Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
Thistles and brooms, ryegrass and goosegrass and vetch. The more I learn about the weeds that infest our paddocks, the more I find myself spotting them when we travel. Fancy names, multiple names, "Great Mullein", "Salvation Jane", "Horehound" and "Pellitory of the Wall". Some are clearly at home, well controlled by the climate, or insects... 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 →
For the third time in three years, many of our trees are looking like ghosts of their former selves. The immediate, obvious, culprit is the Christmas Beetle (an anoplagnathus species of scarab), a bit of seasonal joy in a shiny suit. If the weather's right, it digs its way up from underground in November or December,... Continue Reading →
A late addition to the collection of trees we've been planting this year has been a group of trees that have just graduated from the Australian National University. They're now decorating the slopes of our box-gum woodland plantation with tasteful stainless steel pendants and copper necklaces identifying them. The concept of the research (by Tricia... Continue Reading →
We went out yesterday hoping that it was the perfect day for a small bushfire. We've had a dry couple of weeks, and rain was predicted for the evening. Lovely. I wanted to set fire to some grass in a small enclosure on a windy ridge that Mum had made about ten years ago. It... Continue Reading →
When the wind gets above 45km/h every gap and crack in this old house begins to whistle. The walls are two feet thick, made of rammed earth, but many of the windows are single-glazed and rattle...a lot. Even the ones that are double-glazed seem to have gaps for cold drafts. The oil-burning central heating we... Continue Reading →
