We get a number of avian visitors to our yard but the latest regular was quite unexpected. White-faced herons are common down at the beach, foraging for food in the shallows. Like most wading birds, they are stalk and stealth hunters, waiting for an unwary fish to come close enough, then stabbing with that sharp…
I can’t help thinking that we’re living through 1939 all over again. Czar Putin has his troops massed on Ukraine’s border. All he needs is an excuse to invade. Back in 1939, Hitler had security service (SD – Sicherheitsdienst in German) agents dressed in Polish uniforms attack a radio station in Poland and broadcast anti-German…
We’ve had visits from kookaburras over the years but they’ve not been frequent until the last couple of weeks. One turned up and took a bit of the food we leave out for the butcher birds, which are also carnivores. Then over a number of days, it turned up fairly regularly. And it brought friends….
Today I’m as tired of politics and covid as everybody else. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing a bit more than a zephyr, less than a howling gale. The grass is growing as we watch and the air is humid. Welcome to a Queensland summer with a La Niña thrown in. La Niña…
Whatever might be happening for the denizens of this planet, it carries on regardless, waltzing its way with its partner, the Moon, around the Sun. As the Northern Hemisphere tilts away from the sun’s heat, the Southern Hemisphere leans in closer. Up there, fall is on its way. Down here, we’re heading into spring. (Not…
If life had continued as it used to, right now I would have been on the Danube in a riverboat, watching the scenery slip past as I sipped my champagne. But we’ve been handed devastating fires, massive floods, and now a plague. It’s almost like the story of Moses and the flight from Egypt. And…
Back when we used to be working people we used to get up before six in the morning and get on the road to Melbourne before seven, and we’d get home again by about seven in the evening. That meant we had the weekend to Get Things Done. You know – washing, ironing, house-cleaning and…
It was supposed to be an all-girls chill-out – just my best friend and me, but the boys decided they wanted to come, too, so we booked flights and headed off to meet in Cairns, FNQ (Far North Queensland). Pete and I left on a respectable 10am flight. We had a slight scramble at Brisbane…
Ho hum. The Football World Cup is coming to its conclusion and many of the people I know who are interested in the round ball game were hoping for a France-England clash. I must admit there would have been something historically satisfying about a France-England clash. The Poms might finally have got their own back…
After last week’s post about a newcomer bird in the garden, it occured to me it might be nice to show you some of my regulars. So here they are, in no particular order. Gee, and that’s just a handful. I’ll show you some more another time.