Our great southern migration

  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...

  Scott's sister Brooke and our niece Daisy came into town for a visit and to see Grandfather on his 97th birthday. Above, you can see the portraits Daisy made of everyone. Ditto below! Grandfather didn't catch the instructions to put up your image. Or chose not to. It was his birthday. I was taking the pics so here is mine. Daisy doesn't believe in modifying reality too much :( Evil child. We met Brooke and Daisy in Canberra. You can see how tall Daisy is getting (or how everyone else is shrinking). This was dinner at our lodging We headed off to Questacon the following morning. Daisy had a great time with a few of the exhibits, including this one of skulls. She also did the free fall drop and spent more time than we did in various sections (we went off for food and coffee).  Brooke seemed to like some of the exhibits too! I really like the marble sand activity (you can see Daisy leaving me behind) Scott liked the pool ball movement display (as did I) We had a couple of se...

Apparently June 7 was the day the wombats came out to play! These marsupials are generally noctornal and might be seen at dusk but not in broad daylight. However, on the Kings Birthday weekend, we saw several out during the day on Sunday.  The one above was in the middle of the paddock.  Most wombats are not quite as red. He/she seems to be struggling to keep their eyes open! Scott saw this one in the scrub the makes the south border of our property. While he has been "hissed" at by wombats that felt he was too close, this one didn't seem to care.  Finally, this brown lump by the gate is one of older wombats. We do often see him sitting by his den when we come back after RFS (rural fire service) training. But on June 7, he dragged himself out to join the party! Since June 7, the wombats have not been nearly as visible. Not sure if this is a monthly, annual, or other event! Besides watching the wombats, we have been working on fencing. We need to fence off the septic field...

       This blog is in honor/honour of the females that are brown or faded green while their mates are colorful/colourful! Many of these birds are not readily recognizable! I have now downloaded but not yet sorted my Korea pics so didn't want to wait on those. Hopefully this weekend! Note: these could be juvenile males; they look like the females. But we are going with these are females.  The image above is a golden whistler. It does whistle but isn't very golden. You can see the male on J is for jellyfish. This little lady (pretty sure she is a lady) is a female scarlet robin. Looks brown and orange to me! Her mate was on the  Gang's all here The female fairy wrens are great at incognito. They could be superb or variegated. In some instances, I swear they are red-browed fire tail finches. However, those juveniles are all brown and don't have red eye patches. The fairy wren boys come in various blue shades. See More fairy tails . The females are bolder...