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Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Wildlife XIV: The Cage

Friday, June 10th, 2016

I placed the wildlife camera on the back patio over my trip, carefully aimed at one of our bird feeders, which itself is cleverly designed to keep the squirrels out via an impossible-to-penetrate cage.

Here’s one of the first photos it took:

As you can see, the cage works imperfectly!

All told 191 photos were taken in a single day. This was because the seal on the camera had apparently failed and water had gotten inside, which seems to have prevented it from taking photos for most of the time it was placed. I’m not sure if it is permanently ruined or not; I’m drying it out now before trying again.

At any rate, in the several hours of the first day it was out almost every single one of the photos was similar to the above, featuring suspicious squirrels:

Brave squirrels:

Friendly squirrels:

And even in a few shots – thankfully! – a bird:

That little bird is a wren (named ‘Kylo Wren’) who is currently building his nest in our wren house and singing for a mate. We assume he’ll be successfully; many little wrens have been hatched in that house over the years.

Also, you’ll note the chipmunk in the last two shots. This is the first time I have gotten clear, focused shots of chipmunks on this camera. This is no small achievement since they spend most of their lives invisible and moving at light speed. I guess the lure of the 110% delicious cracked cown and sunflower mix I put out was too much for them 🙂

My neighbour recently told me she has seen groudhogs (yes multiple, possibly a parent and child) wandering in our backyard. They will be the next target of the camera assuming it still works.

Posted in Garden, Home, Nature | 1 Comment »

Introducing Marimo!

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016

This is one of the more unusual birthday gifts I received this year:

A glass jar with rocks, a bit of sea fan and something in a bag. First we put the rocks and fan in the jar and filled with tap water:

Here’s the weird thing in the bag:

It’s a ‘marimo’, a type of algae native to certain lakes around the world that grows into ball shapes. He was to live in our jar!

After a quick washing:

We put him in the jar:

Where he floated! The sheet that came with him said this was due to the water ph and oxygen content, and marimo would change his depth depending on such things.

After about a week though, he has settled on the bottom like he would in a lake:

Marimo needs almost no maintenance, prefers low light (no direct sunlight!) and can apparently live (and grow) for decades. The perfect plant for a cat household!

Posted in Garden, Home, Nature, Pets | Comments Closed

Magic Days

Sunday, January 17th, 2016

That’s the Prince of Randwick himself, preparing his deck at the MTG prerelease tourney we attended yesterday.

It was a fun, low pressure casual event in which everyone won prizes. This was good for me because I badly played a deck I had badly built 🙂

The players themselves here are pretty much the same as in the USA. Except for the funny accents Aussies have 😉

After the tourney we went and checked out the pinballs at the nearby RSL club, which led to a lengthy (and fascinating) discussion with the guy who manages it all and is heavily involved with pinball collecting.

An evening of cricket on the Telly (and more MTG playing!) rounded off a fun day.

Today – my last full day this trip – I walked to Bondi along the cliffs via Coogee Beach. I do this walk (which takes a few hours) every trip and it’s always great.

It wasn’t too hot or too windy, as if the country was apologizing for the weird weather it gave me this trip. Since it was a Sunday, the walk was extremely popular with both locals and tourists alike.

Pleasant weather notwithstanding, I was ruined by the time I got to Bondi Junction mall, and almost wept when I sat down to this:

Which was immediately washed down with this:

Tiredness notwithstanding, today was another great day!

Posted in Games, MTG, Nature, Trip | Comments Closed

The Burning Mountain

Tuesday, January 12th, 2016

Today Sue and I visited this:

It’s a burning coal seam about 2.5 hours northwest of Newcastle. I’d learned of it via an ancient episode of Ask The Leyland Brothers and new I had to visit one day. Despite very high temperatures (upper 30s) today was the day!

