I’ll keep it brief today. All day I have been shivering at my desk, working on assignments – there’s two due this weekend – and tonight we have the fireplace on again. This morning Mount Warning was hidden by mist and clouds, and by lunchtime the valley had gone into hiding too. The rain has continued all afternoon and into the night.
On the plus side, my garden is getting watered! 🙂
It took a while, checking the valley at various times of the day, seeing only a sheet of white. Finally, just before nightfall, Mount Warning emerged from beneath her white blanket.
The rain bucketed down for most of the day and during the only break I noticed in the rain I went outside with my camera for a few minutes. It was then that I saw quite a few familiar bird faces around, so I assume they were taking advantage of the dry moment too.
There’s a family of Pied Butcher Birds nearby and I’ve often noticed they take refuge on my veranda on rainy days.
I call the Butcher Bird above Hoppy. They arrived at my house one day with a mangled foot and I feared they’d be attacked by the other birds as can happen when a bird is injured. I thought I’d never see them again, yet here they are, still visiting.
The bird above is another Pied Butcher Bird, but this one is less than a year old. He, or she, usually visits with Hoppy and I’ve noticed he-she also often stands on one foot even though both feet are just fine. I don’t know if Hoppy is a male or female, but I suspect this young one is “hers” which is why it mimics her stance.
The larger bird on my clothesline is a young Australian Magpie, and its little friend is another Australian native bird, a Noisy Miner. I’ve noticed that Magpies and Miners seem to hang out together a lot and even share food without squabbling. They must have some sort of a birdie-world agreement going on!
And the of course, there’s always a kookaburra or two in the garden. They usually have comical expressions on their faces, but I really had to laugh today at this pair with their inquisitive stares and wet, bedraggled feathers!
What an array of weather we have had this week, all the way from cool rains, right through to the extreme humidity of our sub-tropical climate.
I think that if you compare the two photos above, you will see what I mean ~ the first photo shows a kookaburra on a bright sunny day, feathers fluffed up, and looking very handsome indeed.
The second photo shows a bedraggled kookaburra on a dull day, with feather weighted down by the drenching rain.
All of these photos were taken during the last week…….
In the next photo you can see a placid kookaburra enjoying a quiet moment in the morning mist. The purple tree beside him is a Jacaranda, a beautiful tree which puts on a brilliant show in the late spring in our area.
For a couple of months now I have seen very few rainbow lorikeets, even though most days until recently I have had thirty to forty of them in my garden at a time. Their numbers seem to have decreased, and I have no idea why. This week though, they have started to visit again, first just two, then four, and today I had six lorikeets here, enjoying breakfast at the bird feeding table.
Without the rainbow lorikeets in the garden to take photos of, photography loses some of its appeal to me. I think I would feel the same if any of my regulars stopped visiting though, they are like my own little wildlife family, right outside my back door, and I miss them when they are gone.
With summer making its way back during the last few days, Christmas being just around the corner is becoming a harsh reality……but how did the year vanish so quickly?
In My World 