More Mulcahy

I promised another Russell Mulcahy music video. How come I never get invited to parties like this one?

I've managed to knock off a bit more text. But the sub-plot is taking over. That's the problem with writing — a story is like Frankenstein's monster. Creating it is difficult enough but keeping it under control is another matter altogether. It lives!

Of drought and flooding rains

If it's not one thing, it's the other. This part of Melbourne is receiving steady rain (hooray!), while Gippsland is getting drenched. The combination of rain and lively southerlies have prevented me from going for my morning constitutionals along the waterfront. Yes, I am a sook. Let me be the first to say it.

And to add to the sookiness, I've been wearing a blood pressure monitor. (It's off now, thank goodness.) The cuff inflated at 30 minute intervals and it was bloody annoying. If anything were guaranteed to elevate my BP, it was that damned thing going off all the time. I wore it for 24 hours (so, not much sleep), finally ditching it at noon today.

Rock star

I haven't been out on my morning seaside rambles at Williamstown for the past few days, so here's something I prepared earlier.

Little black cormorants hang around in large numbers at low tide but they're cautious and easily spooked. I took these pictures with the zoom at maximum focal length.



I didn't notice that I'd photographed more than just the cormorants. The rocks are covered in mussels. Big ones, thanks to the ban on collecting molluscs in the intertidal zone. But that ban only applies to humans. The feathered marauders have immunity, as do the invertebrate ones.



Also on the rocks is a North Pacific sea star (Asterias amurensis. This species in native to the NW Pacific but was inadvertently brought in Australia in ships' ballast water. It was first recorded from Tasmania in 1992 (although it had probably been introduced in the previous decade). From there, it spread to Port Phillip Bay.

Like many other large (and small) sea stars, it is a voracious predator, taking on just about anything and everything. In SE Tasmania, it had been implicated in the decline of the endangered spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus). The sea star's impact is twofold: it feeds both on the egg masses and on the colonies of sea squirts used as nurseries by the fish.

That was a silly idea. I went to the gym today — for the first time in ... well ... let's just say a while. I'm feeling okay but I'm sure I won't be so lively tomorrow morning. Still, I'm glad I did it. All I have to do is keep going.

Work hasn't changed. We are surrounded by a sea of plonkerness. (I was going to say that we're adrift in the Good Ship Plonker and it's time to throw people over board but that didn't make sense. So then I thought about being stuck fast on the shoals of plonkerdom but that didn't work either. I give up.) Only 98 weeks and 2 days to go before I move north permanently*. I hope I can hang on for that long.

But I'll be up that way before then. In fact, in about three weeks time, I'll pack the car and head to the Atherton Tablelands for field work. If I have any spare time, I might case the area for suitable land. (Not that I can afford it at the moment but it'll be fun to look.)
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* I'm serious about this, Mr McD. Mark my words. (And clear out your garage, just in case I can't find a place to live.)

Back to the 80s ...

... just.

Icehouse by Flowers, which then became Icehouse. (There'll be a test on this later.) The video was directed by Russell Mulcahy*.
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* No, I don't understand it, either.

Royal spoonbill

In the breeding season, royal spoonbills (Platalea regia) sport manes of long white plumes and look very regal indeed. Over winter, when there's no need to show off to potential mates, they are less ostentatious. But they are still spectacular birds with their startling white feathers and eyes like cabochon garnets set in gold.


This spoonbill was feeding in the shallow water at Williamstown, completely oblivious to its audience (me) watching from a few metres away. (Quite unlike the flock of about 200 little black cormorants that took off as I approached. Now that's a sight.) Whereas many large wading birds are visual predators, spoonbills are tactile feeders. They don't look for their prey — shrimps and fish — but feel for it in the murky water.


The inside of a spoonbill's spoon bill is lined with a multitude of fine parallel ridges that run longitudinally from the expanded tip to the narrowest section. The ridges are less than 0.5 mm high and between 0.3 and 1 mm apart. Between them lie pits, which probably contain sensory receptors. The rest of the bill is dotted with a double row of small, hard tubercles.


Swennen and Yu, who studied the black-faced spoonbill (P. minor) of Asia, suggest that the ridges serve double duty, first detecting prey during the side-to-side sweeps through the water and then trapping it. The tubercles may hold onto the prey as it is tossed back towards the throat.

Foraging spoonbills are models of time management. About 65% of their sweeps through the water result in something to eat. Swennen and Yu recorded the items collected by the birds during feeding and calculated that (on average) 10 minutes of work netted just over 45 small items and 1 large one. If they don't find anything within that period, they often give up and move on.

