Usually I leave the slugs to the bluetongue. I’d hate to starve him (or her) into deciding to live somewhere else. But he’s a bit too well fed, and I’m not. A cup with an inch of beer, buried so the rim is at the soil surface, overnight collected all these. The chooks will feast on beer marinated slugs.
Isn’t she the prettiest little chick? She’s an Australian Game, a tall long-legged breed, excellent mums, decent layers, decent meat birds, and very good at foraging for themselves.
Yeah, you think you’re so on top, strutting around in the pecan tree that shades our verandah and overlooks the garden. Stealing chook eggs, stealing pawpaws and bananas and pumpkins and taro, scratching up the mulch, even getting into the bread dough proving on the verandah table. You wait. Come the zombocalypse, you’re dinner.
This is the boy, and it’s hard to capture his true beauty in a photo. He is a beautiful satiny blue-black and his eyes really are that colour. And this is the girl. She came inside to try to steal tomatoes and couldn’t figure out how to get out again.
In our olive tree this morning, no doubt blown around in the wild weather of the last few days. Anyone a better bat identifier than me? Is it a very young, small black flying fox (Pteropus alecto ). It’s the right face and colouring, but it is only about 30cm long and they grow to much larger. And it was all alone and usually they roost in colonies. And it…
Like me, the carpet snake likes warm weather. He (or she – we’re not that friendly) has not gone properly into hibernation yet. She’s just decided to have a little snooze, in the sock drawer. Lucky it’s bare feet and sandals weather still.
The figbird is not the only one nesting in our pecan tree, just off the verandah. The wagtail makes such a classic, neat nest. Come on baby wagtails. Hatch in time to knock out the cabbage moths.
Can you see her? This fig bird and her mate have built a nest in the pecan tree just metres from our verandah. Males and females are supposed to take turns sitting but she seems to have been doing more than her fair share. The nest has been riotously buffeted in a big storm, the noisy minors have taken noisy offense to the gentrification of the area, a goanna has…
Spotted on my morning walk, a fine fat fellow looking very relaxed in a tree right next to our driveway. It is easy to imagine if you live in a city that wildlife is happily safely securely flourishing “somewhere else”. You hear about extinctions but maybe you don’t get just how profound it is.
We have a star bath. It’s a heavy cast iron bath in a very unfashionable shade of green with a fireplace under it. It sits out in the open with a clear view of the wide starry sky, and on cold winters nights we fill it up and light a fire under it. A glass of wine, a candle, a hot bath that stays hot for as long as you…