A crow was casting a hopeful eye at our ducks yesterday, and said I thought it was too early for it to be expecting any eggs yet, with spring still some weeks away. This morning, there was the first egg of the season. Crows are most amazing! I brought the egg inside and then managed to drop it on the floor.
Yesterday morning I looked out to find 18 king parrots in my garden! There were also a trio of young crimson rosellas, and a pair of eastern rosellas. At first they were in a tree, looking like bright red decorations. This is a king and an eastern (smaller):
Today there was a strange animal nosing around in all the twigs and leaves the parrots had nibbled off and dropped on the ground. Can you see it’s back legs and long tail?
A wider view:
Yeah, just the plumber’s electric eel. I was interested to see that he kept the eel rolled up in a car tyre. I meant to ask him if that was just his particular invention, or one most plumbers have taken to. It’s a great idea.
I happened to notice this tiny baby gecko trapped in a spider’s web outside my studio window yesterday. It was only an inch or so long. At first I thought it was one of the little sleek brown skinks, as we have lots of those, and the gecko’s distinctive pads on its fingers were not easy to see. I’m fond of both, but especially geckos, and I don’t see them very often.
It’s tail was very securely fastened to the web, which made me think it had been properly caught, rather than had just wandered into the web and got tangled. Perhaps the spider was waiting for it to weaken, because it hadn’t been poisoned or wrapped up more. I didn’t search for the spider, but maybe it was one of the black house spiders that live under the external window sills. After I had taken a few photos, I rescued the gecko and it ran away into the tanbark. It surprised me thinking about it afterwards that it hadn’t shed it’s tail to get away as both geckos and skinks can. Maybe tail shedding ability only comes with age?
Also from my garden, a moth with great camouflage, sitting on a towel on the washing line the other day. From other angles it was even more the colour of the towel. Underneath though, it was very colourful, and it had masked face like a bandit, and a shape that made me think of stealth bombers.
There are a few more photos in my Backyard set at Flickr.
