Verandah bat

On a very hot afternoon last week, I was visited by a tiny representative of a species that I rarely see. Bats.

There are 20 bat species recorded in these mountains, but as I am not a nocturnal animal, I don’t see them. But this one came to me as I worked on my verandah.

It flew up and down the length of the verandah a few times, attracting my attention, and then landed on the narrow strip of mud wall above the window. Far too close to the tin roof for comfort, I’d have thought.

And there it stayed for some hours, flapping its ears periodically. Its clinging power surprised me, as my mud wall’s not that rough.

I found it very hard to work out its features, but I think it’s an Eastern Horsehoe-bat, from the small size and the horseshoe shape of what my book calls the ’noseleaf complex’.

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About five o’clock it flew to a western end rafter and clung to a bolt. It was still there on dark, but gone in the morning. 

I know almost nothing about bats, but I am delighted to have met this little one, even briefly.

Pigeon swiftie

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I’ve posted before about the times I’ve seen the White-headed Pigeons visit me from the rainforest. They’re classed as fruit pigeons.

Last week, from the breakfast table I saw two plump grey birds, waddling up the track in that distinctively nervous way that pigeons have.

They didn’t have white heads or chests, but did have clear chevron-stripes on their chests.

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The pair came up the track to the house, separated, did a little foray up the bank, then turned and sashayed back down the track and out of my life again just as I reached the track with the camera.

The bird book tells me they are ground-dwelling Wonga Pigeons, and what’s more I had noted that on 10/6/03 I had seen three down in the spring gully, probably when I was planting my rainforest tree seedlings.

I’d visited their place, and now a decade later they were dropping in to mine.

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These are very sleek and handsome, their dark grey blue-tinged (to my eye). The book describes them as having a white necklace, but as they were constantly moving and wouldn’t face the front for a photo, it’s hard to show you that. Maybe this rather fuzzy one gives the idea, as the top stripes meet mid-chest. You can also see the pinkish legs and feet in this one.

The speckles below add to the crisp nattiness of their plumage, while the large eyes in the pale shaded head makes them look gentle.

They were seriously shy, so their one swift visit is all the more to be treasured. You certainly have to be on the alert here; you never can guess who will drop by or for how short a time.

Wary and wise

The wallabies often sit up suddenly, on the alert — although for what I usually can’t see.  Unless, that is, it’s me.

Mum sitting up is far more comfortable for the pouched joey than Mum doubled over, feeding her way across the yard.

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The older joeys tend to be somewhat scrunched, and it must be far worse in the forest beyond, with tall tussocks and bladey grass and fallen sticks to be negotiated.

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This day was one of clear skies and sunshine, so the behaviour of a troop of yellow-tailed black cockatoos was baffling. About eight of them landed in the tall trees that edge the yard, and kept up their raucous warning cries for hours.

Supposedly wise harbingers of rain, they got it wrong this time.  If they are going to hang about often for this long, rain or not, I really wish I could oil their rusty-sounding voiceboxes.

Annual visitor

For the last three years, each November I have noted in my Gould League Banksias and Bilbies Seasons of Australia diary (a wonderful book, now sadly out of print) that a solo White-necked Heron has visited my little dam.

This year it didn’t come in November.

But in the first week of December, there it was. This time I didn’t spot it first on the dam, but as I came down my verandah steps, I saw it on my solar panel array. Double take!

I ran inside for the camera, muttering ‘Please stay there, please,’ and barely had time to take a photo before it flew off to the nearby dam.

It did its usual slow strut through the water’s edge, skirting the waterlilies and all the life they hide, only this time it was making a call. 

I thought it was a frog at first, but there was only one. It was a repetitive guttural sort of croak. 

Then even from my distance away I saw its throat distend with each croak, as obvious as a swallowed golfball.

My book says it makes noise when startled, which it wasn’t, or on the nest, which it wasn’t. Ideas, anyone?

Winter warmth

Much of this winter has been spent at the computer, writing more book talks. It’s cosy inside my cabin, with the slow combustion wood heater going all the time but fully banked down, as once the mud brick walls have heated up, they hold the warmth. No heat transfer at all.

