Stormy November

Well I've already done a post on the hailstorm that happened on the 18th, but there was the rest of the month as well, and a very hot and sticky month it was too.  In the first half of the month it seemed to be storm after storm.  Tolkein, who hates storms, got so tense he began to throw up after 4-days of storms in succession. I have to add that most of these storms were more noise than anything else as the worst of the weather usually ends up skirting around the other side of Mount Tamborine, but if you area a very small dog they can be very frightening.

The sticky weather had deterred a lot of work in the garden, and having recently attended two courses on invasive weed eradication by the Land for Wildlife people I was eagerly planning my assaults on the Devil's Fig, Mollasses Grass and Singapore Daisy that has established a small, but insistent grip on one small corner of the land.  The work was going to involve a considerable amount of poison being sprayed, so ideally I needed the weeds to be growing vigorously and a day with no wind.  prior to the hailstorm there was too much wind, and after the hailstorm the weeds had been so battered that they wouldn't have taken the poison on, so I'm still plotting their downfall from the garden shed.

The warm humid weather brings with it a flourishing of activity on the dams with Dragonflies appearing in numbers.

Diplacodes bipunctata are one of the regulars commonly seen skimming over the lily leaves.

As is Orthetrum caledonicum...

The native pond lilies attract an assortment of bugs including native (sting-less) bees

The reed beds are a favourite for the dragon and damselflies.

Rhyothemis phyllis chloe appear in large swarms floating on the thermals near the house, but it's extremely difficult to catch one on the wing. Fortunately this one obligingly paused on a wall for a moment.

A bit of a thrill for me was the sighting of a Cicadabird.  Whilst not uncommon these smaller members of the cuckoo-shrike family are often heard rather than seen, and even then they can often be mistaken for cicadas as their call imitates their namesake.

Male Cicadabird

The other less welcome visitors included Lace Monitors, large Goannas that can grow up to 1.5 metres in length and will eat a lot of things including pullets and chicks!

Lace Monitor up a gum tree...excellent climbers.

Fortunately the dogs protect the coops and chase them up the nearest tree.

So, onto the birds of November...

Regulars (Seen at least five times a week)

Australian Magpie
Bar-shouldered Dove
Bronzewing
Double-barred Finch
Forest Kingfisher
Galah
Laughing Kookaburra
Magpie Lark
Olive-backed Oriole
Pacific Black Duck
Pale-headed Rosella
Peaceful Dove
Pied Currawong
Rainbow Lorikeet
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Torresian Crow
Wood Duck
Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Common (Seen at least twice a week)

Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike
Dollarbird
Eastern Whipbird

Eastern Whipbird

Grey Shrike Thrush
King Parrot

Sparky still with us despite the storm.

Little Friarbird
Mallard
Noisy Friarbird
Noisy Miner
Plumed Whistling Duck

Plumed Whistling Duck

Spangled Drongo
Welcome Swallow

Uncommon (Seen 2-5 times in the month)

Brown Goshawk
Bush Turkey
Channel-billed Cuckoo
Dusky Moorhen
Eastern Yellow Robin
Figbird
Leaden Flycatcher
Red-backed Fairy Wren

Red-backed Fairy Wren amongst the devastation after the storm

Rufous Whistler
Scarlet Honeyeater
Spotted Turtle Dove
Striated Pardalote
Welcome Swallow
White-necked Heron

White-neck Heron hunting in the reeds

White-throated Gerygone
White-throated Honeyeater
White-throated Treecreeper
Willie Wagtail
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo

 Rare (Seen only once)

Cicadabird
Crested Pigeon
Golden Whistler
Indian Mynah
Lewins Honeyeater
Little Black Cormorant
Little Bronze Cuckoo
Little Pied Cormorant
Long-billed Corella
Nankeen Night Heron

Nankeen Night Heron over the Lap Swamp

Pheasant Coucal
Satin Flycatcher
Variegated Fairy Wren

Which is 62-species, despite the hail and devastation. See you soon for December and the recovery shots!

The Hail Storm

Australia can be a beautiful country, but can also be very violent.  Bush fires in the southern states and massive floods in the east are regular occurrences, as are vicious summer hail storms. In the 11-years that I have lived here I've seen news reports of the storms, but never really encountered one myself. On November 18th that changed.  I had spent the morning working in Brisbane and as I drove back I heard on the radio a storm warning, so when I got back I did a quick check around the house to ensure that everything was secure and tied down before heading upstairs to my office to carry on working.

