Winter Wednesday # 8

Pink Heath has to be one of the most joyous

things about Winter.

Common Pink Heath is the floral emblem for the State of Victoria.

It flowers from Autumn through to Spring but is at its best in Winter.

 As its name suggests,

it is common and also comes in white 

and a darker pink/almost red.

Common it may be,

but it is also impressive.

Its 2 cm (a little less than 1 inch) flower tubes

have nectar at their base and pollen close

to the opening.   Nectar eating birds, are lightly dusted

when they probe the flower with their long beaks 

and become unwitting pollinators.

But that's not all.

Photo credit.

The  microscopic pollen grains have narrow fins 

that slide between the edges of the bird's feathers 

so that they are efficiently carried away.

Now, that is IMPRESSIVE

So it will come as no surprise that the botanical name 

for the common heath  is  epacris impressa!

Click on these links to other bloggers 

who also find joy in winter

Rose's Mum has a winter visitor in her bed

Our Malay-Kadazan girl is making winter bombs!

Snuggle up with Angela Earthmama

Phoebe is getting dirty looks over at Ballynoe Cottage

Kristi likes a bit of winter rain

Alison is into extreme monotremes

Suzanne is enchanted with waiting

Mrs Gooseberry is baking up a winter storm

Her heart may be Asia but she is celebrating some winter whiteness

There is some wild beauty over at The New Good Life

Barb loves lots of things about Winter in W.A.

Ali is peeling her lips of and her son has feet like a chicken...I think???

Is your bum guilt free?

 Crapman wants you to make a stand when using the toilet.

Healesville Sanctuary is promoting the use of recycled toilet paper.

(When this product was first introduced, my mother was horrified...

'Who would want to use toilet paper that had been used already!'

However, she quickly changed brands once she found out it

was made from recycled office paper...chuckle!)

Australia has the highest rate of extinction of mammals in the world,

and we have lost vast quantities of our native forests in the past

200 years.  

In a time of climate change, our trees...

whether they come from plantation or old growth forests...

are much better off in the ground than down our toilets.

If you use recycled toilet paper 

then your bum is guilt free.  

If you don't it's time you made the switch 

and your bum will feel much better.

In the flight show, a parrot unfurled this sign.

You can show your support for Crapman by visiting and friending his facebook page

Stop being a tree flusher 

and wipe for wildlife.

A sticky situation

 I blogged recently about a pair of Willy Wagtails who built a sturdy little tea-cup nest from spiders' webs and fine grass on a branch hanging over the creek.  The chicks hatched about ten days ago.  I have enjoyed watching the parents flit to and fro, catching bugs for their brood.

But it poured for three days and the creek flooded.

This is what the nest looked like yesterday. The raging water was grabbing at the branch and providing an adrenaline pumping carnival ride for the chicks. Tree limbs and even whole trees were being driven along by the current.  I was waiting for one to hit the branch and rip it off.  I didn't hold out much hope for them.

Today, the nest is not quite as round as it was, but it is still there!  I could see two healthy and demanding chicks. Mum and Dad were busy fetching them snacks and trying to draw my attention in case I had predatory intentions.  You can see by the grass in the background how high the creek got in relation to the nest.  The water is still brown and fast but much lower.  The wet humid conditions are perfect for insects so there is no shortage of food.

One small positive story in a week of record floods in various parts of Australia.  

Let's hope there are more to report as the clean up begins.

Eggstreme composters

About a week ago I made a new compost.  I layered lawn clippings with bedding straw and manure from the chooks and goats, some shredded paper and a couple of bags of horse poo I had picked up somewhere.  I dampened it and covered it with a piece of carpet.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  

As you know, if you get the mix right, the compost will heat up as the bacteria kicks in.  This was a good pile, and when I poked around in it a few days later I was very satisfied to see the steam rise and feel the warmth.  

Then I got to thinking about animals that incubate their eggs in composting nests.

One thought lead to another and... 

I buried an egg in the compost.  

I went back to retrieve it two days later and this is what I found.

Not a 'perfect soft boiled' egg...but definitely cooked.  

Cook had better watch out...she may be out of a job.

Makes me admire the Australian brush turkeys ,  saltwater crocodiles and mallee fowl.  They all use the heating power of composts to incubate their eggs...without cooking them.

Brush turkeys spend their days testing the temperature of the nest with their beak and adding and subtracting material to adjust the temperature.  They must maintain a steady temperature of 33 - 35 degrees celsius.   

The crocodiles spend 90 days watching over their nests and maintain the temperature at around 30 deg. by splashing water onto the pile with their tails.  Small temperature variations, in both cases, effect the sex of the offspring.  Cooler temperatures result in male chicks for the turkeys and female babies for the crocodile.

