A bonus delivery.

I know I have been remiss these last two weeks in my blog posting, blog reading.. blog everything really…

My apologies to all but we have been really busy these school holidays. We have been… ummm… doing stuff. Lots of it too. Nothing I can really put my finger on but by the state of the house clearly it has been taking up much of my time.

Normal transmission will probably resume next week once the boys go back to school and I get the washing under control.

We were constructive today though and I have hard evidence that we actually did something. I had a pile of firewood delivered at the crack of dawn this morning. So early in fact that despite the drive here when the trailer arrived it was still covered in ice after being parked out in a paddock all night.

Number 1 and I gloved up and started stacking it on the verandah, discovering along the way that we had been delivered of not only a pile of wood, but that we had also received a shipment of cockroaches.

Now, before you panic they were the good sort, bush cockroaches, not the kind that make you want to turn your kitchen into some sort of spraycan induced biohazard.

Our Native cockroaches are not pesty ones and don’t even like coming inside. They live happily out in the garden eating bits of wood or plants and give our lizards and frogs something to eat in turn.

The guys who arrived unexpectedly this morning were Native Flat Cockroaches, my favourite because they are like tiny, armoured doormats. These guys are perfectly designed to fit in narrow spaces, like under the bark of the wood I want to put in the fire!

We found so many tucked away in the pieces of wood that we ended up making a corral for them so we could move them up the hill to a more appropriate home than one that was about to go up in flames.

Once we were finished stacking, Number 2, the bug lovingest son, helped me relocate the group to what was supposed to be a secondary compost heap but now has come to be known as my barkpost instead, as it ended up containing only bark, dried leaves and sticks.

Because of that mix this pile has become the perfect dumping ground for disturbed lizards, bugs and pretty much anyone else we find when we poke around in the garden who needs to stay out of sight of the birds. Now it has a colony of Flat Cockroaches living there too.

mmmm… delicious wood…

These two were the only ones I could get to stand still long enough to get a picture of. When they have all their appendages tucked away it is hard to tell which end is which and considering how far their armoured plates extend it is amazing how quickly they can flip themselves onto their legs and zoom off if they end up on their backs.

The racehorse of the desert. 1934.

What do you think of when you hear that title, the racehorse of the desert?

When I read it I immediately thought of a camel. Quite fast when they want to be and appropriately adapted for running in sand. We have quite a few wild camels here in Australia, in fact, we have the largest wild population of them in the world. Considering that they are an introduced species that is quite an achievement.

Anyway, I would never have connected that particular title to this vision of a gigantic lizard, would you?

It is a pity there isn’t anything in the top photo to use as a scale but I think we will all agree, that is a lizard that would have been left to go his own way, unmolested by pretty much everything. If you would like to see a similar photo here is one from 1935 I posted a while ago of a 6ft long Bungarra with a wary dog for scale although I get the feeling todays Goanna is even bigger….*

Western Mail 25 Dec 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38390784

After the wonderful clarity of the photos of an 1934 outback christmas I used in my post yesterday I went back to that particular paper to see if they had any other gems and these guys were on the very next page. Fortunately this time there was a note as to who took the picture and we can thank Mrs. E. Lambert and E. Tindale for these pictures.

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*Here is a link to an earlier post with a youtube clip of a far more recent encounter with a goanna, this time the goanna is helpfully perched on a backyard bbq for scale. They are smaller these days, but still impressive. 😀

An assertive pigeon.

Since we have had the influx of Rainbow Lorikeets into our garden I have noticed that their appearance has changed the behaviour of one of the other regular residents, a Bronzewing pigeon. Not all of them, just one.

The Bronzewings have been here since we moved in. When we arrived there were a terrified few who would blast into the sky at the slightest hint of us through the window.

It was a little self-defeating though, they are so well camouflaged that the only reason you notice them is the fact that they launch into the sky with all the grace of a bag of laundry. If they just stayed still they would be all but invisible!

Over time their numbers have crept up from a few to about twenty and now they are happy to see us move in the house without panicking. They won’t hang around in the garden while you are outside like the parrots do, but at least they don’t make a mad dash for freedom for the smallest reason.

With the regular attendance of the Rainbow Lorikeets there is always a bit of seed spread in the grass and one of the young Bronzewings has clearly developed a taste for the seed and the company.

This Bronzewing has proved to be a little less delicate than its brothers though. If there are pigeons and parrots grazing at the same time usually the smaller parrots rule the roost and push the pigeons around in an attempt to get the best spots. This pigeon however, has developed a behaviour that has shown it is not willing to be pushed around.

“I’m bigger than you, so watch it!”