But I am also out and about giving those talks, and was lucky to see this fabulously fiery grand scale sunset as I headed up through the Hunter the other week.

At home, in between deluges and dreary dampness, the Liquid Amber tree continues to hold all the colours of a sunset in its leaves. It glows even on the greyest of days.

I’ve enjoyed seeing that the roo family has been hanging about a lot lately. I took the photo on the right the other day, thinking how pretty the carpet of fallen leaves was.

But on the other side of the tree, in that same carpet, I spotted the red-bellied black snake whom I’d been blithely assuming was safely asleep. It was moving quite briskly too. Not fair! Winter is supposed to be my time of ease of mind when walking about in the bush, let alone the yard.

A  visitor to this site had said they can wake up if it gets warm, interrupt their hibernation.

So I want this slight winter warmth to go away, back to really cold for at least another month. And the snake to go back to bed.

Sharing the place

After all the initial rushing about and media interviews for the new book — ongoing and more to come — I was glad to have a few relatively peaceful days at home with my fellow inhabitants.

As I am still without 240v power until my solar system’s inverter is fixed, I am to-ing and fro-ing between cabin and camper to use the small inverter and two panels there to recharge the laptop.

On the steps, about to dash across once more, I saw the big red-bellied black snake who has been visible somewhere about the yard most days for the last few weeks.

It was under the camper, heading towards one of the wallabies who like to rest there.

They looked at each other for a while (long enough for me to grab the camera) — and then the snake did a U-turn.

Unfortunately it then headed towards the cabin. So I’m on the steps, needing to see where it goes, while saying, ‘Oh please, don’t come this way!’. But it did.

It went under the open steps, so of course I was hoping it didn’t decide to come up through them on to the verandah.

But it came out the other side and into what used to a herb rockery before the coal book lost me my garden altogether.

Immobile, there it stayed for ages — waiting for lunch, I assume. With the days warm but nights cold, I guess it’s fattening up for a winter break.

It’s pretty nerve-wracking having to be so on the alert, with it stretched out and almost invisible in many of the places I’ve seen it, and where I often walk. I wish winter would hurry up!

Royal visitor

Down here in my skybowl I have had isolated visits from birds I don’t usually see – just dropping in for a peek at how we poor groundhuggers live.

But I have never had a Wedge-tailed Eagle come calling at the house.

Last week this one flew into my yard and landed in a very large and spreading stringybark tree, just up the hill. The photo was taken from my verandah steps.

It was only there for about five minutes. I don’t know why it came so low and why it landed; the magpies usually hunt them out of our air space quite promptly.

When it took off, I was in awe of its skill in managing those huge and deeply flapping wings between the branches before it could get up and away.

I count this as a royal visit because to me the Wedgies are the kings here, as I wrote in this chapter of Mountain Tails.

Sky lords

A pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles lord it over these mountains, often accompanied by a third, presumably their young one. They circle overhead on the air currents, barely moving a wing. At times so high as to be mere floating specks, at others low enough for me to see their pale hooked beaks and the colours on their plumage; at heights in between, dark silhouettes of the distinctive wedge-shaped tail and the up-curved swoop of wings.

They seem to be the natural kings of the upper sky, effortlessly surfing the invisible currents, crossing from ridge to ridge, watching the clearings in the valleys far below for a rabbit or other small mammal. Their main mode of flight is thus elegantly languid, appearing to be almost lazy, yet it is absolutely economical, perfectly poised, ready to bundle themselves into an aerodynamic lightning bolt to hurtle earthwards after the prey detected by their extraordinary eyesight.

That eyesight is equivalent to mine — if I was using binoculars with 20 times magnification power!

Elaborate aerobatics are also used as foreplay, to impress the female partner. She plays hard to get, feigns nonchalance, now and then surfing the air currents on her back to briefly hold ‘hands’, link claws, with her slightly smaller suitor. When she gives in, her mate helps repair whichever of their several nests they have decided to use that year. She often has two young hatch, but usually only one survives to adulthood — by killing its sibling. So we shouldn’t complain about pushy brothers or sisters; at least they didn’t push us right out of a (probably very high) nest.

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Flash visitor

In November two years ago I’d been astonished to see a single White-necked Heron in my small dam down the front.

