The House(s) of Fran_mart

Our plan had been to head home on 26 June as an irrigation guy was due there on the 27th for the last major subproject of bush fire recovery.  However it turned out he wasn't coming until the 29th so we could grab an extra day out of the heavy frost.  As I had let the fire die out at Mallacoota (so I could clean out the stove before we left) it felt quite cold (4 o C outside, 8 o C inside) there! The sky was clear but there was still some good colour along the horizon.  We had begun the day with out usual short walk along the Inlet to the Park boundary.  A couple of items of interest were another 2 Bassian Thrush at Schnapper Point Drive and lots of Rainbow Lorikeets and Honeyeaters in some flowering eucalypts up on the ridge. On return we found out about the bonus day, so I took another short walk to check out the flowering gums.  Here is the blossom.  I had my telescope set up to take photos with my phone and got a few close-ups of a dinin...

I thought I'd adapt a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune as the title of this post.  In fact there are two moon risings as I had published the post for 29 April before taking this image of the moon well risen on that date. Some 12 hours after that moon rose the sun followed it.  I was a tad surprised where the sun came up along the horizon.  I was expecting it to be about the position shown by the purple arrow, but it was actually at the red arrow.  Of course I should have known it moved over the course of a year but this still surprised me. Here is a wide view of the area at the purple arrow: nice colours. Good puffy clouds in close-up. Unfortunately that's all I got.  However the Koala was happy to see the sun rise at the red arrow! On our walk into town the spoonbills weren't concerned about the sun.  They were groping in the lagoon for whatever they could find to eat. Our second walk of the day was the Heathland walk (thanks ebird for...

Each year COG mounts a Blitz to cover as many areas in the ACT as possible, with an emphasis on recording birds undertaking breeding activities.  I have focused on the Kowen pine forest area (although this year I pretty much covered native vegetation patches lurking within the pines).  The following snip shows the places I visited: the red line on the Eastern side is the position of the Whiskers Fault (purely for interest - it doesn't seem to affect the birds). This image shows the Molonglo at Blue Tiles picnic area.  At this point it is the border between NSW on the left and the ACT.  At one stage this was a popular spot for picnics on the weekend, but as it is now only reachable (without specific official permission to drive in, which I had) by a fairly rugged 3km walk it is rarely visited.  I recorded 14 common species here in 20 minutes. Very close to Blue Tiles is a peninsula with rather different habitat - mainly a dry rocky ridge.  I recorded 1...