Australian Brush-Turkey

We are off to Darwin tomorrow for some birding. The kitchen downlights are in and work and look great! Now it time to pack and charge up the photo/video gear. Hopefully I might get some footage, but this trip is more of a hunt for birds we missed last time, so it's going to be full on!
Our target lifer birds are:

Hooded Parrot
Red Goshawk
Northern Shrike-Tit
Large-tailed Nightjar
Masked Finch
Chestnut-backed Button-Quail
Red-chested Button-Quail
Red-backed Button-Quail
White-breasted Whistler (for Liz)


Here is a video of a Brush-Turkey from our last trip up near Cairns in Queenland. He didn't seem to care how close we got, as he was so busy looking for food in the rainforest leaf litter.

Lots of Work - House not Fauna

I've been so busy lately, not with fauna work which has been a bit slow this year, but house renovations. We have decided we are staying in our house for the next few years, so lots of work needs to be done, work we put off for far too long (by going on birding holidays)!

One bathroom fully renovated with new floor and wall tiles, new cabinet, mirror, taps etc.....

Not a job I want to do again in a hurry (hate cutting tiles)!

Current project 1 - Scrape old ceiling paint off (that's with a small razor), install new downlights, fix ceiling and re-paint!

Current project 2 - Remove old broken (broken by tree-loppers) wooden fence, clear brick retaining wall and have new metal fence put up. Work left to do - New patio and paving, new backyard landscaping, install roof insulation, build carport, painting, more tiling etc........

We are off to Darwin on Saturday for a birding holiday.............oops, the house may have to wait a little longer. I better go and finish wiring those downlights!

Australian Bustards

Last Christmas during our travels in north Queensland, we went to an area to the east of Cairns near Mt Carbine. This area is called Maryfarms and is well known as one of the best places in Australia to see Australian Bustards. We saw at least a dozen bustards in about a 5 km section of track.

Here is a video of a couple of them.

More Music from SaReGaMa

Here is some more of the wonderful relaxing music of SaReGaMa. My ipod is full of his music, that's great to relax to and use as wildlife video music.
For those interested, free downloads can be found at  http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/saregama and at his blog site http://saregama-music.blogspot.com/





SaReGaMa - Aquarius
Uploaded by Triplexity.




Here are the answers to the 'What are these????' puzzle. Thanks for having a go guys and some good guesses. Some of you got the seed pod, but the rest were tricky. These are some of the usual plant and animal body parts I find when I sift through the soil under a microscope looking for snail shell fragments.

Spirals in Life

Spirals in life are amazing, in nature and personal things. A couple of weeks ago it seemed that I had lots of consulting work until Christmas, but within days they spiralled down into nothing. Now birding trips to the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Borneo and Thailand have spiralled up you might say, all before Christmas. Amazing!

These are pictures of some of the spiral snail shells found on Koolan. I was using a Leica microscope with built in camera (with a very limited depth of field and focus problems).

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wonderful Music of SaReGaMa

I often hunt the internet for free music that I can use for my videos, especially basic raw tribal-type of music. SaReGaMa is an artist whose music I really love, he is one extremely talented individual. I believe there is nothing better to chill out to with a glass of wine, after a hard day's work!

Used for a movie, this is one of my favourite soundtracks. Enjoy!

Snails Under The Microscope

Even broken snails have a beauty all their own.