The mallee fowl builds a huge nest mound 1metre high and 4 metres across using mainly sand.  The male fowl puts damp leaf litter in the centre to create the heat and the parents test the temperature by sticking their heads in the mound.  The ideal temperature for mallee fowl eggs is 33 deg.  The mallee fowl is the most hard working of this trio of composters. The male fowl adjusts the temperature by scratching huge amounts of sand on and off the pile.  On hot days he scratches it off and spreads it around.  As the day cools he scratches layers of the warmed sand back onto the pile.

I thought about hatching some eggs in the compost but it sounds too hard for this old chick!

FOOTNOTE:  This is actually a post that I prepared earlier.  It is sheer coincidence that Missy had a visit from a brush turkey and blogged about it yesterday.  Serendipity strikes again!  But do click on her name to have a gander at a brush turkey.

Inner Space

I have been doing a bit of paving around the potager to make access easier and more logical.  In doing so I had to alter an existing path.  Under the pavers was a whole other world.  I was only tweaking the pavers a little so was able to put them back, albeit at a slightly different angle, so I didn't disturb this subterranean world too much.

Firstly there were worms...great fat worms disappearing down, what looked like, permanent passages.  The worm tunnels also provided easy access for the probing, white roots of couch grass and were home to other beasties.  There were also skinny worms and tiny frantically wiggling, white ones.  

Then were ants and more ants.  Some were reddish brown and so minute I had to put on my glasses to even see them.  There were black ones with lots of eggs and with them some brown ones with big heads.  I am not sure if they were a different ant or just a different form of the same one.
As this path is close to the house, I guess this is where the black ant invasion in the kitchen earlier in the year was launched from. 

There is one of the brown ants at the top of the picture near the middle.  When I pulled the paver up they were together.

There were white curl grubs (lavae) and cockchafer beetles (adult) beetling away.

The most exciting thing I uncovered was a centipede (scolopendromorpha) curled around a cluster of  eggs.  She was about 7 - 8 cms long (3 inches) and beautifully segmented.  When she walked the segments slid over each other like armour.

You can also see the roots of the couch grass following the worm burrows.

I also spotted a small (less than 1 cm) spider scuttling away.  I have become accustomed to seeing spiders carting around their papery egg sacs of various sizes and forms at this time of the year.  This one, however, was carrying her babies on her back.  I had to take the photo and enlarge it to make sure that is what I was seeing.  Her spiderlings were so tiny!

Didn't someone say that if all the humans disappeared from Earth the insects would continue to thrive but if all the insects were to disappear, humans wouldn't last long?

Nesting and some updates.

I have been watching a pair of Willy Wagtails build a nest on a branch hanging out over the creek.  Each night I go for a walk to admire their building and to note the changes.  

The first two photos were taken a week ago.  They spent a long time on the foundations of the nest which was mainly spiders' web.  It was fascinating to sit on the bank and watch them weave beak fulls around the branches. Then they would press their chests into the cup to make it conform to their bodies.  

This photo shows an almost finished nest, I think.  It is about the size of a teacup and now has a fine grasses woven into it. 

This final photo shows the position of the nest over the creek.

I have done a bit of reading and it seems Willy Wagtails usually lay three eggs.  The resulting offspring quickly outgrow the nest. To cope with the over crowding problem they climb out onto the nearby branches.

At first I thought this was the perfect place for a nest, away from predators.  Now I am hoping the chicks can hold on tight...or that they can swim!

I found a pelargonium to love!

The flower is tiny and the bush smells like roses when brushed...it is probably a 'Rose Geranium'! 

Due to popular demand, I will not be pulling out the other pelargoniums.  This is just a STAY of execution.  I will cut them back, plant around them and spare them so long as they blend in and behave themselves.  I had no idea there were so many pelargonium fans out there in Blogland.

Bad news on the chick front.

Henny killed or fatally injured five of the chickens.  We retrieved the live, uninjured ones she had kicked out of the nest and have them under a light.  Looks like a bit of hand rearing of chicks will be happening here.  Once they warmed up they began eating and drinking and look strong and lively. 

Henny has suddenly snapped out of her broody mood and spent the day with Brewster and the others as if the last three weeks was a dream.

Avoiding the 'C' word.

Yes, I know it is December and that Christmas is nearly upon us but I have been trying not to post about it.  However, today I found this gorgeous Christmas Beetle and had to share!

Then I had to spoil it all by doing something stupid like an internet search.  

It isn't even a Christmas beetle which are metallic gold.  

This is likely a Lamprima Aurata - a golden stag beetle.  

That also explains the antlers which only the males have.  

It looks pretty christmassy to me.

.............

Why I live where I live.

I have lived where I live for less than a year.  

Serendipity brought me here...

but other things keep me here.

