These lovely guys have been visiting us recently in the mornings. I’m not sure if they’re Eastern Rosella’s or Crimson Rosella’s, whatever they are, they’re gorgeous! They come into the back yard and eat the seed that the chickens have missed.
This was almost heart attack material! I went into the garden this morning to stake a tomato plant that didn’t hold up too well in our recent wild weather. Then I looked down and the first thing I saw was brown scales under the mulch! Of course my first thought was “SNAKE”, and it was right where I was about to step, and then I realised that it had legs. It’s an Eastern Blue Tongue Lizard. He’s about a foot long, so definately an adult. Lovely!
He’s lost his tail, and you can tell it was fairly recently as it hasn’t grown back yet, and I’m really, really hoping that it wasn’t my cat who did that to it! So until I can get a fence around the vegie gardens, which I need to do before the chooks arrive anyway, she will be an inside cat, or very closely supervised outside.
After Dian arrived home from school I showed her the lizard and then we fed him/her some banana and apple. Obviously it liked them, ate them all up! He’s a most welcome visitor in our garden as Blue Tongues eat snails and slugs.
Isn’t he beautiful!
I have a garden!!! It’s even growing things, which is pretty amazing when I think about it, as we’ve only been here six weeks! I’ll post more details and pics later. There’s bushland over behind our back fence and we have an abundance of wildlife here! Last week there were four kookaburra’s like these one’s http://www.mareebaheritagecentre.com.au/images/kookaburra-large.jpg in the gum trees, laughing away for about an hour!
On the weekend Dian and I were watching butterflies dancing around the garden. I haven’t seen butterflies for ages, and these were beautiful! This morning I followed a bee, so laden with pollen it was falling off her! She buzzed around the pumpkin patch, hovered near the garlic, stopped off at a few dandelions that I deliberately let flower, before buzzing off again.
A magpie http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Australian_Magpie_-_by_frank_wouters.jpg hopped almost right up to the back door! I took out a piece of ham and cheese pizza and fed him. It was so friendly! Obviously used to humans, although he did go and jump on the back fence when the cat decided to play.
I really love the area here. There’s so much greenery and plant life, it’s just wonderful! I don’t enjoy that we’re so far from shops (20 minute drive for a major shopping centre) Dian’s school, church etc, but the area is lovely.
We brought home our two temporary chooks today! They’re on loan from my sister in law, and we take them back at Christmas. I can’t imagine an interstate move with chooks!
The larger brown one is named Betty, and the smaller black/brown one is named Boo. Betty Boo…. Dian named them. The pic was taken about fifteen minutes after being put into their run, they have since totally denuded the grass and stripped all the leaves off the weeds. Insatiable eating machines these things… The run they are in is a narrow strip up between the garage and the fence. They’ll be locked in there for a few days to a week, to get used to roosting in the shelter there, and after that we’ll start letting them out into the backyard during the day.
