Mother centipede

Graham decided he'd never use the remaining sandstone blocks from the subfloor walls of the old house, so he loaded them into the ute to take to the tip. Under the rockpile he found

a mother centipede with babies clinging to her belly. However, they were being attacked by ants and eventually the mother ran away to the remaining rocks, leaving he babies to their fate.

Possums

Louka requested a possum-feeding table, with a bridge to the paperbark tree in the park. We put a carrot there the other night.


You can see the stripe of furless skin on the underside of the possum's tail in this photo.

Fungi

With the recent bout of rainy weather, lots of fungi have sprouted up.

I especially liked this cheeky toadstool peeking out from a tree trunk.

Podargus

Louka and I were walking through the trees in the park collecting feathers when we saw something sitting on the path in front of us. It was clearly the bird that had dropped most of the feathers: a tawny frogmouth. It watched as we got quite close to it, and I wondered if it was injured. Then when we tried to go around it, it flew to the nearest branch.

Teddy bear bees

There are several teddy bear bee nests in a rocky bank in the corner of the garden. It's lovely to see the furry little blobs flying round and emerging and disappearing into their holes. I'm going to try to get a photo, but in the meantime look at this lovely picture on the Brisbane Insects website.

Edit: I haven't seen them now for ages. I hope someone hasn't decided they're pests and killed them.

Rainbow lorikeets

I bought a cape seed loaf from Bakers Delight the other day. Louka doesn't always finish her toast or sandwiches, but the lorikeets love this bread.

Cuckoo

The other day we were swinging at the park when we heard SQUARK SQUARK loudly above our heads. Looking up we saw a big bird being fed by a currawong, which looked quite small beside it.

Subsequent research on the web revealed it to be a juvenile channel-billed cuckoo.