A week ago I was delighted to see one (it?) again on the bank of that dam.

I did a double-take at the flash of white through the netting of the fence. Grabbing the camera, I moved a little closer, but not too close, and to a higher spot, to see over that fence.

Nevertheless, the Heron quickly took off and flew over the treetops, a strange sight here, although they are apparently a common enough bird. 

Had the fence not been in the way I could have stayed put on the verandah and not startled the bird. That fence is in the process of being dismantled and I can’t wait for the completion of this restoration of the flow between me and the bush.

Tree trio

Q. Could you get anything more iconically Australian than a kookaburra in a gum tree?

A. Three kookaburras in a gum tree.

These three attracted my attention with their chorus, and held it by remaining together for some time there, silently watching, turning this way and that. They were also showing me their full plumage, with its striking markings and always surprising blues.

I fancied they were two teenagers and an older guide, a parent or an uncle, showing them how various kooka jobs are done. The middle one must be the rebellious young male, needing to look cool, as he kept his punk hairdo the whole time, not settling those crown feathers as the others did.

When I was a kindergarten teacher we’d sing Kookaburra sits in an old gum tre-ee, Merry merry king of the bush is he-ee… but my own children had a different version: Kookaburra sits on electric wire, Jumping up and down with his pants on fire…

Verandah birds

Must be spring; the swallows are back. Several are squeaking and doing aerobatics out there in the yard’s airspace, but two have claimed that of the verandah.

They’re doing low flying runs from one end to the other, looping out over the lattice gate or though the still un-vine-screened ‘windows.’

Over my computer I watch them alight on the fairy light strings — just briefly. They sway a bit, peep to each other  — and they’re off again. I haven’t found where they are nesting; the old one on the verandah rafter has not even been visited, or not so I’ve seen.

I think it might be nearby and that the aerial maneouvres are to shoo off the magpies as much as to show off.

Today, I also had ‘rosellas in the mist’. The rosies haven’t been visiting the verandah, probably busy raising those green-backed babies, and I don’t know how they twigged that today I’d put out some birdseed, after about a month of none. I don’t like them to count on it.

They were a welcome splash of colour.

Indian Spring

The last days of July have been warm and calm. With a month of winter yet to come, it feels like Spring.

The ground is still very damp, but the locals don’t seem to mind.

This wallaby mum lazed in the sun for hours until the treeline shade caught up with her, while her joey stayed cosy ‘indoors’ but was wide awake and curious about all the goings-on, including me.

I love the oversized translucent pink ears of joeys this age!

The false Spring was heralded by the return of a few annual visitors and residents.

The Maned Wood Duck couple made their first appearance for the year, sleekly dapper as ever. As they pottered about the yard, the younger wallabies watched with interest. ‘Welcome back,’ I called.

I had been picking jonquils earlier, especially the Erlicheers, whose scent is so sweet and strong. I had weeded amongst them a few weeks ago and had been thinking I must do the other clumps of bulbs before Spring and its attendant snake worries.

But I am too late. On the rock steps I saw my first red-bellied black of the season. Oh no, they’re back, and it’s only July 31st.

Youngish and quite lively, it slipped into partial hiding in the unweeded bulb clumps opposite the Erlicheers, and stayed there, immobile, for ages, sunsoaking like the wallaby mum. I’m afraid I couldn’t say ‘Welcome back’.

Pigeon population explosion

I was thrilled as the lone White-headed Pigeon became three; and then five. And some kept revisiting, to peck/sip the water from the concave top of my cabin water tank.

But this week, the number of tapping pecks and the flurries of wings seemed more than even five could make.

I looked out through the window, to see three surveying the world from the tank, and two others preening and fluffing their tail feathers in a nearby tree. Equals five.

I walked out on to the verandah to get a better shot, and couldn’t quite believe what I saw. Pecking and poking about on the track above the tank were lots more pigeons, including several of the greyer, duller-plumaged females.

Counting and re-counting as they pottered about, I can swear there were thirteen, although they were too spread out to capture in one shot for you.

I am over the moon with gratitude that the advance party decided it is safe at my place for the whole flock to visit, even the ladies.