Our great southern migration

  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...

  I spent last week in Sydney as part of the site visit team for Sydney U vet school. I did have roast beef for dinner a couple of times! I didn't really go to market but figured it would be rude to suggest Scott was a little piggy, even though he did stay home.  I am still an AVMA site team member so help ensure that the AVMA accredited schools are meeting the standards agreed to. Schools get reviewed every 7 years. Now that I am in Australia, I get fewer options but Sydney was a good fit. Sydney also gets reviewed by the local group (AVBC) and by the British group (RCVS) since they do have students from Australia, NZ, North America and Britain. The AVMA requires summary documents with 100 pages of reading and 100 pages of tables max. The other groups have different formats and requirements. Putting them all together made for a heck of a lot of reading and triangulating. After doing that initial reading, we asked for even more reading. Finally, we go on site, talk to everyone...

  This post will be mostly about our farm birds but also a bit about those idioms. It also rings true right now as I am starting a site visit for veterinary school accreditation. That is definitely part of the gate keeping process!  Gatekeepers have various repercussions, depending on the topic, but are generally considered to be a person or thing that controls access. This could be access to a place, a person, a resource or information. In that line, most of our birds are not truly gate keepers. The jacky-winters on the gate above are not restricting anyone. They are part of the robin family and seem very peaceable. Ditto for this scarlet robin female: However, the magpies below are a bit more threatening. If we go back to the social psychology roots of the term, Kurt Lewin used it study how social groups filter and manage choices. These three are definitely a social group.  As we head into spring in the southern hemisphere, we are now down to two magpies. Our best guess...