Fred Baker

Return of the python

by

Having assumed that the Diamond Python relocated from my verandah to the national park would stay there, I received a nasty surprise late yesterday afternoon.

python-back-1

What looked like the same python –– no distinguishing features! but the same size – was making its way along the footings. Had it travelled several kilometres to its old home, i.e., mine?

python-back-2

As it appeared to consider heading straight up the mud wall, I went and closed the windows. I was glad I’d got round to plugging a few holes in the last week. But had I found them all?!

python-return-3

As dusk fell, with shudders at the memories of last time, I hurried to have my shower (which is  on the verandah) before it decided to resume its occupancy there. 

I didn’t see where the homing python went, but later that night my torchlight found it back in its old spot on top of the mud wall corner, just under the tin.

Next morning it was still there, but more restless. After breakfast it was gone, and despite peering hard into the grape vine along the western wall, I couldn’t see it.

Every time I went outside I searched the verandah for telltale splashes of pattern or bulges of shape. And I realised how complacent I’d grown since it was evicted last time: such as flipping over the wind-blown rubber bathmat by hand. It’d be back to the broom from now on.

It was only as I went to ascend the steps to the verandah that I glanced up and there it was: right above the top step, seemingly comfortable, slung between the wire netting and the tin, and only marginally supported by the rafter.

python-return-4

I envisaged its questing head dangling down as I walked beneath. 

I’m back to high python alert outside and inside, in case it finds a place to sneak into the ceiling.

But if it’s so keen to share with me, I think I’ll have to get used to it. Perhaps it will help if I name my python tenant, but that’s hard when I don’t know its gender. Daphne or Desmond?

Potting hornet

by

hornet-1

On my verandah I have hung an antique tin tub, so rusty as to be lacework.

Having found it way down in a gully, far from any habitation past or present, I have assumed it was left behind by a cedargetters’ camp, long, long ago.

Now it is providing shelter for an Australian Hornet, who is busily making nests for her young.

She buzzes as she works, the sound being amplified as it vibrates aginst the tin. She bring small amounts of wet mud and shapes them into elongated cups with her delicate feet.

They are like half-coil pots and she is one of the family of ‘potter wasps’.

hornet-1a

Inside each clay cell she places paralysed caterpillars, lays an egg, then plugs the top. The young will feed on the caterpillars. Interestingly, the adults only feed on flower nectar.

hornet-2

Next to that cell she made another, joined but separate. Look at the neatness of the rows of clay and the flared shaping for adhesion and strength at the ends. She’s an experienced potter.

hornet-3

Next morning she had finished two and was inside an almost-completed third, perhaps placing a stunned caterpillar?

These hornets don’t attack people, as I know from them regularly passing by my head as I work when I have the window open here.

So no need to fear or remove them, and they do keep caterpillar numbers in control. Plus they make admirable pots!

Summer whites

by

whites-1
Not cricket apparel or cool clothes, but flowers: free gifts that appear each summer to brighten my days and my by-then mostly green garden.

They all receive my admiration but none of them need or receive any attention in between.

The Spider Lilies are extraordinary, delicate space age creatures that prance and arabesque from fleshy  bulbs and leaves. Beside them flower the herbs yarrow and meadowsweet; the nearby oregano is about to burst into white flower spikes too.

whites-2

Twining daintily along my verandah and perfuming my evenings is the Mandevilla laxa, commonly called Chilean Jasmine, although it isn’t a jasmine at all.

whites-3

And the shed is being overwhelmed by a rioting fountain of Chinese Star Jasmine.

The scent of these flowers comes to me separately and together at different spots in the garden.

Sweet summer whites.

Bye-bye babies

by

empty-nest
After a little over a week away, I returned to find the empty nest of the Yellow-faced Honeyeaters swinging unattended in the breeze.

I’d been looking forward to seeing the growth and changing coloration of the two teenage young ones.

So had this been a very quick maturation, or Christmas dinner for some predator?

I hope it was the former — but I have to doubt it.

Poly fungi?

by

poly-fungus
Driving home along the track I stopped to inspect this large whitish blob which hadn’t been there three days ago.

Was it a chunk of aged polstyrene, or yet another fungi that I’ve never seen before?

I didn’t touch it, but now realise I should have, for I can’t identify it in my fungi books. It doesn’t seem to fit anything exactly: maybe a sort of Calvatia?

Then the ridged lip made me wonder if it had fallen from a tree, but I hadn’t checked if it was attached to the ground, and it was undamaged.  Even so, I still can’t work out what it might be.

Next trip out I checked, and yes, it was just sitting unattached on the ground.

How amazing that it hadn’t smashed when it fell from the nearby big grey gum where I assumed it had grown.

Wasp nursery

by

waspnest-1
As the warmer weather arrived, I opened the window in front of my desk for the first time in ages.

Immediately I realised that I had uncovered the living larder of a very busy mother wasp.

In the narrow gap between sill and window base, she had created a mud maze in a neat butterfly shape.

In there she had laid her eggs, and sealed up stunned spiders ready for the first feed when the larvae hatch.

This will give the larvae the energy to turn into the pupae from which the adult will emerge.
waspnest-2
But as these look like pupae, has she over-provisioned or will the adult eat them later?

Anyone know? I’d like to.

Lego royalty

by

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?’
king-parrot-1

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

by

hatch-1
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.
hatch-2
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!
hatch-3
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

by


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

by


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

by

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?

Read more

Verandah python

by

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?

Read more