A quick WIIW

It is Wednesday so: what on Earth do you think this might be?

I suspect this is a tricky one :-)

Kinda' Cute, Kinda' Ugly and Damn Cute

In a shameless exploitation of Oz wildlife tonight's post is of some of the wildlife I "captured" while on our recent weekend with our girls at Yamba.

First up is a tiny hermit crab I found while we were exploring a tidal rock-pool.
I would never have seen it other than as I walked past its shell "ducked" in a way that these common sea snails never do. The odd movement made me look closer.

Second is these two Australian Pelicans (Pelecanus conspicillatus) which were lazing around by the water. 
I think they are rather beautiful, but it is a kind of beauty that is very much in the eye of the beholder!

Finally in the nearby Yuraygir National Park I snapped a few shots of this lazy mob of Eastern Grey Kangaroos (Macropus giganteus).

No that isn't a six-legged Kanga'.

She has a joey who is nearly too big for the pouch.

As she obligingly stood up to have a scratch baby 'Roo swivelled around to pop his/her face out.

He/she must have been hungry because when mum bent over to graze again baby picked at the grass too.

Like I said damn cute

Fishing and High Drama

This week three people had a stab at WIIW.

There were a couple that were close-ish

Linda G guessed: “Hmm. My first thought was a shadow. But it could also be some sort of niche cut into a ... I don't know, maybe a stone wall?”

Your first guess is pretty close, it is a silhouette rather than a shadow so I guess that earns 80%.

John guessed: “A musical instrument”

It isn’t, but that is a creative guess I could see the gold as a finish on a guitar or some other wooden instrument.

Marcy was with Linda on the shadow: “it looks like the shadow of a cross. On what surface I'm not sure...”

As I said above it is a silhouette, and it isn’t exactly a cross, but it is a cross-beam, so I guess you hit 95%!

So what is the mystery object?

Well last weekend Deb and I headed down to Yamba to spend a couple of nights on the coast with our girls. Did I mention that our baby Lu has heard the call of the beach and has moved in with the other two for the next couple of months?

Anyway her plan is to spend the summer break with the girls and then take up her studies again but enrolling in Brisbane, which is an awful lot closer to the rest of us than Melbourne.

Lu is a mad keen fisher-person so we decided to spend Saturday evening having a BBQ on the bank of the Clarence River and casting a line in.

So the mystery image is part of a fishing platform. The two fishing people silhouetted by the evening light are Deb and Lu. We only caught a few Flatheads, which are beautiful eating fish, but they were undersize so we threw them back.

There was a moment of “high drama” when this honey-eater got carried away by E’s (E is our eldest) bright flower print dress and tangled itself in her hair trying to get at what it thought were the best flowers around!

 

As the sun continued to set a shower came across from the ocean creating a rainbow.

 As the sun set it turned the sky and river gold

 

We stayed until well after dark with the play of the light changing on the river

and then gradually fading away…

A quick WIIW

A little late tonight so without further ado - what on Earth do you think this might be?

The Giants Return

Three people had a shot at my WIIW this week.

Marcy guessed:  “I think it may be the splash of a large mammal like a whale or dolphin.”

Bingo you are right on the money 100%.

Linda G adopted a barrack room lawyer approach with: “This week's WIIW is easy-peasy: water.”

Well you aren’t wrong, it is water so I guess that earns a good 80%.

Linda was with Marcy: “Gracious, how in the world did you learn how to do all of these things? For a guy from the city, you've become remarkably self-sufficient in the wild!
Whale tail hitting the water?”

Although my most recent incarnation has been as a city slicker, I am in fact a country boy from way back, and a bit of a “Jack of all trades”.

And yes the WIIW is a splash from a whale’s tail hitting water.

I shot this a few weeks ago at Yamba, not a great shot because the animal was so far off shore but I couldn’t help myself.

This was one of a dozen or so Humpback whales we saw breaching that afternoon. When I was in my late teens you would only see the occasional whale migrating along the shore to their winter breeding grounds at Harvey Bay in Queensland (or on their way back to Antarctic waters in summer). 

But since the introduction of the international whaling moratorium in 1982 the Humpback population seems to be climbing back from the brink. So now an hour or two on a headland will usually reward you with the sighting of several of these wonderful creatures at this time of year.

Now to a closer encounter, I caught this Brown Falcon (Falco berigora) on the way down our track on Friday.

She was positively camera friendly, posing front-on

 

Before showing me her “better side”

 

Finally she bobbed her head at me and shot off through the trees.

First Fire, then Water and a WIIW

Well only one person guessed WIIW last week.

Marcy guessed: "looks like dirt stairs to me.

Or is it roots that look like stairs?"

Right first time! 100%

I cut these rough stairs in the creek bank way down our hill.
Why?
Well usually we rely on a spring higher up one of our hills to gravity-feed water to our little house.
But all the dry weather we have had has not only led to an early fire season, but it has also dried our spring up.
So Deb and I  had to begin pumping from the main creek for our domestic water. The pipe up from the creek has been there for forty odd years, but has not been used for many years. This area is a high rainfall area but we seem to be heading into drought.
So I had to get a pump down there. Over most of the 400 metres (1/4 mile) and 50 metres (170 ft) vertically I can take the pump in a 4x4 vehicle, but the last section I have to hump it.
And while that bank is not too steep to climb unladen, I was not going to try it with a heavy pump.
So out came the pick an shovel to cut temporary stairs...

And by the end of the day I had the pump in place. Our 6,000 gallon tank is again full and should last for a few weeks. As a bonus the pump will double as a fire pump should the dry weather bring the fires back.

Now as it is Wednesday
What on Earth do you think this might be?

A Late WIIW

Well I was home all day yesterday, but I worked so hard that when it came to the evening I simply didn't have the energy to post.
So given it is dawn on Thursday I will post a quick WIIT.
Because I don't have time to seek out a clever image I will post this dodgy piccie I took with my phone.

I think this will be an easyish one...
What on Earth do you think this might be?