where do you live?

[billy rubin]

you know wot?

ivebeen sittin g in a lawn chair on the front slab of tbe warehouse out here for an hour. drinking some bushmills.

listening to the redwings, the crows, the woodpeckers, meadowlarks mockingbirds and so on as the sun slowly sets

stark fucki g nekkid

not a single car, ute, bike, or lorry has come by to make me duck.

my kind of country. walking dead or not

[Bluenose]

This is just up the road from my place

[Dark Lightning]

This is just up the road from my place

Nice! Wife and I went camping (motorhome with hookups-I've spent enough time sleeping on the ground hiking into the hinterlands to last me for a lifetime). We were surrounded by lots of oak trees and such.

[billy rubin]

beautiful

[Icarus]

A fine example of mother natures ambition, Bluenose.

The density does not appeal to me for a hike in that forest. There may be drop bears, funnel webs, angry kangaroos, and all sorts of Antipodean hazards in there.  It is beautiful nonetheless.

[billy rubin]

[billy rubin]

my year is marked by milestones

first peepers

vernal equinox

first kingbirds

first hyla versicolor

first mowing

and so on . . .

we're at the first mowing. up until today the hayfields have been masses of agelius phoenicius, staking out territories. the sturnella neglecta have laid out their first nests in the fields days. threee ago the lightning bugs came out in force.

today the neighbors came in with the mowing machines. the hay is high enough to bale, and so the blades are coming through about 6 inches up. if youre a black bird and havent got the fledglings out, theyre dead. same with the meadowlarks. the lightnng bugs can fly, so theyll mostly be okay.

occasional mammals get chopped up by the sickle bars. possums and such. not much in the wider scheme, but a big deal to people like me who live the details. i can remember killing hundreds of small mammals before my sea change in belief. i wont kill things anymore.

but the day is still a benchmark in the year. up until now, the hayfields bseides urs have been a metre high in monocots. now theyll be turned into fodder for the milk and beef cows around here that are part of the local unsustainable variety of farming.

we're doing okay-- broadleaf nut trees, as many native fruits as i can get in the ground. if i have free space, i cver it in sunflowers, milkweed, or whatever else will support the local native insects, pollinators or not.

we only have 25 acres in th emidst of a different mindset, but in a hundred years we ll have something to show for it maybe.

[Anne D.]

Gorgeous pictures, bluenose and billy. Be mindful of those mosquitoes, billy, sitting out there in the buff. 

[billy rubin]

not many yet, anne.i have a big net to put over my bed when they get numerous.

ony two places in my life have ever needed a mosquito net. malindi and ohio

[Bluenose]

A fine example of mother natures ambition, Bluenose.

The density does not appeal to me for a hike in that forest. There may be drop bears, funnel webs, angry kangaroos, and all sorts of Antipodean hazards in there.  It is beautiful nonetheless.

The only notable wildlife I've encountered in mountain ash forest are lyrebirds, echidnas and sundry other birds. Drop bears prefer dry sclerophyll forest (LOL), you might see the occasional brush tailed wallaby, but large roos prefer open grasslands.  Our lizards are generally harmless, even if they look ferocious, but again they're unlikely to be found in cool, moist mountain ash forest.  Oh, and Sydney funnel-web spiders (the deadly ones) only occur within about a 100-mile radius of Sydney, so you're well out of their range down here...

I like playing the "Aussie critters will get you" game as much as the next guy, but the reality is that you're pretty safe in the bush.  We don't have large predators to worry about (except estuarine crocodiles up north - but that's thousands of kilometres away), remember it's in North America that you might get eaten by a bear!

[Icarus]

 Good information Bluenose.

Indeed we might be eaten by a grizzly bear, Gored by a western bison, dismembered by a Florida or Louisiana swamp alligator, or castigated by christian nationalists.  The USA is a dangerous country, more so by humans than by animals.

[MarcusA]

God, it's cold and you are to blame.

[billy rubin]

echidnas!

how common are tbey?

how big?

how close can you get?

[The Magic Pudding.]

echidnas!

how common are tbey?

how big?

how close can you get?

They're mostly couth but you get the occasion crass one.
Four to five bananas long, two to three high, twoish wide.
In my state if you get within 50 metres of an echidna you're supposed to slowly back away.
Other states differ, are either draconian or criminally lax in their protection of echidnas.

[Bluenose]

echidnas!

how common are tbey?

how big?

how close can you get?

They're reasonably common in areas around the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne where I live, not so much in built-up areas, but certainly in parks and surrounding bushland and, of course, in the bush.  I think Magic Pudding must be using lady finger bananas, as I would have said that echidnas are about half that size.  I have encountered plenty of them when camping or fishing, even had them come right through my camp site.  They seem pretty impervious to the presence of humans in my experience.  I have gotten close enough to reach out and touch one, although I wouldn't.

I took this photo on Kangaroo Island a few years ago, the echidna let me get directly overhead of it, maybe 30 cm (1 ft) away.