La Nino is the boy child who comes to visit at Christmas some years and who takes our rain. Here is one of the rare visitors of a La Nina year when it is wet. This season makes your tomatoes and squash wilt with fungus. You will note the distinctive lichen which develops only during high humidity and constant showers, there is some on the post too. It only lasts a week, already it seems she has had too much holiday spirit and some of the growth has fallen out. By Sunday she will be back to her old self.
DAvid, pull yourself together! You are slaughtering the Spanish language. No such thing as LA NINO. A boy child would be EL NINO. Then we are suddenly precipitated into LA NINA, a whole other kettle of fish.
So you are on the west coast of the USA? That's how it works, when the bath water sloshes up one end it is down at the other. I bet you don't get kookaburras with red crests though.
Yes, it's that time of year again when we celebrate Christmas AustCham-style! Bring your Santa hats and Christmas spirit to Aria Bar on Friday 9th December. Enjoy an Australian Christmas Dinner, drinks and a chance to catch up with friends prior to the great Christmas exodus from Beijing. It may be the only place in town you can get a good Christmas meat pie!
This will be our last Kooka for the year so come along and help make sure it's a big one!
Our kookaburras are all on strike, it seems! Maybe the Corellas and SCCockatoos moved 'em along...
But just this week, we've had a huge Blue Tongue in our bathroom, a Water Skink in the living room and a Blind Snake on the front verandah. The reptiles must all be having their Christmas parties early!
Now, if only someone would move that blasted Koel along. He's driving me MAD!!!!
I am in the middle of a clan war between two families of kookaburras. They come to the power pole near the house to have a laugh-in to advertise their territory.
No reptiles getting too friendly here but if it warms up we will see some.
You have to cut down all the large trees nearby so they will go and call somewhere else :-)
Hah! No, *you* have to come and cut all the tall trees down!
I tell you, the damn bird's driving me nutso.
'Ooooo-oo!' he says, 'Ooooo-oo! Ooooo-oo!'
And as if to make matters worse, there's a tribe of Figbirds hangin' around as well and *they* make a noise like last year's office party about an hour before everyone passed out.
'WoopWoopWoopWoop-WOOOO!'
What is it with the bird world? Whatever happened to good ol' 'Tweet'?
Instead of ruing your fate, you may want to celebrate your sounds of nature. The are many places in the U.S. where the only sound is the background rumbling of traffic, or no sound at all in the wastelands of housing tracts.
I really do love the many sounds of Nature at our place. It's just... the bird in question (also known as 'the brain-fever bird) has an extremely monotonous, ongoing call that *never* lets up. They even call through the night! After a few weeks of that, I'm sure you can understand why people get a tad impatient. ;D
Other than Mr Koel, we also have a flock of two hundred or so Sulphur Crested Cockatoos that flies over our house a few times a day. They're
*deafening* (ie. you can't hear yourself speaking), but I usually bid them a cheery 'G'day' because they're gorgeous, especially on clear sunny summer days like today. The pure white of the flock as it wheels across the sky is stunning. Then, in the right light, you see glimpses of the sulphur-coloured feathers in their armpits. Lovely!
We get Galahs too: they're a smaller pink-and-grey parrot with equally raucous voices. Oh, and Corellas (white). Rainbow Lorikeets (multi-coloured). Eastern Rosellas (multi-coloured). Crimson Rosellas (red/blue) and King Parrots (red/green). Then, of course, there's the overhead passers-by, like pelicans and egrets, herons and ibises. Very occasionally, there'll be something exciting, like a Spotted Harrier, a Sea Eagle, a Wedge-Tailed Eagle or the nifty little Australian Falcon who lives on top of our local hospital with his missus. He's *deadly*: so fast, you barely know you've seen him streaking by!
Reptiles are pretty plentiful too. We get big fat Blue Tongue lizards (a big female will grow to about eighteen inches or so) that eat the snails and slugs for us. There's all sorts of medium-sized skinks and then the occasional Bearded Dragon or Water Dragon might visit. For a few years, we had a Red-bellied Black Snake living under our house (name of Snidely). He was *great*. We never saw a single mouse in the house when Snidely was living with us!
I've counted five species of frogs in our garden and we encourage those by giving them lots of begonias to hide in and a pond for their - er - courtship requirements. I *love* the frog-music at night, especially when it's been raining. They all seem to want to sing in the rain and so we have a chorus of Gene Kelly wannabes to serenade us to sleep.
I hope this hasn't been too much raving on, but you reminded me how lucky I am to live where I do. I couldn't bear not being surrounded by living things! Here in Oz, even city-dwellers like me can have that.
Your Kookaburra sounds similar to our Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), although it sounds as if you have way more birds than I do.
I attribute, in part, the lack of bad bugs in my garden to the bird feeder, and bath which attracts chickadees (Chestnut-backed Chickadee [Poecile rufescens]).
We also have many blue Jays that are really quite Stellar, but no one is going to confuse them with songbirds.
Newcastle, and its environs, looks to be a very nice place.
The Kookaburra is a great big kingfisher in shades of buff and chocolate. They like to eat snakes and frogs and small birds, but most of all, they like to laugh maniacally at the misfortunes of human beings. A tribe of four or six of them will gather on a power pole and laugh for a good ten or fifteen minutes to announce their presence. It's a great sound and very loud while it lasts. Everyone smiles when the Kookas are laughing.
(NB. It's pronounced 'cook-a-burra' with the emphasis on the first syllable).
Oh! Lucky! I s'pose the closest bird we'd have to a Chickadee would be our tiny Fairy Wrens or maybe our Flame Robins (which are really flycatchers, but let's not split hairs). A friend once sent me a feather from a Stellar's Jay and it has pride of place among my natural history collection.
It really is! We have a great climate and excellent beaches and access to all sorts of ecosystems ranging from extensive sand dunes to coastal heath to temperate rainforest to mediterranean wine-producing country. The city itself is full of trees (and therefore, wildlife), but the atmosphere is much more laid back and relaxed compared to Sydney. You should visit. ;D
PS. The best thing: our main street ends about a block away from the Pacific Ocean.
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