The Little Wattlebirds are nesting in the jasmine and other plants that hide the side of the shed. Mum is sitting on the rail, bottom left. Here are both parents, with dad telling me off for hanging around. Which I shouldn't have been as I have a big weed and mulch project to get finished before summer. The original mulch has been there for six or seven years and has broken down nicely to create a few inches of actual soil on top of the sand and limestone. Weeds have been enjoying this for a while now but it's time they went. I'll use the soil/weed mix to top coat the driveways which are bare sand/rock and get eroded by the elements. Big, fat trailer load of mulch produced on site, mainly dead wattle and fallen limbs from gum trees, and fed through tractor-driven chipper. It doesn't take long to fade from pink to the grey you see in front of it, but it does a good job of weed-suppression. Still, it's a labour of love - got a spare day or so?
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When I was watching the mad antics of the New Holland Honeyeaters today - and taking a few photos - there was one bird that looked, well, wrong. It wasn't until I looked at pics later that I realised the bird was different in a few ways, but one of them was quite striking. The adult bird's expression is priceless. That's right - no white eye-ring. A blue eyed baby New Holland. Well, all babies are cute, so they say.
I'd often admired these tiny flowers that appear on the block in spring and wondered what they were - The answer came unexpectedly when I was weeding and trying to pull out some fleshy looking grass - tough to remove as it has these corms - in this case two of them. These gave me the clue I needed and I discovered that this is, in fact, Onion or Guildford Grass (Romulea rosea). Not great news, as it's an invasive South African plant. I'm sure any gardener who has it 'ruining' their lawn could have told me what it was. Still, the flowers are very pretty. Next goal is to identify this, also tiny, plant. Any ideas?
These blue-eyed birds are plentiful at the moment. But I really wanted to show you the fledglings -
Quite a few Crimson Rosellas around - this adult was demonstrating bathing techniques to a juvenile - The Superb Fairy-wren males are in their breeding colours - While the female Little Wattlebird has been catching lots of bugs - hmm, wonder why she needs extra protein...? Finally, Old Man Banksia has taken a bit of a beating from frequent Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo visits to feed. The male here (males have the pink eye ring) has been appointed look-out, so while the others munch away he keeps an eye on me as I watch from the verandah. A sudden move on my part, he'll sound the alarm and they'll be off - very nervy for large birds with nothing much to fear except land clearing.
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December 2020
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