Good stuff. Just about everything in my garden is edible. I’m particularly fond of the midjim berries and Lilli pillis. Still waiting for my Macadamia to flower.
Soy/curry kangaroo wrapped in big blanched Warrigal greens leaves (new Zealand spinach), when you can find them, are also a favourite. Sadly, I don’t live where samphire grows any more; it’s a good side dish if you can get young shoots.
Wires and false colour can be pretty awesome.
Anyone else have wire themes pics?
Great use of black and white.
Lizards are starting to come out in the late winter sunshine.
Pied: Bingo
Yep, noisy miners. They’re aggressive little buggers. One of the reasons that park designers are encouraged to include small shrubs with thick foliage, is to give smaller birds somewhere to hide from the miners, otherwise you tend to get a bit of a monoculture of miners.
Yeah not too many mynahs around here thankfully. Partly due to the Butcher birds!
Butcher birds are generally smaller, have a different pattern to their colours, and are a bit different in their vocalisations. Magpies tend to warble, whereas Butcher birds generally have a distinct series of tones (that varies a bit around the country). They also tend to hop more than walk - much shorter legs. The beak is a tiny bit different to a magpie too.
The adults are black and white, but the juveniles are usually light grey and white.
The noisy mynahs tend to be a bit more paranoid around Butcher birds too. Maggie’s are less likely to actively hunt them. ;)
If you hear a bunch of mynahs going off in a group, it’ll most likely be a snake, an owl, or one of these guys.
And another on the same theme.
Nice!
Butcher bird though.
It’s… not fun.
I’ve spent a little time around the Keppels. I remember kayaking out to Humpy island in August 2010, and being astounded by the vivid blue staghorn coral at the reef edge.
I’ve been back many times since, and though the coral health surges and wanes, the general trend is definitely negative. There are still small hints of colour in the reef around Humpy, but white, and white with hints of brown, predominates. In the last year or so I’ve started to see a few deeper water corals start to regenerate a little, and some of the more distant bays seem to be surging a little - but they’re fighting a losing battle.
We’re seeing less of this.
… and more of this.
… and fair enough, that second shot shows indications of damage unrelated to heat (maybe a boat anchor perhaps?) - but it’s indicative. For better or worse, heat means that coral resilience drops through the floor. Anchor damage, tsunami, cyclone, crown-of-thorns. Things that it used to be able to shrug off in a reasonable timeframe, now cause long term issues.
I remember kayaking up near Peel Island when I saw one of these roll in from the gold coast.
No chance of making it back to base in time, so I pulled into the beach, found a place to sit out the storm, and asked the Mrs to call me when she spotted a clear weather window to make it back home again.
Around 14 surrounded the boat - didn’t seem too worried by us. Kinda wished I had a drone available; with the winter water clarity, it would have been interesting!
Rainbow, looking south towards peel island, during a brief rain squall.
Generally, everything else I need is there by default depending on the distro.
Home workstation-wise… maybe:
Landscape and vegetation reminds me of Bundy… Qld?
Sunrise.
Horizon angle was a bit whacky… but came out ok in the end.
Yeah, they’re pretty good!
Particularly if you can get them young enough before the internal ‘stringy’ bit gets too hard.
South coast of nsw is a pretty good option. Great as an accompaniment to snapper or flathead.
Native cherries aren’t too bad either… but it’s a tough ask to get them after they lose their astringency and before the birds get them. The broad leaf variety are even harder.