Fred Baker

Lego royalty

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I was visiting a friend’s house in bushland in the lower Hunter. Her small grand-daughter was also visiting, so a child-sized table was set up on the back patio. Large Lego kept her amused.

My friend had fed the King Parrots there for a long time but the white cockatoos had begun to dominate, so she was restricting the sunflower seeds to where she could watch who was eating them.

‘The king is here!’ she called to the child. ‘Shall we feed him on your table?’
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king-parrot-2

To the delight of us all, the king deigned to leave the guttering and alight on the table. His queen watched from a nearby tree for a little while, until she felt secure enough to join him amongst the Lego people.

My friend, originally from Denmark, vividly recalls her amazement at these parrots when she first saw them. We all agree that their gentle yet blazing beauty continues to astonish us afresh each time.

Honeyeater hatching

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I have had my first sighting of the Honeyeater babies in the nest outside my kitchen window. There appear to be two scrawny-necked grey heads, with rippled pink beaks like delicate clam shells.

They seem to alternate in their bobbing up and down, so it’s hard to catch them together.

I have placed a chair by the kitchen sink so I can jump and snap the pair when they are staying up more often in unison.
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Mum is being kept very busy and the morsels I have seen her bring are quite large, although I can’t tell what they are.

But it must be good; just look at the eyes closed in ecstasy as it swallows!
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And then I managed it: here’s the pair, snapped just after Mum had flown off so both their heads were raised, swallowing hard.

Houseproud honeyeaters

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My nesting honeyeaters aren’t happy with the house they built. At least she isn’t.

Perhaps the winds have made the finely netted nest feel less secure, or she’s rethought the design.

She doesn’t seem to sit still for as long as she was, turning about instead of facing away from my window as before.

She fusses about the nest inside and out, from all angles. Is she patching and improving on what they built together, or are those the bits that he built — unsatisfactorily?

Or does her restlessness mean that she hasn’t yet laid those eggs? Perhaps this is the avian equivalent of a human female driven to ‘springclean’ just before she goes into labour.

Meanwhile all the father-to-be can do is keep watch — and pace the branches.

Country Viewpoint

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My next Country Viewpoint, ‘Farmers say no’, will go to air on ABC Radio National next Tuesday 16th December (ABC Radio National Bush Telegraph, 11am-12noon Australian Eastern Daylight time: Country Viewpoint airs at 11.55).

Bush Telegraph is also available as a podcast and you can now download individual program segments instead of just the whole hour.

Python farewell

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The day my python had surrounded the shower shell on my verandah, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to risk a shower that evening.

It was a windy night, and next morning when I did go to have a shower, the rubber mat had been blown back, doubled on
to itself.

I usually just flick it back flat with my hand. Something made me use the broom this time.

Just as well, for there lay the sleepy python, in a perfect coil.

I gave the shower a miss yet again. A top and tail at the kitchen sink was a far better idea!

But I kept checking for when it might awake, to see where it would head next.

Eventually it uncoiled and poured itself over the mat and between the boards — or was it going under the mat? How would I ever be sure it wasn’t under that raised edge of the mat where it met the fibreglass base?

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Verandah python

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It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was writing about a rare sighting for here –  a diamond python. That was a fair distance away, on the track.

Meanwhile a friend, having rescued a stunned python down on the tar road, had brought it here to recover.

He thought I might like one for my garden; despite the posed benefits of keeping the numbers down of other snakes and small mammals like bush rats, I declined and asked him to release it outside the yard down by the dam.  I thought no more about it.

I do have a bush rat of some sort that, every night, without fail, enters the house and dashes along the same exposed rafter, always between 8.45 and 8.50. I haven’t been able to find out how and where it goes in and out.

Then one night it did fail to show up.

Next day this is what I saw, up on the top western corner of the mud wall on my verandah, partly hidden by the grapevine.

Plump loops and rolls of spots and diamonds, fishnet black over yellow and white.

It was a diamond python, curled up, fast asleep. Was this a post-prandial nap? Post-rat?

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Hurricane Hunter

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This was the sky on Saturday 22nd November, late afternoon, looking north up the Hunter Valley.

It followed an extremely windy day we’d experienced further south, but this looked more like we were heading for a hurricane – or it was heading for us!

With violent storms repeatedly hitting parts of southern Queensland the week before, a taste of the same was only to be expected.

The sky seemed to be sucking the clouds into a darkening funnel to the east yet the unusual band of crisply serrated white peaks just above the horizon remained undisturbed.

They made it appear as if, once over that final hill, we would drop off the edge of the highway into a snowy alpine landscape.

