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There are five juvenile Magpies in the garden area of the block at the moment - one set of parents has successfully raised three and the other, two. While they are now able to find their own food - - they are still begging to be fed and make quite a chorus of insistent whining. Here a youngster is given a decent-sized worm - not sure if it knows it has it though. Needless to say the parents are very busy.
A few hot days and the reptiles emerged. A young brown snake - quite skinny and less than a metre long - crossed in front of me and into a garden bed. Note to self when next weeding - This Shingleback Lizard was basking on the grass - I broke my 'don't feed the animals' rule and left a strawberry (they are all ruined by millipedes again and I'm about to give up trying to grow them) in the direction it was headed. The smell of it got the lizard's tongue tasting the air and when I returned both the Shingleback and the strawberry were gone. Quite a few kangaroos around already - they're usually not so noticeable until mid-summer when the green feed in the bush has run out. They do like a newly mown paddock to graze in.
October ended on a sobering note here with a grass fire less than 500 metres from the block. It took the local Country Fire Service (CFS) crew a good 5 hours to get it under control and the next day they were still mopping up. While it was quite hot and gusty, just two days later the heat and wind were horrendous and would likely have sent the fire through here. Bush fires - one fly in the paradisial ointment of life on the block. I was thrilled to see this pair of Rainbow Lorikeets - they've been around for a few days munching on the lerps - another bird to add to the visitors book. Another pair - this time Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos - have been back to Old Man Banksia to extract seeds. This Emperor Gum Moth is near the end of its life-cycle and waits it out in the rain. With no mouth parts, it has exhausted the supply of fat it gained in its time as a caterpillar and existed in this form only to breed and start the process all over again.
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December 2020
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