Next time I see a spoonbill, I'll get the stopwatch out and see how the regal version compares to the common herd.

(Oh, and just for the sake of completeness here's Australia's other species of spoonbill, the yellow-billed spoonbill, P. flavipes. I took this shot at Healesville Sanctuary.)


Reference
Swennen, C & Yu, Y-T. (2004). Notes on feeding structures of the Black-faced Spoonbill Platalea minor. Ornithological Science 3: 119–124.

Swennen, C & Yu, Y-T. (2005). Food and feeding behaviour of the Black-faced Spoonbill. Waterbirds 28: 19–27.

Grebe chick

Our Australasian grebes have chicks. They've very cute. They're also very noisy, following their parents around and begging constantly.

First, the usual grebe photo. Bottoms up!




And now, mum or dad and one of the young ones.



I hope this isn't the time that campus management decides to drain the pond.

Bare canvas

The front garden is now bare. Hakeas, wattles, correas ... all gone. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll see what's on offer at the local nurseries. (While leaving my money and credit cards at home, so I don't buy anything on impulse.)

I'll try something I haven't tried before — planning. I want a range of colours. I'd like to have something in flower all year round. And I'm sticking to plants less than 1 m tall, so I don't have to call in someone with a chainsaw the next time I want to redo the garden.

Snake bird

Darters or snake birds (Anhinga melanogaster) are a common sight on lakes and dams in warmer parts of Australia. The distribution is patchier in the south, so it's always exciting to see one of these strange birds.

It sits on the shrubs that hang over the water; and, in a country where every one's ideas are filled with serpents, often terrifies the passengers by shooting out its long, slender neck, which, in their first surprise, they take for the darting of some fatal serpent.

Thomas Pennant et al., Indian Zoology, 1790

Darters swim submerged, with only their necks and heads above water, given them an odd snake-like appearance. They feed mainly on fish. The 8th and 9th cervical vertebrae form a hinge that allows the bird to extend its neck rapidly in a stabbing movement. The birds catch prey by impaling it on the beak, in much the same way as do herons and egrets.

The plumage is not waterproof, so darters must air dry their feathers after immersion. This bird (probably a juvenile) was doing just that on a jetty in Williamstown, Melbourne, this morning.

Here be parrots

Australia is a land of parrots. Occasionally, you might think it's a land of galahs but there are other types. Quite a few. On my short tour of the Dandenongs, I dropped into Olinda for lunch. I wasn't alone. The sulphur-crested cockatoos were also there in force.



A benevolent store-owner put out seeds for the birds, who assembled en masse in the trees and on the lawn. It was a beautiful sight. Sulphur-crested cockatoos always look immaculate. (Well, almost always. They have their street urchin moments.) Who can resist that dazzling white plumage and lemon yellow crest. And when they fluff up the feathers on their cheeks, they're utterly adorable.



Until they get bored. And then they turn into mobsters.

I wonder what happens when the seed runs out. Do the birds fly off? Or do they hang around, peeling off the paint from the woodwork, plucking at the telephone wires and dismantling the outside displays? Cockatoos run protection rackets. Hand over the seeds or there'll be a nasty little accident.



(Healesville Sanctuary used to have an aviary of cockatoos. Telecommunications companies would give them material for testing. If it survived the attentions of a cockatoo or two, it would survive just about anything.)

Sulphur-crested cockatoos weren't the only species to benefit from the store-owner's generosity. A pair of galahs and a small flock of crimson rosellas hung around to mop up the left overs.

Karwarra Gardens

I had second thoughts about driving up to the Dandenongs today. Thick fog blanketed the city (visibility less than 500m in some places). It was bloody cold. And I'm a sook when it comes to inclement weather. But I was meeting a friend at Kalorama for a walk around the Karwarra Australian Plant Garden. If the walk turned out to be a daft idea — a botanical gardens in winter? — there were plenty of cafes and craft shops in Olinda and Sassafras to entertain us. And there was a lot of news to catch up on.

But the fog that mantled the city didn't extend to the hills. In Melbourne, you couldn't see to the end of the street but in the Dandenongs, you could see from ridge to ridge.

Kawarra was established in 1967 as a garden dedicated to native plants. It has several significant collections including Boronia, Thomasia and Lasiopetalum. These last two gave me pause for thought. Until I saw the monstrous shrubs growing in the garden beds, I believed they were all tidy little things. Once again, I'll have to reconsider the lay out of my own garden. Karwarra has 2 hectares to play with (and they're a packed 2 ha). I've got substantially less.