It was so spectacular I took a moving shot, through a very dirty windscreen, then felt guilty for not doing it more justice. By the time we were out of the dips and had found a place to pull over, a different skyscape presented. The Valley continued, the snowy mountains were just clouds after all.

As it moved westward, the huge formation still seemed to be connected to the earth, sucking at its surface. From news pictures of American storm centres, it was easy to imagine Kansas Dorothy flying up that grey funnel – from land Oz to sky Oz.

Given that we were on the way back from a rally against coal power’s fuelling of more climate chaos – it was also easy to assume we were seeing an example of it.

New nest

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The Yellow-faced Honeyeaters are definitely building their nest in the Crepuscule climbing rose outside my window.

They are very quick to dash in and add to it, one at a time, and they don’t stay in there long.

The whole branch they’ve chosen is suspended, loosely swinging, so hopefully other feathered predators won’t be able to get at it.

One friarbird, who’s also collecting string and such for its nest, has been hovering around, flapping frantically in mid-air and causing the honeyeater to fuss and chatter at it.

You can just make out the tail of one poking up from the nest.

I can’t open my casement window much now as a friend noticed that they weren’t coming to the branch when I had the window in front of it wide open.

Obviously the immediate surroundings had changed too much and made them wary. They resumed when I latched it closer to the frame.

This nest seems to be mostly composed of lichen.

 No mud as in the swallows’ construction.  

They must be just weaving and hoping.

Japanese memories

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In western New South Wales there is a Japanese war cemetery and a Japanese garden, commemorating in different ways the Japanese World War II soldiers who died in Australia.

Here at Cowra there was a prisoner-of-war camp and in 1944 over 500 Japanese made a suicidal break for honourable release: 231 succeeded by death.

In after years the Returned Services League cared for the graves so well that the Japanese Government moved all their war dead on Australian soil to this cemetery.

Later Australian/Japanese joint efforts created a wonderful Japanese Garden, a botanical and meditative treat for visitors as well as a memorial.

The road leading up to the gardens is lined with cherry trees, and below each is the name of a Japanese soldier.

Australian and exotic trees, clipped, shaped or gracefully weeping shrubs, natural boulders and artificial pebble banks and beaches, set off the water that winds through the sloped lawns and gardens, resting in calm pools before rushing off in falls and streams.

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Hurry up, Mr Rudd!

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On Saturday 22nd November about 150 people walked in to the aging Eraring Power Station near Newcastle NSW.

Emitting over 20 million tons of C02 each year, it is one of the world’s most polluting, so an appropriate site from which to urge Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong to get serious about acting now to slow our runaway global warming.

And certainly not to give such an emitter a permit to keep doing so!

Police flanked and backed the walkers all the way.

Once we got there, they intensively guarded the final fence, while guard dogs paced behind it and police on horses and trail bikes patrolled the perimeters. We were allowed only three hours for a rally before all had to leave, escorted.

Perhaps they feared strong action, realising that people are getting desperate about the lack of genuine commitment by the Rudd government as time runs out.

The power station is huge when you’re up this close. It’s daunting, as are the unresponsive policemen between whom we edged to tie to the fence the banners we had carried, plus photos and drawings of things we love, and for whose futures we fear unless carbon emissions are stopped.

Here’s most of mine— less half a grandchild!

In December, the Rudd Government will announce Australia’s medium term emissions reductions targets, and they are widely expected to be weak and ineffective.

It looks unlikely that they will show enough courageous leadership to announce that 2010 will be Australia’s  ‘peak carbon’  year – after that and forever, our greenhouse pollution must come down.
 
But that is what we need, and what Saturday’s rally called for.

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House honeyeaters

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A pair of honeyeaters have taken to perching just outside my kitchen window, sometimes on the climbing rose that hangs just beyond, and sometimes on the window frames themselves.

I think they are Yellow-faced Honeyeaters. They have a pretty call, quite loud for their size, and I am very pleased to have them as new regular visitors to serenade my days at the computer.

Assuming they are nesting somewhere near, I hope they take up permanent residency.

Mountain goanna

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Last week I saw a goanna on my ridge. It was an occasion of great delight because, over 30 years, this is only the second goanna I have ever seen up here. They have both been Lace Monitors.

My new goanna ran up on to the base of a large horizontal tree trunk that had been snapped off and smashed down in a storm some years ago.

As you can see, the camouflage is perfect – greyish, pinkish, blackish; ripples and spots, patches and strips. And look at that exquisite needle point tail!

Perhaps there are more goannas here than I thought: I just haven’t had my goanna eyes tuned in.