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...

  Most of the Australian jellyfish are also full of toxins. The main ones to worry about are those that hae been beached. Stepping on them is still painful! The blue-bottles (aka Portugese Man o'War) is apparently four creatures merged into one. From the Australian museum website : The float (pneumatophore) is a single individual and supports the rest of the colony. The tentacles (dactylozooids) are polyps concerned with the detection and capture of food and convey their prey to the digestive polyps (gastrozooids). Reproduction is carried out by the gonozooids, another type of polyp.  J is also for journey. The waiting list for cardiology evaluations is just as long here as in the US. Because my pacemaker was no longer under remote monitoring, they found me an earlier appointment - in Canberra. We could and did do it and I feel more comfortable that I will soon have it back under an alert system. However, it was a 3 hour trek each way (over the mountains). We stopped at a nati...