Tag: kookaburras

Australia · clouds · garden flowers · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · photography · summer · Tweed Valley

The Moodiness of Mount Warning

Joanne6 Comments

A slither of blueness returned to the morning sky today, just a slither, but enough to give me hope that today might just be the day the mountain would reappear, after sulking behind a wall of clouds for the past four days.

Little Hoppy (of gammy leg fame) was on standby, watching the mountain with me. I can always count on Hoppy to drop by every morning.

But wait – the Three Stooges are here as well, with clean and fluffy feathers after several days of being washed by the rain – repeatedly.

Not to be outdone, baby magpie waited patiently for me to turn around and take a photo of him as well.

Meanwhile, the mountain remained mostly hidden for most of the morning.

Early in the afternoon, most of the cloud cover had disappeared. Seeing the beautiful vivid blueness of the ranges is good for my soul, even if a few clouds lingered.

Less than an hour later, we had a complete mountain view!

I kept on checking the mountain today, and she was full of surprises. At dusk, even though she had caught a few clouds again, the setting sun’s dazzling rays shone across her lower ranges.

Quite a few daylilies appeared today, so while I had my camera in hand, I thought I’d better preserve some of their splendour. They are called daylilies for a reason, and will be gone by tomorrow.

During the few short minutes while I had wandered off to visit the daylilies, the mountain had changed again, this time darkening in preparedness for nightfall. Today, however, Mount Warning had one last treat remaining …

Goodnight mountain. ❤

 

Australia · Changes · daughter · family · flowers · granddaughter · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · realities · spring · subtropical weather · Tweed Valley

No Mountain Today …

Joanne15 Comments

Today I haven’t seen Mount Warning at all, not even for a second. There is no rain about, so I can’t blame the whiteness on distant rain. The day has been warm, dull, and humid, so perhaps it is heat-haze. It has also been extremely windy all day, so my granddaughter and I couldn’t even enjoy some time in the garden today while she was visiting. So indoors we remained, playing with farm animals, reading books, and watching some cartoons on TV. It is easy to keep Aurora occupied, both indoors and outside, and she is wonderful company. I must admit to being a tad tired tonight though after a whole day with my lovely little visitor.

Considering the lack of an interesting mountain photo today, it is a good opportunity to share a couple of photos taken during the past week. First I have a photo of a cute little Honeyeater who visited my back garden recently. If it wasn’t for the rustling of the palm leaves, I wouldn’t have known he was there.

The gum tree the trio of Kookaburras are perched in is right down the back of our garden. I realised these three were there when they had a laughing competition with another group of distant kookaburras. I’d love to know what they were saying to each other.

The last photo is from May. I came across this photo when looking for flower photos for The Week of Flowers posts, so saved it as an extra to share this week. It is a beautiful bunch of flowers my daughter – Aurora’s mummy – gave me for my birthday.

So here we are, the 30th of November, the last day of spring. It is with a touch of trepidation that I will turn the page of my calendar tomorrow morning to the first day of summer. Every year, I try to find positive aspects of my least favoured season of the year, and by the end of summer I always look back and think the heat wasn’t as difficult to cope with as I imagined it would be. It’s a bit like a visit to the dentist really, an unpleasant thought until it’s over. Once again, I have my fingers crossed that we will have rain without floods and heat without melting! I learned many years ago that when living in a subtropical climate, it’s useless wishing for no extreme heat and no cyclonic rain. Mother Nature will do as she does regardless. 🙂

 

Australia · clouds · gardening · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · photography · spring · Tweed Valley

A Day That Sparkled

Joanne11 Comments

About a week ago we had a couple of days when storms and blustering winds hit us each afternoon. We even lost power Saturday before last. During the chaotic weather, our palm trees took a bit of a battering, and since then we have lost a few of the lower leaves. Where once I had palm leaves dancing in the foreground as I took photos of the mountain, now all I have are tall, bare palm trunks. The leaves are still growing in the lofty heights of the tree, they just don’t appear in my photos any more.

So today, the first photo I took of the mountain features a cluster of palm trees, just for something different.