Although winter isn't necessarily the best time to visit gardens, quite a few plants were flowering. New Holland honeyeaters and wattlebirds were gorging on the banksias and grevilleas. They were far to hyperactive to photograph. A troop of tiny birds skittered around the branches of a dead tree, displaying to one another by fanning their tails and spreading their wings. I have no idea what they were but their antics were enchanting.

Now that I know what to expect, I'll try to get back to Karwarra at regular intervals. I must also learn more about plants so I can get beyond marvelling at their beauty.

A sample:

Bracteantha

Thomasia

Stenocarpus, Wheel of Fire

Banksia

Chorizema

I and the Bird #51

The latest edition of I and the Bird is up at The Birdchaser. And this time all that reading could pay off. Check it out for your chance to win a signed copy of the Audubon Society guide to attracting birds.

Write stuff

The Guardian's Sarah Kinson interviewed authors on their motivation and the mechanics of writing. Here are the responses of three of them to the question Do you find writing easy?

No. It's like carving in granite. The marks you make on the page are the last stage of the process. I'm in my 51st year of doing nothing but write and for me, the period of not-writing has got longer, and the period of writing has got shorter. My last book took ten years but it was written in five months - all at the end. The writing part is like tying the parcel - it is not putting the parcel together.

Alan Garner

It gets harder and harder. Every day is a turning point. Every day I have to force myself to go and write, and every day (more or less) I still do.

Philip Pullman

I'm afraid I'm in agreement with Lionel Shriver - that writing is mainly dull, and if you've got any self-respect you'll throw most of it away. It never gets any easier, although it is less frightening. The turning point in my career was certainly winning the Whitbread first novel award.

Tim Lott

Clamming up

New South Wales oyster farmer, George May, dissolves Viagra pills in the molluscs'' water to boost their reputed aphrodisiacal properties. Government regulations prevent him from selling them in Australia but he's exploring the Asian market.

The story encouraged one of his Louisiana counterparts to engage in some friendly rivalry about the relative merits of the Pacific- and Gulf-grown products.

In Louisiana, which produces more oysters than any state in the country, industry representatives wonder why the additive is needed for an already-sensual shellfish.

To make the point, one of the farmers decided to dispatch a sample to Australia. Who did he send it to?

Voisin shipped five-dozen Louisiana oysters in dry ice Friday to Australia's minister of health and aging, Tony Abbott.

The Times-Picayune has the story.

Charming oysters, I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
No Colchester oyster
Is sweeter and moister:
Your stomach they settle
And rouse up your mettle:
They'll make you a dad
Of a lass or a lad;
And madam your wife
They'll please to the life;
Be she barren, be she old,
Be she slut, or be she scold,
Eat my oysters, and lie near her,
She'll be fruitful, never fear her

Jonathan Swift

Although it is colder than it really needs to be, there are enough plants in flower to feed the honeyeaters and the last few flying insects that are toughing it out. In my back garden, the kangaroo apple (Solanum laciniatum, fan flower (Scaevola aemula) and pincushion hakea (Hakea laurina) are slowing down but are still providing food for a range of animals.

In the front garden (which is about to be razed and remodelled), the gold dust wattle (Acacia acinacea) is on the brink of blooming. Unfortunately, it'll be chopped out before it can really get going.

Also in the front garden, and a hit with the white-plumed honeyeaters, is a green-flowering correa (right). It too will bite the dust too because it's just too vigorous for the spot it's in. Not only does this one have attractive flowers, the bark is also quite remarkable. I'll just have to find a free space in the back garden and plant another one.

Even though the remodelled garden will cater just as well for the animals (including the one typing this), I still feel like a villain*.
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* If you find one, please send him to me c/o this blog. Thanks.

The daily rant

A friend told me that she remembered the day when she began ranting at the television. It was her 42nd birthday. One day she was 41 years old and not ranting. The next ...

I don't rant at the television. But in the past week, I've developed a variation on this theme. I've had to stop myself writing letters to the newspaper*. One day — possibly quite soon — I'm going to lose the struggle. I'll no longer be known as Snail but as Disgusted of Maribyrnong. Well, it does have a certain ring to it.
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* The most recent letter I didn't write was in response to an op-ed piece about Paris Hilton, for cryin' out loud. The author was banging on and on about how we all should be ashamed of ourselves for showing so much interest in her. Fortunately, my irony meter overloaded. I might leave it in pieces.

