Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
At the moment butterflies are everywhere, including, unfortunately, smashed on the windscreen of my car. There've been many years where there have been grasshoppers throwing themselves in front of speeding vehicles (I don't think they intend to). Craig and I had one trip to Swan Hill years ago where we had to keep stopping and... Continue Reading →
Gaily zipping through the trees A flock shows grey, then, Lifting their wings, shows pink And in the sunset Heads for home. Photo by George Roderick One of our pleasures each evening is to watch these birds flying home. Unfortunately, I discovered they had decided to roost in my pear tree and, as evening entertainment,... Continue Reading →
Since the end of the drought there has been a spate of sheep and cattle thefts ("duffing") particularly by thieves using empty caravans to stuff suddenly valuable animals into. It's suspicious if an apparent grey nomad has a trailer that bleats or moos. That's not the sort of stock-taking I'm doing. With my mother's death,... Continue Reading →
When the whole world is sharing a pandemic, I thought it would be nice to share some of the beauty we're "locked down" with, including the dragon's breath sunset above. Our friends George and Rosie from Berkeley also gave us some wonderful long lens photos of birds and kangaroos, stars and sunsets. And of course,... Continue Reading →
There's not much competition between a long-necked turtle shell and a heavy duty truck on a gravel road. Sadly the turtles (chelodina longicollis) don't know that, and set off as soon as the rains came looking for romance in alternate ponds and dams. This one I saw after dodging dozens of excited frogs flaunting themselves... Continue Reading →
After sunset, most birds are prepared to get some sleep. The volatile sulphur-crested cockatoos cease their screeching, the galahs "zip-zip" their way to bed, and even the restless flycatchers actually take a rest. But the Masked Lapwings (vanellus miles) are always on guard, giving out alarm calls day and night. That’s because they live and... Continue Reading →
A scratch at the door. The dog knows to come around to the laundry. Another scratch at the door. Finally I get up to take a look. It's the termite inspector. I know there are many types of termites all around us, just waiting to have a little chew on the timber parts of the... Continue Reading →
Having a river in your backyard is a lovely idea, not always so pleasant in reality, as fences and dead animals go swirling past in a flood, or when you find out that a city upstream is putting something in the water that shouldn't be there. Waterwatch has been a great way to find out... Continue Reading →
They look so innocent. But my, they have big teeth. And lots of them. I'm currently not feeling very friendly towards kangaroos. Since we finished this year's main tree planting early I had a chance to go and check on our WOPR planting, a ten hectare plot near the river We started with direct seeding... Continue Reading →
I've been looking out for Rakali for a while now, ever since my wonderful assistant Matt found a yabby claw out on the creek bank while we were doing water testing at Lizard Crossing. I was told that water-rats (or rakali) like to take their food out onto the bank to eat. Unfortunately, the first... Continue Reading →
We have some beautiful beetles here, and some that annoy me by eating trees that I would like to have survive, but I'd never paid much attention to the little black beetles that crawl around on the ground. Then in March we had a visit from Kip Will from UC Berkeley who was interested in carabid... Continue Reading →
It's the time of year to see reptiles out and about on the roads again. Bearded dragons (pogona barbata) do threatening push-ups as they try to frighten off approaching cars. Or they lie as flat as possible like this one is doing, before scuttling quickly away. Blue-tongues (Tiliqua scincoides) try to be awesome by opening their mouths... Continue Reading →
A few old trees make all the difference when you're doing a bird survey. The bare, newly planted paddocks on Carkella and Adnamira were limited to a few species, mainly parrots (galahs,red-rumps, rosellas) and a small family of magpies. On a grey morning in April three ornithologists from Canberra Ornithologists Group (Sue Lashko, Chris Davey... Continue Reading →
Our lovely neighbour Cathy Campbell has a new project. It's called "Managing Mange in the Mullion" (that's the title of the Facebook group also) and involves counting wombats, working out how many of them are affected by sarcoptic mange and treating them using "burrow flaps" that deliver a dose of medicine automatically at the entry to... Continue Reading →
Before I got glasses for short-sight at the age of eleven, I used to wonder why people made such a fuss about birds. Most of them were invisible as far as I was concerned. The only ones I never had trouble seeing were the big ones: the egrets, the Wedge-Tailed Eagles, the black swans (which... Continue Reading →
In the darkness, I heard the dog barking and scuffling with something in the gravel driveway. I assumed it was a beetle. Obviously something small. But when I went over to look I could see it was a snake. Calypso was dodging in and out enthusiastically. So much for the snake-avoidance training. I shouted at... Continue Reading →
This year the grand finale of our tree linkage project was not even on our own land. To complete the 3.9 kilometres (2.4 miles) of small plots that will allow birds like diamond firetails (stagonopleura guttata) and speckled warblers (chthonicola sagittata) to move around the landscape, we planted a larger area at the edge of... Continue Reading →
We don't often see Eastern Long Necked Turtles (Chelodina longicollis), as they spend most of their time in the water. The Murrumbidgee River is rarely clear enough to see to the bottom where they hang out. We do sometimes see them hiking overland after rain. When you pick them up they not only hide as... Continue Reading →
Last weekend we planted in two different directions at once. We finished the final small tree lots that are part of the chain of connections across the Murrumbidgee river for small birds. That makes nine tree lots for connectivity only, plus two extra areas, a shelter paddock that used to be a calf-feeding area,... Continue Reading →
Just before the weather began to turn cooler, a stranger came flapping through the garden. It was large enough that you could expect to hear the wings beating. I spent some fruitless hours looking at pictures of Delia butterflies, since the last impressive butterfly I saw was an Imperial Jezebel (Delias harpalyce) in a neighbour's... Continue Reading →
One Bend In The River 