There was some rain about this morning, not much, but just enough to make the valley sparkle. Some days, rain can have the opposite effect, making the valley appear dull and lifeless under a veil of grey mist. Today, the valley looked magnificent.

I had the usual morning crew here for breakfast, and if kookaburras are not photogenic enough, the light of the day added extra pizzazz to their appearance.

Here they are, getting stuck into some beef pieces for breakfast. They always dominate the feeding table, even though I assure them there is plenty of food for everyone.

Little baby magpie has become a regular visitor every morning too. He/she usually visits with both his/her parents now, but I’ve noticed the father usually feeds baby.

Later this afternoon, I went for a walk down the back to admire everything we achieved during the weekend in the garden. After putting the cut branches of our fruit trees through the hired mulching machine, we have several large piles of mulch which will come in very handy around the garden.

I took my iPhone with me down the back, and just for fun I thought I’d take a photo of the valley from our rear boundary, just to see if the quality of the camera is okay. I rarely think to take photos with my phone camera, so it was an experiment for me. This is the result –

Between the fantastic light of the day, and the magnificent cloud formations, it was probably a safe bet that the photo wouldn’t look too bad. 🙂

Australia · books · in my garden · Mount Warning · pets · reading · spring · subtropical weather · Tweed Valley

A Happy Garden and a Day Spent Indoors

Joanne4 Comments

Not a happy gardener, because it’s too wet for me to do any gardening today. My garden is extremely happy though, due to a good, solid soaking of rain that has hardly let up all day.

When I saw a magpie, a currawong, and two kookaburras outside my kitchen window this morning, my first thought was one of amusement – they are social distancing! Then I thought, but this is the way birds always act. They never get into each other’s space, they wait patiently, distanced from one another. No, not social distancing at all. I believe birds understand – they have always known – that they each need their own “personal space”.

There’s nothing to see today where the mountain can usually be seen sitting in all her splendour. Nothing but mist and rain. I took all of my outdoors photos today from either inside, or standing on my back veranda. It’s too wet to venture any further.

I have spent most of today indoors, sorting through masses of papers which have littered my desk for the past three months while I have been engrosed in uni study and assignments. I plonked a grey blanket on top of my sewing table a few weeks ago, and Miss Tibbs seems so happy with it being there that I haven’t had the heart to move it. Now, she sleeps on the blanket, and when she’s not sleeping she’s kneading the blanket! That’s why one of her paws is blurred in the photo – up and down her little paws went, kneading away as happy as could be.

I’m pretty happy too – just look at my desk-top! No really, look at it, because you can! And I can too! This is a rare event! I usually have so many piles of this, that and the other on my desk, but today they have either been thrown in the recycle bin, or put away where they belong. Bliss! ❤

I have another blissful sight to share too – a pile of books that I have been collecting over the past months of uni. I’m reading two book now, and will work my way through these, and others, during the next few months.

In another week’s time, I think I might have my life sorted and back in order. 🙂

Australia · clouds · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · pecan nuts · spring · Tweed Valley

Blue-grey clouds at sunset

Joanne2 Comments

The day started off rather cool this morning, but by midday it was in the mid-twenties and rather warm. Around sunset, when this photo was taken, it looked like it could rain – it didn’t – and I made sure I fit as many interesting blue-grey clouds into the camera lens as I possibly could.

During the week I have taken a few photos of birds when they have visited the garden. I thought this kookaburra had quite an inquisitive tilt to its head.

And this butcher bird actually stayed still long enough for me to get a half-decent photo. They flit around very fast usually, so I often end up with a blurred patch of wings in flight on the screen when I upload photos.

All of my figbird photos are taken from a distance. They are very shy birds who don’t get too close to people. This photo is as much about the tree as the bird, it’s my pecan nut tree, and the branches are showing signs of new growth. That means I won’t see the birds on the branches for too much longer, at least until the tree loses its leaves again next winter.

I couldn’t resist adding this last photo of the two little larrikins! Kookaburras have a talent for saying so much, without speaking.

This week is the last week of semester two at uni. I submitted one assignment today, and still have two to go, so it’s going to be a busy week. I’m already dreaming about spending more time in the garden every day after my assignments are done. 🙂