Month: February 2017

FEBRUARY has been quite busy. A new thing for me this month has been submitting some photos in photo challenges, which I have found to be quite interesting. The photo challenges make me think about my photography and that my photos elicit comments from other bloggers and in turn, I comment on their photos or the words used to enhance the photos in their blogs. So if you would like to see what I have submitted, have a look at my last few blogs in February. Maybe you would like to comment too.

In this blog I would like to take you on an adventure with me.

Lets set off, do you have a cuppa or something to sustain you while we explore my world?

I like to find something unusual to capture. The frangipannis shadow on the fence post caught my besties eye so this photo is inspired by her. I also took the photo in black and white but it didn’t have the same effect as a splash of colour in the background.

We like to get away in February for a couple of days (we call our mini-holiday) to Ballina Beach Resort. Among the gardens there is always a Water Dragon or two sunning themselves. Looking down from the balcony you get a different perspective of the Water Dragon.

But he is always watchful and spied me looking over the edge.

Back at my besties famous bird bath, where many a bird photo has been taken, the Striated Thornbill liked to show off his little reddish leg, almost taking a bow.

Now we are going for a bit of a walk around my place. For once I just took my camera to get some of the stuff around here. Most walks get disturbed by the habit of pulling out weeds as I walk around. This time I concentrated on getting some of the life around here. OK, I may have pulled a few weeds here and there!

One of the weird and wonderful are the air ferns. They look rather alien at times don’t you think? This one is growing on a fence post.

As I walked around, every now and then, I smelt the heady scent of honeycomb. The Bloodwoods are in flower. I love the creamy colour of the flowers and green of the leaves against the blue sky.

OK back to ground level. The native flowers that abound the bush come in a number of colours, blues, purples, yellows and occasionally red. Most of the flowers are quite small, ranging from about 5mm to 15mm. I have to find something to take with me to show the size of the flowers.  I also need an identification guide to let you know what the flowers are so if anyone knows a good publication on native flowers of north-east NSW please let me know

This blue flower is one of the bigger ones.

It was hard to capture the lovely mauve of this little pea like flower. The flower is around 5mm.

The star shape is common. Previous blogs have had the yellow and blue star shaped flower. This walk I found a pale purple star shaped flower. This flower is about 10mm in size.

More purple flowers. A bit bigger in size and a bit hairier. Grows closer to the ground than the other flower which are on stalks.

A small yellow pea type of flower similar to the mauve flower a few flowers back, a about the same size. I  love the red stripes. This one comes with a bonus water droplet.

More yellow flowers. A lovely bunch of tiny yellow puff balls. The whole bunch would be no more than 12mms.

A bit of rain saw the mosses come back to life after seemingly disappearing during the dry spell. The smaller star moss and the feathery moss that cascades over the log.

A wonderful discovery was the Hyacinth Orchid just standing tall in the bush. No leaves or anything else, just a lovely flower spike about 20cms tall. It was the only one in the surrounding area. I haven’t been back for a week or so, so I wonder if it is still there?

Rain has put a bit of water into the dam, freshening up the water and the water plants are flowering. The Water Snowflake’s flower is a lovely flower. A wonderful fringe form and so white against the dark green leaves and water.

The Cape Waterlily is also flowering and the reeds are starting to set seed. Among the reeds is a number of frogs whose song at night is quite loud. Also flitting about the dam are a variety of Dragonflies.

The little iridescent blue dragonfly doesn’t sit still as long as the larger dragonflies. They are different to the other Dragonflies as they  have their wings folded along their body.

The many blue dragonflies fly off, swoop and then land to catch their breath on any small piece of reed they can find.

There is as many red dragonflies as blues. They seem to land on the dead reeds on the ground although some never seem to land. The red and blues also fly around the house almost like a patrol flying back and forth along the front verandah, occasionally flying under the verandah roof.

Now this little bloke is so different from the others, not only in colour and patterns, but seems to prefer to land on the end of seed heads of the water plants and then stick it’s rear end up in the air. It doesn’t seem to mind how it has it’s wings either.

I found this orange dragonfly at my besties but they are also at my place but not as common as the others.

The Blue Gingers have the most delightful flowers. The flower spikes have so many tiny flowers and buds that there is always a number of flowers open so the bees have a chance to get inside. As I have said before, the bees have to scrunch to get at the pollen of the Blue Ginger flowers.

The native Blue-banded Bees certainly love the Blue Ginger flowers and have a good scrunching technique as well.

This Summer, my verandahs have been taken over by night spiders. Unfortunately they have become very lazy and leave their webs up during the day. Luckily they have been catching lots of insects so the web is easy to see but there may have been a time or two where I have walked into a web.

 

There are quite a number of Bull Ant nests in the bush. When I try to get a photo, I make sure I look all around to see if there are any outside the nest on patrol or bring back food to the nest. When they bite you know you have been bitten!

I was surprised to find the Satin Bower Birds bower was still in operation and chock-a-block with a variety of blue bits and pieces in the collection. The only things that come from my place are the blue pegs. I know when a Bower Bird has come calling when I find the peg basket up ended. The Satin Bower Birds have made my place home. Years ago they only came here when it was too cold in the Gibraltar Ranges and leaving when it got too hot here.

On our mini-holiday, we managed to get to the beach at sunrise one morning. The sunrise over the sea is fantastic.

The Seagull was patient and seemed to like getting its picture taken early in the morning.

There was a line-up of Seagulls checking out the surf.

One of my favourite photos of February. Just a branch on the beach. I was tempted to put the photo in the blog upside down.

Well it’s getting dark so I must head off to bed. I hope you have enjoyed this little bit of my world in February.

I leave you with the Paperbark tree and the street light.