Winter draws on

Winter is here. One day the weather was mild with cloudless skies, the next it was toe-numbingly cold with grey clouds. No subtle transformation, no gentle transition. It changed faster than a university policy. (Although, it's now been like this for a fortnight, so it's certainly more consistent.)



I had planned to go for an early morning stroll along the waterfront at Williamstown but it was too cold. Instead, I went for a pre-lunch amble when the temperature had crawled into double figures.

Most of the seabirds remained a little too far from shore for decent pictures with the digital camera. Even the silver gulls were a bit flighty. They might have been stirred up by the presence of three juvenile Pacific gulls. After a concerted effort, they managed to persuade one of the juvies to move on. The other two held fast. (I always hope that I'll see a kelp gull at Williamstown, but I think they prefer a shoreline a tad more kelpy.)

The little pied cormorants were out in numbers, as were the masked lapwings but there were no pelicans and only one black swan (which was dozing on a rock despite the racket from the lapwings). Most of the cormorants were chasing bait fish under the hulls of moored vessels.

On the southbound part of my walk, I spotted some small birds among the yachts but I couldn't quite see what they were. They were too far out. But when I headed back, they had come closer inshore. Still not near enough to get a good photo, of course, but at least they didn't dive. More grebes than you could poke a stick at. It fair made my day.

Getting ahead

The Neurophilosopher has an excellent post on the history of trepanation / trephination. There are pictures too. Lots of 'em.

For another interpretation, check out Bioephemera's post on artist Madeline von Foerster. (Lots of lovely stuff to read and look at Bioephemera. You may need to set yourself time limits.)

Getting out of the office

I was sick of sitting in front of the computer today, so I packed up my camera and binoculars and headed down to Serendip Sanctuary. Not exactly wilderness but it's an excellent spot to contemplate bird life. And there are no phones, no email and, this afternoon — hooray! — there were no other people. I had the place to myself.

The bird watching started on the Princes Freeway between Werribee and Lara. This is a first-class stretch for raptors. I saw two pairs of black-shouldered kites. The first couple were hovering over the slow lane, about six metres above the road. The second swirled around each other, in a mating display or territorial dispute or possibly just for the fun of it.

At Serendip, the grebes were doing what they always do—diving just as I pressed the shutter. It didn't take me long to give it up as a bad job. No point filling up the camera's memory with blurred shots of the birds' cotton wool bottoms or of ripples spreading out from the places those fluffy bums had once been.

The chestnut teal weren't quite as modest but they were still reticent about having their pictures taken. I raised the camera; they retreated. I pretended I wasn't interested in photographing them, but rather the ibis rookery on the other bank. No good. They weren't fooled. Canny things, those chestnut teal.

And that's how the afternoon went. Plenty of birds but none of them prepared to be immortalised in pixels. Even the pelicans, normally unconcerned by the attention, weren't playing the game. They clustered at the far end of the lake, lined up like yachts in a marina.

So I put the camera away and took out the binoculars. And that's when things livened up. Apart from those species listed above, I also saw black-fronted dotterel, masked lapwings and magpie geese. Welcome swallows swept over the water. Superb wrens (mostly males in eclipse plumage) hopped along the lake's edge. (Like me, they were probably trying to avoid stepping in ibis poo.) A black kite landed in one of the taller trees and surveyed the scene. (Tallying the number of visitors who'd slipped on the poo-greased board walk?)


Away from the lake, New Holland honeyeaters and a couple of spiny-cheeked honeyeaters — more common further inland — worked their way through the last of the eucalypt blossoms. A gang of about twenty white-winged choughs moved through the open woodland, examining the ground with the diligence of an archaeological team. (They went on to mug the captive bustards for their lunch. I saw one of the bustard hens staring at the mountain of red-eyed glossy black birds in the spot where her food tray had been only seconds before. She looked appalled.)

The resident emus kept very much to themselves. This is a Good Thing. Emus that get used to humans are quite intimidating. The birds at Serendip like to maintain their distance.

But the highlight of the visit came on the way out. The chestnut teal may have sailed away when faced with the viewing public but this male musk duck was not so coy. He was advertising his availability with a theatrical water-splashing display. I had to catch this on camera.