The area of interest itself is over an hours walk from the (somewhat uninviting) carpark, and the walk is about 25% like the above image, but mostly like this:

It was hot and humid, but the path was mostly uphill and the higher we got the stronger the breezes. We didn’t see any mammals but there were a few birds, lizards and about five billion of these guys:

He looks bigger in that photo than he was, which was about an inch long. Sue was mindful of snakes, but if they were around they were hiding in the shade 🙂

Eventually we reached the top, which looked like this:

The smell of sulphur was strong, but we didn’t see much steam coming out of the ground. The signs said that 30 meters underground the temperature was 1700C, but if it was notably warmer at the summit it wasn’t easy to tell due to how hot it was anyway.

Ducking around the fence into the sulfurous ground made us a bit uncomfortable. There was something unusual about the place, and we quickly shuffled away.

Of course it took us another hour or so to walk back to the car. It was getting even warmer now, and the car air conditioning was welcome indeed.

On the drive back we stopped at two lakes. The first, Lake Glenbawn was ringed by a very locked fence and this sign hung on the gate:

The next, Lake Lidell had an incredibly creepy caravan park full of ancient, mostly locked up caravans that look like they’d been there since the 1970s. We drove around, disturbed by the creepiness of the place, and I doubt you could have paid us to exit the car!

There’s a story waiting to be told about that place!

Anyway Burning Mountain was fun and it was a good day trip ‘out west’. If you’re ever here, it’s worth the trip. On a cooler day 🙂

Posted in Nature, Trip | Comments Closed

The Great North Walk

Saturday, January 9th, 2016

I caught a bus yesterday to Speers Point, a town on the shores of Lake Maquarie.

I was there since I wanted to do the portion of The Great North Walk that connected the lake to Newcastle. The entire walk runs all the way to (or from) Sydney but I’d never done any of it.

The lake was beautiful and I briefly considered abandoning my plan and walking to Belmont. However I was looking forward to a bush walk and followed the markers guiding hikers along the trail:

After a bit of walking through the suburbs, I reached the bush and this sign:

I was a little surprised at this point since I thought Newcastle was only 8 km away and Charlestown 3. Apparently this leg of the walk was a bit longer than I expected. I didn’t know too much about the route except that until Charlestown almost all of it would be in the bush. Here’s the path vanishing into the trees:

The first half hour or so was fun, if a little hot. The bush was thin, the path wide and dry, and the songs of birds were everywhere. I watched carefully for snakes but only saw lizards. I’m sure snakes had their eyes on me though from hideaways like this one:

The sun rose higher and it got hotter. Getting close to an hour into the bush the path had started breaking up and patches of mud and even puddles (remnants of the recent storms) were to be seen.

As I pushed on through spiderwebs and knee-high grasses it became increasingly humid and wet. It was clear that the path – now much smaller and slightly overgrown – had been a creek only days prior. My shoes sunk into mud.

The puddles became larger; the mud deeper. Along with the birdsong I started hearing frogs. I was drenched in sweat; my bottle of water long since empty. I’d been walking for almost 2 hours. Where was I?

Around this time I saw the only other person I would see on the track, an elderly lady heading from Dudley to Toronto (a considerable distance). We had a chat for a while and she was very afraid of snakes, telling me this section of the track was known for them. I told her I’d seen none and that puddles and mud would be her biggest problem. She told me Charlestown was only 20 minutes away. Hallelujah!

That’s how the track went under the freeway. The tunnel was long and very dark, and I can only imagine what sort of evil creatures dwelled at to bottom of the sickly creek that passed through the tunnel as well. This was only 10 minutes or so from Charlestown, but even at the very end the trail had surprises, including sharp rises and drops under a near-rainforest canopy.

I shuffled along at double my usual speed, eager to put this hell behind me.

When Charlestown Square finally loomed into sight I was overcome with joy. Although only a little over two hours it had been one of the most unpleasant bush walks I’d ever done and although I’m glad I did it I know I’ll never tread those paths again!

I had initially planned to walk the entire (15 km?!) trail to Newcastle. That plan was quickly abandoned, although as fate would have it I ended up walking back another way anyway.

It was a very tiring day. I think I need a vacation 😉

Posted in Miscellaneous, Nature, Trip | Comments Closed

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