found a need to go to Merimbula on 3 July.  En route we called in to the Haycock Rd component of Ben Boyd National Park to explore a couple of walking tracks.  Basically excellent. The first walkwas to the Pinnacles.  A 1km loop track. The track begins in woodland and then comes out into heath where there was a fair bit of flowering going on.  The first seen was Hakea decurrens . Acacia - possibly A. suavolens . Persoonia levis . A view of a distant island over the heath. The Pinnacles. A Pelican on the Pinnacles. Towards the end of the loop efforts had been made to fell the pine trees.  Presumably the piles will be ignited at some point. The start of the walk was not exactly wheelchair friendly.  Actually, judging by the way my legs feel this morning it wasn't old-fart friendly either. Looking down on to Barmouth Beach from where the walk began. Myoporum insulare (Common Boobialla) The berries of the above. The woodland was quite quiet but when wwe em...

Taken on our lawn.  I don't have much to say about these except they get progressively cuter.

From time to time I wonder how the august people on Scientific Committees etc come up withe the names they do.  A classic example is the duck Aythya australis with the common name 'Hardhead'.  This used to be known as the White-eyed Duck but apparently the appropriate Committee found people were abbreviating this to White-eye and thus causing confusion with the genus Zosterops, which are small, finch-sized bush birds.  Go figure!  So they adopted the shooters name which apparently arose because the birds were hard to hit due to speed of flight and small frontal area.  Rather than admit they were lousy shots the lack of corpses was blamed on the species hard heads! That is a long lead-in to a post mainly about  a macropod.  I call - and will continue to do so until the day after Hell freezes over - this animal a Swamp Wallaby, or if pressed for time a Swampie.  Apparently It has an alternate name of Black-tailed Wallaby (because they are somet...

One day last week our lawn was graced with a Red-necked Wallaby. Of the 3 common local macropods this is the least frequent on the lawn.  As can be gathered from its pose, it didn't hang around for long. Yesterday (28 October) was the day of COG's annual Bird Blitz of the ACT.  As I had various other duties my input was a tad abbreviated this year - but at least I got out, unlike last year.  I visited three sites. The first was the Kowen Pound: this is a Travelling Stock Reserve which is no longer on a road, and judging by what I saw yesterday has no food for the stock if any happened to pass by.  I recorded 15 species of birds there: none unusual and none in extraordinary numbers.  As I was leaving I noticed one eucalypt (possibly E. meliodora ) in blossom.  No birds were visiting it.  The next tree had a flowering mistletoe (I think Ameyena miqueli ) which did have some birds and I thought I might be scoring Mistletoebird.  It wasn'...

These are snaps of things in the yard.  The first few were taken from my desk through a window, which explains the lack of sharpness! I spent some fair time watching the beast with two heads grazing on the lawn. I reckon if I was Mum I'd be telling this person they could look after themselves.  Certainly the joey  is looking ready for what ever action has attracted Mum's attention. This is the state of the Tawny Frogmouth's nest at present. It looks to be about the full amount of material they usually use, but needs a bit of compressing.   . I am still bemused that although they are hanging around together they aren't roosting snuggled together as in the past.  I am tempted to interpret this to mean that there has been some changing of the guard - but I am uncertain which bird is more likely to remember the nest site. After a few days of hazy skies (and no-one seems to know what caused the  haze) it was beautifully clear and blue today....