This weekend, we went for a hike in the sunshine coast hinterland. It's a very nice place to walk, typical Australian rainforest: lush and beautiful.
Except it's been raining for the last week up there, so it was a little swampy. And no swampy trail would be complete without leeches. No, the leeches here aren't venomous or anything, just annoying. They grab on to you as you brush up against leaves or just climb up your shoes if you stop. No one got bit, though they did make for a funny (paranoid) walking pace for everyone.
Little guy: No one was willing to let the big ones crawl around them for a picture!
Fun fact: Leeches are closely related to earthworms... except leeches have razor-sharp teeth, *growl* hehe
Here's a small picture assortment of different birds around the house. Clo took most of them, she loves the birds here, I also took a few.
One of the trees just behind the house started flowering this week. It's a "Weeping Teatree" (Melaleuca leucadendra) and has thousands of little white bottlebrush blossoms. We noticed the smell, it's pretty strong, not exactly pleasant, but not foul either, a sort of "sweet stink" is the best way I can describe it.
It must actually be sweet because this morning as we were enjoying our sunday morning pancakes, Clo noticed 3-4 rainbow lorikeets chirping and feeding on these flowers.
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Once again, YouTube turns a decent movie into a fuzzy mess, oh well, you get the idea ... and the sounds!
This next one is pretty funny, while the picture isn't great, if you look closely you'll see a Kookaburra on the lower branch, a Blue faced HoneyEater above and to the left, and also a Noisy Miner right at the top. The Kookaboo captured a mantis or stick insect (probably caught it with its lasers, right ?) and the other birds were trying to make him give it up by poking him from behind. Crazy monkey screaming ensued.
Clo really likes these guys, they're called Galahs. The reason Clo likes them is you usually see them huddled together 2 by 2 (couples) on power lines in the morning. They mate for life and they always stay together. Clo spotted these two feeding on clover in the park one afternoon. I think they look like a cross between a pigeon and a parrot. :-D
We came home from doing the groceries tonight, Clo was putting away the food and then calmly said: "There's a snake climbing up the window !?" Sure enough, this Carpet Python was climbing up the security screen, with some kind of small animal in its stomach. It eventually fell down to the window sill and slithered across the BBQ then down past the garden and back into the ravine next to the house. I'm guessing it was looking for somewhere warm to digest that yummy morsel.
The window, the python.
Clo loves snakes!
Sticking its tongue out for the camera
Slowly making its escape ...
Along the BBQ cover
Down the propane tank
Into our garden and under the fence (Look at my beautiful chili peppers)
This one was ~1.2m long, they average 2.5m so this was just a youngin'. They can grow to 4m and have been know to eat cats and small dogs. Pythons are not venomous.
We came back from a bike ride on Saturday and Clo said she saw what looked like a dried up gecko on the garage's screen door. Turns out it wasn't a dry gecko but rather a baby Water Dragon.
I don't know how it got in the garage or how long it's been there, but it looked kinda weak, so we set it free in the boulders next to the house, it should be fine there with plenty of hiding places and bugs and moisture.
They get pretty big and resemble Iguanas once fully grown, there's no way it would have survived in our garage...
. I'll try and make up for it, here's three new post of pictures that were taken in the last month.
. I've been seeing a lot of Praying Mantis these last couple of weeks, maybe it's mating season. I'll assume the ones I saw alive were the females then ...
I remember seeing a few when I was a kid in Montreal, these are about the same size (~10cm) ... and just as vicious if you try and touch them.
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Tonight I was cooking up some chooks on the barbie (chicken on the BBQ in Canadian english) when Clo spotted this little guy on the dining room floor.
. Once in a while, usually around 6:30-7am, we get cockatoos flying in the park next to the house. They're such a beautiful bird, about the size of a large raven, if only their song didn't sound like smoker-pterodactyls. They live in groups of about 30 birds, so they pick a tree or a spot on the ground to feed, then sqwak away. Crank your computer speakers to their loudest to get the true immersion of what it's like to live with them. Then imagine that times 30 birds...
. You might have already seen Clo's pics of the little snake she saw just outside our house. It's a green tree snake, this one was ~60cm long, they're not venomous, in fact they're actually pretty cute. Even Clo agreed it was cute when it pretended to be a branch by bobbing its head side to side but didn't like it when it slithered around.
Little guy: No one was willing to let the big ones crawl around them for a picture!