Well of course there is the garden.  It is established and superb, the soil loamy and fertile.  

The property large enough to do the things I want to do, but small enough to manage.  

The creek at the back is not only beautiful and has at least one platypus,  but also provides water for the garden.  

What more could a gardener want?

Although it feels like a bush retreat, there are neighbours and a welcoming community and all only one and half hours from Melbourne.

We can go on a lovely short rural drive to Yea and have lunch and a latte.

On the way home, just off the main road we can make a stop.

Imagine this

It is a warm humid day with thunder rolling in the distance and this is the view we must look at.  

There is a flutter of butterflies (what is the correct collective noun?) all around the car.  Because they seem so camera shy, The Cook offers to stand like a tree in case one might land and deem to have its photo taken. They just laugh and fly away.

The noisy cicadas, probably don't have time to be amused by our strange goings on.  They are preoccupied, serenading each other.  Cicadas have probably been speed dating longer than humans have been around.

On the grass at my feet, a shucked off cicada casing.  Next to it, its recent inhabitant acclimatizing herself to her new outfit.  

Cicaderella, ready for the ball.

The Cook, obliging as always,  offers a contrasting back to display the cicada in her finery.

 We didn't keep her long from her Prince Charming 

.

I'm not sure that March flies trying to bite one through one's jeans can really be a reason to love living here. But they are such a part of Summer in the bush...why not?  Anyway, they don't succeed.

 I don't know what this is, but it is pretty and matches the flower...besides I am very proud of this photo so couldn't leave it out. 

When the rain comes we sit in the car and listen to a show about Janet Frame, a favourite author, on the radio.  The butterflies disappear and the cicadas rest from their song...perhaps they are interested in the New Zealand author too.

The rain clears, the butterflies and cicadas get back to business and this is the view.

Once home, I sit with the goat babies by the creek. Listening to them pull grass and chew is very meditative.  I watch a baby currawong hassling its mother for food in a tree on the other side of the creek.  A kookaburra is perched, as he is every afternoon, on a dead tree with his head cocked to one side.  He is looking for movement on the creek bank.  Every now and then he swoops down and picks something up.  I am waiting for the time I see him with a snake in his beak.

Today I also planted the lettuces in the pottager, and more chamomile and corn in the vegetable garden. 

I made sure Henny got off her eggs to have something to eat and drink.  She does not enjoy this twice daily forced health regime.

The Cook made a fabulous risotto al fungi.  Warm orange cake, drizzled with orange sauce and cream is  desert.

Another 12 botttles of marmalade were made... to feed my obsession.  Soon it will be off to bed to listen to the night sounds of frogs romanticising and the willy wagtail who will warble on and off all night.

Now why I would want to live anywhere else!

I would love to hear why you live where you live.

.........................

Locust under glass...a recipe for disaster.

Those bugs splattering on my windscreen yesterday were locusts.  I found this one in my veggie garden this morning.   Hardly a plague but still an indication that they are here.

After his photo shoot this model was snapped up by an agent wearing a chicken costume.

If you are interested in learning more about plague locusts, the Department of Primary Industries has an informative site.

• Have a look at Australian Plague Locusts - Identification and Biology.  
• For up to the moment information on their progress through the State.  
• And there are some interesting Response Maps showing their progress.

Spring wildflower meadows

The best Spring rains in 30 years have resulted in a floral bounty in the Victorian bush.

Chocolate lilies - dichopogon strictus

Milkmaids - Burchardia umbelata

Sundew - Drosera

I have posted this before, but I was amazed at how much of it there was and how lush it was on this roadside verge.

Hibbertia - there are over 150 species of this little fellow.

Now this is where I will need some help.  This is what, as a child, I called shivery grass.  I know that 'trembling grass' with the larger seed head is an introduced species but am wondering about this very fine form.  Maybe there is a bush chick out there who could tell me if this is indigenous and what it's botanical name is.   :-)

Salt and Pepper

This is another one whose name I can't find on the web so would appreciate a botanical name.

Nature's apartment building - a threat

All of these flowers were thriving among the grasses on the edge of the road, under this dead and blackened eucalypt,  complete with its dead mistletoe.  

I was considering what may be living in its hollows, when a family of screeching indian myna birds skimmed in to investigate the hollows.  

Native parrots are happy to share trees and to live 'apartment' style with each other and possums.  The introduced indian mynas, however, will use a single hollow and then stop any other species from using the other nesting sites in the tree or nearby.  They are aggressive and territorial and will eject possums and birds, destroying nestlings and eggs. They also compete with local species for habitat and food.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has ranked the Myna amongs the world's 100 most invasive pest species.  The Lane Cove Council in New South Wales has an eradication program.

Horrible things!

Up close and personal