Spotto!

Kids on boring car trips used to play a game of looking out for a designated and usually uncommon item — like a purple car, or a Palomino horse — and ‘Spotto!’ you’d yell if you spotted one.

If you read my excited posts about my several sightings of a lone White-headed Pigeon, you can imagine what a treat it was for me to spot three of them.

They were perched on a tree on the island in the middle of my big dam — well, it’s actually two dams sharing the island and the outlet. Spring-fed, below it is the main regenerating rainforest gully.

These are rainforest-dwelling birds; have they taken up residence now it’s becoming more attractive to them?

And why does only one visit the house?

A few days later, a less welcome sighting — and much nearer the house.  As I was coming down the steps I spotted a medium-sized red-bellied black snake sunning itself  by the bank.

By the time I had the camera in hand, it was oozing in under my firewood heap. And not as slowly as I’d have thought, or wished, it being Autumn.

Does it live there? In which case, under advice, I have placed a long-handled rake nearby for dragging logs out. But every time will be nerve-racking; and has it always been there as I reached in barehanded?

My adviser says it will have been watching me, so just carry on as normal.

Since then I have been watching the woodheap and I haven’t seen the snake again, but I will never again be complacent about bringing in the firewood.

Return of the pigeon

A few weeks after I had discovered the solitary White-headed Pigeon sipping — or pecking at — water on top of my tank, I heard the odd tapping again.

It took a few moments for the sound to penetrate my early morning daze and register as unusual.

I only had to look past the kettle, and there it was; the white-headed pigeon, sitting in a pot plant on my verandah. The hasty photo was taken through the screen wire as well as the window glass, so my apologies for the hazy shot.

The pot contained only stems of parsley; the leaves are eaten by the bush rat who picks through my verandah garbage bins each night.

This very welcome rainforest pigeon then flew to the top of the BBQ bench and posed briefly before taking off.  Getting a return visit was surprising, I thought. And why was the bird alone?

Then yesterday, I saw the pigeon again, on top of the solar panel frames on the power shed roof. Again, it was alone.

 It flew off too soon for a photo, but three visits has to mean it lives nearby, surely.

Such ‘an elegant fowl,’ as the Pussycat said to the Owl! I hope it comes again.

Day trippers

A day that began like this could have rested on its laurels, but it went on to offer me a range of unexpected treats. With my current intense writing regime, I only look outside when I am distracted by an odd sound or peripheral sight.

This day I heard a thump, and then rustlings from the verandah. I looked up. The grapevine began to move, and it wasn’t from a breeze. It was being tugged, hard. Leaning  to peer further out the window, there it was, on the steps, at the ‘gate’, my bold young wallaby friend.  ‘Anybody home?’ she seemed to be saying.

Later that day, I’d heard an odd low sound, repeated several times. It sounded a bit like a gently-booming night bird of some sort. I’d left the desk and walked outside, but saw nothing unusual.

Then, perhaps an hour later, from my bedroom I heard unfamiliar clicks; they didn’t sound like magpies walking on the roof.

And they weren’t. It was a lone White-headed Pigeon, a rainforest bird, drinking from rainwater pooled on the top of my drinking tank. Isn’t she elegant?

Echidna crisis

About to walk back up the steps with an armful of wood, I had to look twice to believe what I saw: the little echidna suspended from my verandah edge. Why on earth was it there and how did it get there?

I quickly opened the flimsy wallaby gate and saw that, although it was hanging on tight to the lattice, it wasn’t wedged or stuck. I figured it had suddenly felt thin air beneath it and panicked. Poor little thing!

I dragged the netting away from under it, in case it fell and was caught in that. Then I propped planks and blocks of wood under its rear, hoping it would sense their solidity beneath it, and retreated to let it calm down.

 It worked, and surprisingly soon it backed down, crept through the railings and on to the second bottom step.

But it can’t have been all that panicked. Instead of making a getaway to the safety of non-human territory like grass, it had a leisurely  and thorough scratch amongst its spines, first with one clawed foot, then the other.

Only then did it ease itself rather awkwardly down the steps and waddle away.  I removed the planks.

It was back in the yard next day; I have a feeling this echidna may get too comfy around me and too invasive of my territory, like a certain young wallaby!

