highlights, SEQ, 500m

[Judith L-A <>]

18 -> 20 March 2005

Ocean View / Mt Mee

For the first time ever in our time on the mountain, we are watering in March. This bodes ill for the coming dry season. Our ground has become soaked/softened by rain only once this 'wet' season, so our water-table cannot be full as it would usually be at this time of year. Our tanks, usually full now, are barely up to halfway. The water-carrier is grinding up the mountainside, when he usually is rarely seen this time of year.

The 'antics', as Alan so beautifully described them last year, of 'our' bowerbirds, have begun again for the year. Having quietly returned and re-built his bower, M1 (the adult male Satin Bowerbird holding territory on our place) has begun vocalising again - whirring away in the cypresses between the house and the garden-bed where his bower stands; engrossed in his own mimicry; gathering decorations; and re-visiting the old haunts, taking possession once again of the great Moreton Bay Fig outside our glassed sunroom... from which we get such good views of the lives of bowerbirds.

The fig tree's fruit is still green. But beneath it, a red bell-pepper climbs a fence, and for the first time we notice M1 eating the red bells. To do this, he must leap up from the ground in a chaotic flutter - he seems quite unable to hover at all - and then he seems only to get small pecks. We've also had passing glimpses of the tail-ends of 'green birds' as they dash from sight: the community seems to be aware that M1 is back, and to be stealing a look at his work.

Other highlights this past weekend:-

        - A BFCS still feeding a youngster closely followed (& mimicked?) by a Spangled Drongo.

        - Raindbow Bee-eater flyovers.

        - Masked Lapwings dive-bombed by Grey Butcherbird and Noisy Miners.

        - A 'flock' of YTBCs, rather than the usual one or two passing by.

        - King Parrot visits (apparently a woman over the hill has them inside her house, and we rarely see them now).

        - The gun at the winery down the road still going off periodically - to scare off the Crimson Rosellas and Pale-headeds, they say.

        - WTNTs in ones & twos, but still the rain passes us by.

Cheers,

Judith.

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Judith L-A
S-E Qld
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