He flattened his curious fan-shaped tail against his back, extended his neck and stretched out the flap under his beak. Then he kicked his feet to the side, sending up sprays of water, while making a strange 'plonk' noises to make sure observers got the point. It was one of the oddest — and most captivating — thing I'd seen for ages.

I must leave the office and get out more often.

For fans of Hieronymus Bosch

Not the fictional detective, but the Dutch artist. If you've ever wanted to decorate your home with images from Bosch's vision of Hell (and who amongst us hasn't), here's your chance to do so. You can buy models of the bladed ear, the tree-man with the bagpipes on his head and the demon perched in the high chair from the Garden of Earthly Delights. Why not get the set? There are also models from the Last Judgement and the Temptation of Saint Anthony.

Not your style? What about a life-size statue of Joan of Arc for the garden? The Maid of Orleans made of fibre glass.

Or a selection of items based on the works by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. I rather fancy the scarf.

Plenty of wonderful stuff here.

The octopus strikes back

Stephen Colbert is worried that the world's seafood is about to exact revenge on humankind for all those deep-fried calamari rings. Reconciliation Ecology has the video.

More fun with Google

Just in case you haven't wasted enough time on Google Maps and Google Earth, here's something else to distract you. The Times Online and Wired take you for a quick tour of the strange sights in Google Street View.

The Mouse Terroriser

The mice have moved in. I can't blame them. Winter is here. (And how. After a record-breakingly mild May, June is cold and damp.) They've obviously had enough of the great outdoors and have shifted back to the ducted heating and messy kitchen. They're grey blurs, little animated dust bunnies. But dust bunnies don't leave apple pips of poo in the cupboard under the sink ...

I haven't had much success with trapping mice. They can take the bait without releasing the spring. But I once managed to kill two of them within a week and in the same silly way.

The first was at work. A mouse had made its home behind one of my book cases. I was worried about my books. You know what mice are like—they're no respecters of the written word. So I asked the lab manager if he'd get a trap. No, he said, he favoured poison. If I wanted a trap I could buy it myself.

FF to next morning.

I'd been working at the computer for a couple of hours and decided I needed a cup of tea. I stood up and felt something soft under my foot. I stepped back, a bit confused. And the mouse lay, rather still, on the carpet.

Snail 1, Mouse 0.

FF to the morning after.

I was having breakfast in my kitchen. I got up from the table to put the crockery in the sink and I felt something soft under my foot ...

Snail 2, Mouse 0.

I don't go around with bare feet anymore.

Bare bullseyes baffle boffins

In the Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, something is incising strange patterns into the liverworts. Are they millipede feeding marks? Or are they evidence of very small aliens who can't quite manage crop circles? The New York Times reports.

Caterpillar snacks

My garden is full of pests. This army worm (Mythimna) was having a snooze under the newspaper mulch when I accidentally uncovered it. Army worms are so named because they march (at a caterpillar's pace) across grasslands, wreaking havoc (just as unhurriedly) on the vegetation as they go.

But what they lack in speed, they make up for in numbers. Army worms can cause serious damage to cereal crops by snipping off the seed heads.

This drowsy caterpillar seemed to be on its own. I look forward to the day when it gathers up its mates to lay waste to the weeds in the back yard. I, for one, salute our new larval overlords.

I'm back ... and I'm on leave for two weeks*. Had breakfast at the Gravy Train this morning (scrambled eggs wrapped in a roti smothered with chilli jam) and have now moved on to the next thing on my list—trying to get some work done around the house.

The first thing is to get the front garden cleared of the luxuriant, drought-defying greenery that has been so vigorous that it has blocked the footpath outside my house. I've been meaning to do it for a while but last week the postie called the Council to complain. (Remember the old days when the postie would've just mentioned it to the householder? Or the even older days when the householder would have ensured that the triffids stayed behind the fence, so dangling vegetation wouldn't be a problem. Moving right along ...)

The Council issued a notice, so I'm taking the opportunity to clear the acacias, hakeas and other local plants and redo the front garden. No large shrubs and small trees this time. It's going to be everlastings and their ilk with some Lechenaultia thrown in (if I can get them to grow here).

Slightly less bother are the potted plants. I've just noticed that my dragon lilies (Dracunculus vulgaris) are making an appearance. If they produce flowers, I'll have to shift them to the back of the garden for a while. As is the case with many aroids, flies pollinate them. And the flowers smell of things that flies adore ...

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* Unfortunately I had to go into work on Sunday. That wasn't too bad, except for the whole getting-up-at-7-am business. Who knew that Sunday had a 7 am? Not me.