Goanna

Walking through the local bush a few days ago I heard scrabbling around a large tree and discovered a goanna over a metre long climbing up the burnt trunk. The photos make it look lighter than it was - both tree-trunk and lizard were black. Given its dark colour, it's well-adapted to hide itself in burnt-out forests and thereby avoid predatory birds like kookaburras when young - although even an eagle probably couldn't tackle one as big as this.

The garden in flower.

There's always something in flower in our garden because of the diversity of native plants and selected exotics. But between August and January the riot of colour is exceptionally good.

Global extinction crisis continues

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's latest 'Red List of Threatened Species', "17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction", including "21 percent of all known mammals, 30 percent of all known amphibians, 12 percent of all known birds, and 28 percent of reptiles, 37 percent of freshwater fishes, 70 percent of plants, 35 percent of invertebrates assessed so far".
Meanwhile, in our garden in Gippsland we've recently added more rocks and installed 6 nesting-boxes, two for King Parrots and Crimson Rosellas, one for Tree-creepers, one for Grey Shrike-Thrushes and two for bats. Pictures coming soon, but it will take some time before the birds become interested in them, so they might not get used until next season, unfortunately. However, most native birds breed from about September to late summer, so there is time yet. The bat nesting-boxes are for sleeping in during the day as well as breeding, so hopefully they will be used before too long. Fortunately none of these species are rare, but they need hollows in trees to nest in, so the bushfires of last summer have probably put them at a disadvantage. However, one rare and endangered Victorian bird is the Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua), which are threatened because they have trouble finding hollows large enough to breed in now that many large old trees are logged or destroyed in fires, so I'll be making a large nesting-box for these birds soon.

Mysterious visitor

I'm not sure whether this little bird, which was foraging in the fern garden near the back veranda, is a Brown-Headed Honeyeater (Melithreptus brevirostris) or a White-Browed Scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis). Pizzey and Knight's Field Guide to the Birds of Australia informs us that the Honeyeater's call includes an "animated staccato 'chip-chip-chip-chip-chip'", which seems accurate for the noise this bird was making; but I think the facial markings are more like the Scrubwren, whose behaviour matches Pizzey and Knight's description: "fussy, hops briskly on ground, logs, undergrowth; ... tame in garden". It certainly made photographing the little bugger difficult.

King Parrots

The King Parrots (Alisterus scapularis) come looking for food every day. They must live close by, because often if I start working in the garden a pair show up, sitting patiently nearby waiting to see if they are going to get fed. However, they only get fed every few days because otherwise they become too dependent on human charity, rather than foraging for themselves.

Superb Blue Wrens at the loungeroom window

A pair of Superb Blue Wrens (Malurus cyaneus) come everyday, at least ten times a day, from dawn to dusk, to catch insects that they find hanging around our loungeroom windows and in the garden in front of the house. Despite the name, only the male has blue plumage, but the female is also beautiful. It took quite a lot of patience to get a shot of them in a good position, since they flit around pretty rapidly most of the time.

Straw-Necked Ibis

Among the species of bird that coped really well out of the European colonisation of Australia are ibises. These birds love to take advantage of plowed land and wet paddocks. Sometimes you can even find them in vacant blocks of land in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. There are three Australian species, of which one is the Straw-Necked Ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis). This flock was in a paddock near Yarragon.