Another year passes

 I have no idea where the last 12-months went, rushing past without a single post. I suppose I just got caught up with things, reviving my business after the debacle of a job that encouraged us to move here and reestablishing ourselves. 

Now we have been here over 18-months I beginning to get a feel for the place. Emerald is hot and dry, not as dry as we experienced when we lived in Oman, but lacking the natural springs that came out of the mountains over there. The one river that flows through the town, the Nogoa is a tributary of the Fitzroy River. Its mud-grey turgid waters carve a steep banked slash across the country and I suspect the waters carry the agricultural run off that is part-blamed for the damage to the Great Barrier Reef.  The land around the area is largely flat broken bush with stands of scrubby eucalypts blocking long views. It is a land of raptors, kites, hawks and falcons dotting the sky, whilst down in the long grass and hiding in the eucalypts small insectivores including Fairy Wrens, Finches and Thornbills skip from bush to bush in small flocks.

Yellow-rumped Thornbill

The Yellow-rumped Thornbill is the largest of the Thornbill family weighing in at a hefty 9 grams and bill to tail end can be up to 12 cms.  They appear in flocks and enjoy the harvest of insects they find in our garden trees.

Weebill

Weebill

The smallest bird in the garden, and indeed in all Australia, is the Weebill that comes in at a mere 6 grams and 8-9 cms in length. These tiny birds appear is flocks of a half dozen or more birds that skip through the canopies of the trees in search of insects. They are named after their tiny bills.

Male Red-backed Fairy Wren

Female Red-backed Fairy Wren

Male with a couple of his wives.

Five of the girls nearby

Last year we had a family of Superb Fairy Wrens, but in recent months they have been displaced by a largish family of Red-backed Fairy Wren. The group includes two males and around a dozen females who spend the day simply circling the house and sweeping up any insects they can find. These little fellows can weigh up to 10 grams and are longer, mostly because of their wonderful counterweight tails.

Plum Headed Finch

Double-barred Finch

Then of course there are the finches, and in our back yard that means the Plum Headed or Cherry Finch and the tiny Double-barred or Owl Finch which is only a tad bigger than the Weebill. The former tend to be less common and usually appear in pairs whilst the widespread Double-barred Finch is always present in a flock of a dozen or so birds.

Combine all this lot with a resident flock of 50+ European House Sparrows and the inevitable happens...

Collared Sparrowhawk

Yup! We have an almost resident Collared Sparrowhawk. When we lived in Guanaba the Sparrowhawks and Goshawks had to put up with being harried by a mixture of Crows, Ravens, Butcherbirds, Australian Magpies and Currawongs but whilst these birds have some presence in Emerald they rarely frequent our garden and so the Sparrowhawk has an easier time of it.

Well that's it for now, I don't want to strain something on my return to the blog so I'll wish you a happy birding and see you soon (at least sooner than 12-months!).

October and summer hastens toward us

 Its been getting warmer in Emerald but wetter too, much wetter than normal according to the locals. Over one weekend, apart from some pretty impressive lightening storms that had Tolkien shivering in the bed next to me, we had 240 ml in the weather gauge with similar amounts recorded around town. Now one could argue that this big splash of water will have affected my ollas experiment, and undoubtedly it did, but things dry out very quickly here and whilst other plants required daily watering the seedlings near the Ollas thrived.

The before shot

Add water

and about 5-weeks later...

The turnip seeds around the Ollas are looking healthy

and the Zucchinis are belting along

Unfortunately the Bitter Gourds didn't show at all, so I shall have to retry that experiment.

Emerald and its locale is continuing to throw up interesting birds and beasties for me to admire. This one caught me by surprise as I was about to do my dhobi (laundry for non-Marines) 

Larry the lizard

Interesting critter

I have been spending some time up on Fairbairn dam wall trying to improve my ariel photography which has been sort of fun and sort of frustrating,

Whistling Kite

Marbled Teal

Nankeen Kestrel

Whistling Kite

Gull-billed Tern

Tern

Nankeen Kestrel

Silver Gulls and a deceased Barramundi

A snack for an Australian Raven

An ancient Darter

A Black Kite

The Whistling Kite

Meanwhile, back at the house...

A gaggle of Apostlebirds

A cute Fairy Martin

The Singing Honeyeater

and a Crested Pigeon

and that's about it for now.

Spring, Summer, Wet, Dry....

 Things can geta bit confuddling up here as the seasons are not so pronounced. Not really the four seasons from down south or in Europe, but nor the two wet and dry of the tropics. It's kind of fuzzy so I'm just having to learn as I go along.  One thing I do know is that the summers here are long and usually pretty dry. Water is metered in Emerald and I understand the bills can be high so watering your garden can be an expensive hobby. So first up I'm planning on gradually getting rid of most of the lawns, not much use anyway. That will take some time but after researching on You Tube I've come up with some more immediate projects.  First off, Ollas. Ollas (Spanish term) refers to earthenware pots that are dug into the ground and filled with water so that they slowly sweat irrigation into the surrounding soil.  Really good as the water is less affected by evaporation and targeted to where you want it so here we go...

Step 1 is to glue the pots upside down into their saucers making a waterproof seal with a silicon glue and then strengthen the structure by applying mortar between the pot and saucer.  Easy to do but a little time consuming as the mortar needs a week or so to dry properly.

Now place the pots out providing an irrigation diameter of about 2' for each Olla.

 

Next step is to dig them in ensuring there are no air bubbles around the pot. Do this by soaking the soil around them and so collapsing any hollows.

Now we fill the pots with water and stopper them with a cork or a stick. The only thing left to do is plant and apply mulch. I've planted Bitter Melon seeds to start with and I'll be adding a variety of vegetable seedlings as they grow. We'll look in on them in the future and see how they go.

Onto the birds....

My list of Emerald birds is growing as I've found Weebills (Australia's smallest birds) and nesting in one of the palms are a pair of White-breasted Woodswallow. Old familiars from down south have shown up including Figbirds and Sacred Kingfisher. 

Weebill with cobwebs

White-breasted Woodswallow

Sacred Kingfisher

Figbirds (male with red eye patch)

Grey-crowned Babbler

It is surprisingly noisy around the house, particularly during the dawn chorus  period, when Willy Wagtails lead the morning choral. They are often joined by the Brown Honeyeaters, Olive backed Orioles and Figbirds along with the Rufous Whistlers. Anyone who tells you that Australian birds don't sing can be safely ignored!

Willy Wagtail

Spotted Bowerbird

Juvenile Brown Honeyeater

The yellow at the crease of the bill indicating that this is a juvenile honeyeater.

 

Double-barred Finch

Juvenile Rufous Whistler

Female Rufous Whistler

Superb Fairy Wren (male)

Superb Fairy Wren (Female)

Juvenile Pale-headed Rosella

Straw-necked Ibis

Pied Currawong

Collared Sparrowhawk

With the almost constant attention of the Sparrowhawk it's surprising the flock of sparrows doesn't seem to be shrinking, but they seems as happy as ever.

 

Male House Sparrow

Well that's about it for September, See you all next month.