Our great southern migration

Back to ornithology lessons as we have a hiatus in new types of activity this week. The main excitement was the RFS (fire service) community event this morning. The big kids played with the fake fire and smoke machines while waiting for the little kids to show up: So many of the Australian birds are identified by eye color; this correlates with a variety of interesting colors.  This  deranged-looking thornbill above is a Barrabaroo resident. We do have at least three types of thornbills; the red eye marks this one as a brown thornbill vs a striated thornbill. These little birds dart around quickly and typically travel in small flocks. Their high level of activity makes it a challenge to get an in-focus photo. I don't think we have buff rumped thornbills here - the light blue eye is just strange. This pied currawong is posing in the formal garden - until he wasn't. Currawongs are often the last to sing in the evening and the first to start up in the morning. They have a lovely ...

  We now have a roof sprinkler system! And two fire hose set ups (as above). This is a short video of the system in action If a fire is approaching, we turn on the system to wet things down around the house. We use the firehoses in other areas. If the fire gets closer, we turn on the sprinklers and hunker down inside. It should be able to run for over an hour if needed.  We put the sprinklers on the house and on the shed. Having the concrete walkway 360 degrees should also help.  The process involved connecting the cement tank to the roof top system We lost a few agapanthus (yay!) and surfaced quite a few rocks (boo). We have both started collecting rocks so we can eventually mow without injury. The agapanthus is moving to the burn pile.  We have also been spending some time killing invasive weeds. The experts recommend getting certain weeds now when they are easy to spot and are sensitive to the weed killers. This is one we are targeting now: Paterson's curse is con...

  I had forgotten this children's song but once I saw the start, the lyrics came back. Since the reference may be too old for many of you, it talks about spring and, most importantly, how the prettiest tree has the prettiest nest on the prettiest branch you ever did see.  And the Green Grass Grew all around. Our green grass is visible but only just. We have had very little rain and El Nino may make it a real struggle for green. However, the birds are still joining up and making nests.This little brown thornbill is attempting to wrangle a cobweb into nest material. Sticky business! We have nesting pairs of a variety of birds. It seems our little scarlet robins found another location and ditto for the satin bowerbirds (at least so far). We definitely have nesting magpies and nesting wedge-tailed eagles         The others are joined but we haven't found their particular nests yet. Our pair of king parrots is hanging around the backyard And the juvenile crimso...