Non-scary snake

As you may know, snakes have a certain effect on me that I have not yet overcome. However this one, found under a log by a visitor, I can cope with.

In fact I can say I almost find it cute.

It’s a Common Eastern Blind Snake — sometimes called Worm Snakes for obvious reasons. They aren’t actually blind, since that dot gives them ‘nominal eyesight’ according to my book.

They are the only Australian snakes known to feed on insects — like ants and termites.

Not much is known about the 30 or so species thought to exist in Australia, and some scientists apparently place them somewhere in between snakes and lizards.

But here’s the part they do know that appeals to me: ‘They are unable to bite humans and lack venom glands’.

Gladiator skinks

Following my last post (Skink family?) on my cute Southern Water Skinks, web visitor Darian Zam told us of his skinks:

‘I have a lot of these. I thought having the screens fixed would stop them getting in the house and running around this summer. It didn’t and it’s worse than ever this year! It’s quite annoying. They poop on everything. I got some great shots of two battling it out dramatically last week — they were biting each other on the head and then flipping in the air together. It was a pretty dramatic fight over who gets to claim the back of the refrigerator, I believe.’

Intrigued, since my skinks so far seem non-aggressive, managing to divide territory quite amicably, I asked Darian to send some of those photos and with his permission I share these three below. Thanks, Darian!

The flipping over is clear and they contort like wrestlers, but I am astonished that they bite the head, not a soft, vulnerable part like the stomach. I wonder if many lose an eye this way.

Perhaps they hold firmly with their jaws — to flip — rather than bite?

I will now be on the lookout for battle wounds on my skinks, of which there are now five zipping about on the verandah. Glad my screens work!

Complementary colours

Summer is new growth time for the verandah’s Crepuscule climbing rose, which is also indulging in a second, lighter, flush of flowers.

The new leaves are a surprisingly bright clear red, complementing the green all around them, and contrasting with the pure papery white of the Mandevilla laxa blooms, with their turned-back cuffs  and neatly furled greenish-tinged buds.

The other red/green composition was formed by a Crimson Rosella, who flew in through the cloud’s veil to check out the bird feeder ‘window’ in my summershade wall of intertwined greenery.  They come now and then — just in case I’ve donated one of my rare and sporadic handfuls of seed.

Bird bank

Viewing the world through slightly misty and not very clean windows is a disadvantage when you want to take photographs of something out there.

In my bedroom, the rear windows face into a close bank, planted with, amongst other things, hanging rosemary and a prostrate grevillea. Birds love them.

An erratic tapping at the windows one morning revealed that a male Superb Blue Wren was making short sharp forays to land on an angled timber frame and then fly back to the bank. And again. And again. He was so persistent that I had time to fetch the camera.

Doesn’t he look fierce? I assume he was scaring off the male intruder in the reflection.

But now the little Blue Wren has taken to patrolling the lower sills of all my windows, fluttering and tapping and veering off and back again.

All of him is never still long enough for a camera click!

Then I noticed that the grevillea flowers had attracted another bird to the bank — an Eastern Spinebill. Sorry the picture is so hazy but I hadn’t seen one of these here before so the combination of camera ready and bird flitting was not to be missed.

Flirting with domesticity

Lately I have noticed that a wallaby mother and her joey have taken to sitting under my verandah. In fact she sits right up against the mud wall, under where my front door opens, so I walk over the top of her often. My verandah decking is pretty bouncy and noisy– as am I — and the screen door unavoidably scrapes out and back across the uneven boards, in order to exclude the slimmest snake when the door is shut.

Nothing fazes her, and I have become used to the glimpses of fur between the boards and beneath my feet. There is perhaps a metre clearance there.

So the other day, as I crossed the verandah and headed down the steps,  I was surprised to hear a deep snort/cough from behind and below me, and a heavy, panicky thud or two. I peered between the step treads and there was a very large wallaroo, now silhouetted near the sub-verandah opening. He saw me, gave another loud cough — almost a bark — and leapt away.

Of course I leapt for the camera, hoping he had paused. As he had, only a few metres uphill, and still inside the yard.

In the six months or so since the yard has been open, the few wallaroos about have rarely come inside. I love it when they do, as there is something about their long fur and their powerful build that is more ‘wild’  than even a big male kangaroo. To have one choose to come so close to the house is unprecedented, but to have him choose to go in under the verandah is astonishing!