While they are grazing a parrot will move closer in an attempt to move the pigeon on. The pigeon will then raise one or both wings and stand up as tall as possible as if to say “Back off mate!” The parrot will move away and grazing will continue. Each time a parrot moves in the wing goes up and the parrot back off.

This was working really well for about a week and then the parrots must have decided that they would push the point. The pigeon had to up the ante.

Now the wing goes up, but if the parrot doesn’t back off in good time the pigeon bounces a few inches up into the air with a snap of the wings and a cracking flick of the tail in the direction of the parrot. The parrot backs off and the pigeon bumps back to the ground and resumes feeding.

If there is a particularly resistant parrot I have noticed that the bounce into the air is finished with the pigeon landing heavily on top of the parrot. Having what must seem like a giant feather pillow landing on your head would probably cause you to relinquish the dinner table too!

I wonder if a few generations down the track the Bronzewings will be dominating the garden, and the wary parrots will be dashing in to snatch up a few crumbs when they aren’t looking! 🙂

“Take that!”

Some new dinner guests.

I have done a few posts recently about the Rainbow Lorikeets (i, ii) who have started infesting visiting our garden.

On Friday the kids and I were called over to the back window by the Man to have a look at some new additions. On the grass, squabbling with the large crowd of Rainbow Lorikeets were two parrots who, although slightly smaller, looked very similar in shape.

Instead of having the bright blue head they were totally green with feathery yellow scales showing on their chests.

Unsurprisingly these parrots are called Scaly Breasted Lorikeets. Since that first sighting they have joined the regular crowd and are often seen battling for prime seed spots with the bigger, and equally assertive, Rainbow Lorikeets.

Scaly Breated Lorikeets.

This parroty crowd can be unbelievably noisy at times although they seem to be their own worst enemy.

Last week there was a period in one afternoon when the crowd was larger than normal and as such were extremely loud. They started flying out of the back garden, circling around the front of the house, then landing back on the grass. They would eat a few seeds then do it all over again. This went on for about 10 minutes and was driving us crazy!

I go up to see what on earth they were doing only to see a Brown Goshawk coming into the garden so fast it was as though it had been shot out of a cannon! I guess the Goshawk was hanging around nearby waiting for its own chance to eat and that was what was keeping the Lorikeets on the move.

Of course once it had made such a serious, although unsuccessful, attack the Lorikeets were gone for the afternoon. The Goshawk hung out in the trees close to the house for a few minutes and then disappeared. I was disappointed that I couldn’t get a photo of it but I was glad it didn’t hang around to feast on one of our dinner guests!

Garden invaders….

I did a post recently about a few Rainbow Lorikeets who appeared to have moved into our garden and I thought I would do a follow-up on them.

In the beginning there were only six of these brightly coloured critters hanging around and they came and went at random.

I wasn’t too pleased about the attention they were giving to one of my tomato plants out there but I was enjoying seeing them so I just let the plant destruction go.

Still eating my tomatoes 😦

Well, here we are a few weeks later and they are still hanging around. Not just a half-dozen anymore though… Yesterday I counted 32 squabbling out there!

Number 2 son has become something of a bird whisperer, in the morning he goes out in his dressing gown with a bag of seed, makes a few high-pitched squeaks into the garden, and throws a couple of handfuls of seed out into the grass like he is feeding the chooks. Within minutes they are flying in from all directions to take over the garden.

After school the process is repeated, another few handfuls in the grass and the birds descend for dinner.

They are so noisy and I can see that I will never get a single tomato off that poor plant, but because they are beautiful they are getting away with murder!

Grazing Lorikeets.

Watch your toes!

I did a post the other day where I included a photo of a small yabbie we found while gold panning.

In the comments Frivolous Monsters mentioned that he had never seen a yabbie before so todays post is to show him the true horror of giant yabbie…… *insert dramatic music here*

In my reply to him I said I was sure I had some photos of a giant yabbie somewhere and, happily, over the weekend the Man was going through some old photos and unexpectedly found them. That means today’s post is also a visual warning about wading in a river without suitable footwear.

Monster yabbie.

This yabbie had been bought to school in an esky for show-and-tell after being caught in the river a few hundred metres from the school. I took these photos in the car park as eager children gathered around, fortunately staying at a safe distance. This guy would have been able to take off any finger that strayed within reach!

The boy who caught it said that he and his dad often see ones this size nearby although, luckily for us, we have never had a close encounter with one of these monsters of the not-so-deep in our travels.

To truly impress you I will add a photo below which includes those eager children to give you a sense of scale.

This guy would just be waiting on the riverbed for naked and unsuspecting toes to wander past wouldn’t he?

Watch your fingers!