About mid afternoon I glanced out of the window and saw what appeared to be a white fog coming up the valley, and so I took a couple of photographs.

The mysterious white fog

It just kept rolling up the valley towards us.

I had no idea what was coming, but was worried enough to start taking precautions; so I immediately set about securing windows and doors and locating all the animals.  Within minutes daylight became darkness and the hail arrived in a glass shattering blast.

It just went black and the temperature plummeted, and then down it came.

The ice storm came up the valley straight onto the back deck.

and it came down hard.

Battering the furniture and the deck.

Out front the parking area was soon covered.

and the dam was being hammered.

At first I raced around taking photographs, but the house was vibrating with the hammering on the steel roof and the animals were shaking, so I gathered them all up and spent the next fifteen minutes with them in the bedroom, with the curtains closed, until the worst had passed.

As soon as the main storm had passed I was back on the run to see the damage and to check on the chooks.

Not the largest, but certainly a commonly sized hail stone.

The driveway had turned into a ski slope.

The cottage garden bed ripped.

The tree ferns shredded.

The whole garden mangled.

The pullet run wrecked.

The dam swollen and iced.

By some miracle the pullets had survived, the roof of their coop holed, but they had taken cover under the nesting boxes and I found them standing in a couple of inches of icy water, shocked and shaken, but otherwise unhurt other than 'Beaky', who had a bruised leg. I quickly put the pullets in the main coup with Pierre and the girls, where they could recover in the dark on the dry straw. I then had the opportunity to take a real look at the results of the storm.

The roof of the chook run and the pullet coup were wrecked.

Tolkien wasn't overly keen on the ice.

The dogs looked on shocked.

Furball just wasn't coming out.

The cold started bringing in a fog.

That just floated through the valley.

Birdtables were full of ice cubes.

The back deck battered.

The back garden almost naked.

The forest paths stripped.

The upper decks covered with ice drifts.

The smashed Cumquats put a strong citrus scent into the air.

The flowers on the Bougainvilleas had been stripped.

It was almost arctic

and my poor vegetable gardens were crushed. That cauliflower was ready for picking, it became chook food.

As you can imagine I was wandering through all this in a combination of awe, shock and amazement, but the things started getting weird.

The fogs got thicker over the shattered reeds.

First the fog rolled onto the Lap Swamp

and then got really dense

Drifting across the valley

and enshrouding the house

It then started to lower...

and turned pink!

But it was just the sunset

Beautiful

and hopefully signalling a calm.

Before dark finally fell, with the help of Bobbi, I managed to secure a tarp on the roof to cover the smashed skylight, and I filled the holed windows with board.  Exhausted I went to bed to see things more clearly in the morning once rested. When the morning came it was still and clear.  The whole light quality of the area had changed, and become brighter.

The Blue Gum bush had turned into a northern hemisphere autumn.

 

The Bougainvilleas stripped clean of every flower.

The ground cover flattened and the trees shredded.

But the dogs are always good for a paddle

and in Tolkien's case a swim

Although there were some scary monsters in the water.

A really odd effect of the ice was the water in both dams turned inky black. It didn't seem to bother the ducks, although the fish were cruising at the surface for a few days, presumably for air.

The Lap Swamp - I'll give swimming a miss for a while I think.

The Rainbow Lorikeets seemed happy enough to search for seed in the melting ice.

Where did all the leaves go...

The Walking Stick Palms survived in a sheltered corner.

 

but there was no shelter for the Eucalypt trees.

We could even see horizons in the distance.

Naked trees.

The lack of leaves has just changed the light in the area completely, no shade, all bright sun.

The garden beds were wrecked, but will recover in time.

Then it rained

Let's have a preen.

That's better...I think!

Love in a shower.

 A couple of weeks have now passed since the storm and I'm managing insurance assessors, construction supervisors, roofing engineers and plumbers, and whenever I can I'm back in the garden clearing up. The pullet shed has a new roof. The vegetable gardens have been rebuilt and re-seeded, much of the nearby shrubs pruned of their damage, and the first sproutings of green are appearing in the trees. The dams waters are reverting to normal and birds and wildlife are returning.  After all, why make a drama over a passing summer storm!