It is bare dirt under there, raked clean of dead leaves only weeks ago, in readiness for the summer fire season. There is nothing to eat. I wonder — is he sussing it out for a shady spot for summer, or is he thinking of compromising his wildness, of flirting with domesticity?

A closer encounter

I see echidnas in the yard often; not daily, like the wallabies, but weekly at least. Sometimes there are two poking about, snouts down and separately. This particular day I had seen the bigger one down by the fence, minding its own business, as the wallaby was, one aerating the lawn, the other mowing it.

Then, as I went to sit on the step with my morning coffee, I saw a smaller one working its way up the yard towards me. Of course I put the coffee down, grabbed the camera — and waited. It was a very cute one, that looked even cuter as it climbed the stone steps amongst the oregano.

I think this was so because I rarely saw one in a vertical position, as if it were walking upright, and its spines looked more punk than usual.

Reaching the top, it kept coming closer, pausing to push its nose into the kikuyu, which seemed to take some effort as it had to do a bit of a body wriggle each time.

It came so close I could see how the fur on its legs shone with health, how solid were the claws below, how the tip of its nose was damp and, most endearingly of all, how long its eyelashes looked. Perhaps they were its eyebrows?

They seem such solitary creatures. I’d like this one to come closer more often and perhaps become used to me the way the wallabies are. But the tiny click of the camera was enough to stop this one in its progress.

I’ll just have to forgo the photographs next time it honours me with such a close encounter.

Suspicious sublet

My ‘guest accommodation’ is an ex-workshop tacked on to a shed. It is of corrugated iron, but lined, and comfortable; far enough from my cabin for privacy, close enough for convenience, and with pleasant orchard views and surrounds.

When I returned after my two months away this winter, I suspected a possum had moved into the roof of this section. Telltale tufts of insulation wool were sticking out from between the roof and the window awning, and a few floated about on the grass.

I checked inside and all seemed fine.

But as spring advanced, I noticed that the climbing roses were being allowed to put forth new leaves and even buds – at least from the height at which the wallabies can’t reach. I assumed the rose-loving possum must have moved on — or had been digested by the python.

Something had changed inside, too: over each bed the ceiling lining had clearly been under stress. The double bed had a huge stain that went right through the mattress, and the top rug on the double decker bunks was bedecked with what looked like bits of nesting material.

Possums do mighty pees, so I could blame it for the stain, but the rest…? And what about the roses? Did I have a ‘live-and-let-live’ possum at last?

When I finally had a visitor willing to climb ladders and prise away roofing trims to investigate, the nest was there; in fact there were two, and full of scats large and small. They were not of possum origin, but quoll. In a way they were related to possums, as quolls eat them.

I had known a quoll was back, or visiting nightly, from fresh scats in the shed and on the verandah. A parmesan cheese wrapper got the once-over on the verandah the other night. I had assumed it was living in the shed, in the horizontal pile of old doors where my earlier quoll tenant had raised many young ones.

Clearly, this year’s quoll wanted better accommodation, with views. So until I can be sure whether it is a ‘she’, with offspring, no more can be done. If that’s the case, until the end of summer when the kids have come of age, I’ll have to turn away visitors or tell them to bring a tent. The beds have been stripped, moved, and plastic laid.

I need one of those signs they have in caravan parks and camping areas: ‘All visitors must call at office before proceeding further’. 

But at least I might get some roses this summer.

Leafy visitor

I’d just cut back the woody stems of the verandah vines — the ornamental grape and the wisteria. A scattering of brown tendrils and dry curling leaves had landed on the verandah and I began to sweep them off.

Only, one decided it didn’t want to be swept and began lurching away.

It was so delicate I’d have broken it with one unwitting blow, had I not seen it for what it was — a small leaf insect, one of the Phasmid family, like the stick insects.

I do have the CSIRO field guide to these extraordinary insects, but I can’t find this one.

Flared and flattened, curled and bent, blotched and pitted — what amazing camouflage! Not much use on this drawer I was airing, so I carefully let it cling to a stick and transferred it to the brown stems and remnant leaves from whence I expect it had come. The delicacy of its feet, especially the questing front ones! 

Nature truly is awesome.