ECHIDNA!! at last ....

At last blogger will let me upload. Thank you Kate for your advice - but the problem was a total absence of the "Done" button! I sent an email to Blogger this morning, and either it alerted them to a problem, or it fixed itself. As you said - what a waste of precious time.

So here are the photos of my friend the ECHIDNA! - they look overexposed despite having been fiddled with, but as I said before, ANY photo of an echidna is better than none. Unfortunately he has a twig across his face in all the snaps, but I couldn't move it, lest he took off. I don't know how the photos will look on Blogger - the preview mode is not the same as the real thing, but when I bring the first one up on the screen, you can see particles of dirt around his nose. I love this ECHIDNA! For some reason I know he is a boy and I have named him ERIC. I am so excited - still - to have seen him.

The wildlife around here is the thing I will miss most when we move. The place we are buying will have a coutyard with the usual suspects - camellias etc - all very easycare and ordinary. At least the developer has agreed to plant me a herb garden as part of the landscaping - and before I finish I hope to have a lemon and a lime tree included. He has a design vision for this complex and everything has to conform. Once we've paid for it and moved in, I guess we can do whatever we like - if we can muster the energy!.


In the last photo below, Eric the ECHIDNA! is snuffling around collecting ants from under the rock.

Thank you Janette, Roxie, , Carson and Kate for your comments on the last couple of posts.

I can't wait for Wildlife Wednesday to show you ....

.... or at least I couldn't. But Blogger has other ideas - " patience is a virtue" the little man inside the machine is saying (only a man would behave this way!) as he happily agrees to upload my images and then EATS THEM!

The reason for my excitement, I hear you ask with bated breath - it is the ECHIDNA! - the one that all my neighbours have seen but which constantly eludes me.

Today, as I was playing computer potato, lounging around, getting my virtual exercise by surfing the net, I kept hearing something moving in the bush outside. Usually the noises are made by blue-tongued lizards or skinks, but after listening for a while it became clear that this noise belonged to something else. It wasn't a snake (I can recognise that sound at 50 paces); it was too heavy, slow and deliberate for a skink; yet it seemed to be too active for a blue-tongue. It was too early in the day to be a possum. The only thing I could come up with was a goanna - and I haven't seen a goanna around here for at least thirty years. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me - I looked out the window to see the ECHIDNA!, right below me. In the time it took to call Grandpa Flea, grab the camera and get outside, it had snuffled its way up along the side of the house and was searching for ants under a large rock on the edge of the bush. BLOGGER! It was hard to get a good photo there without frightening it off - but any photo of an ECHIDNA! is better than none.

I would say ENJOY! except that the little man is still declining to accept my photos. I'll try again tomorrow.

Day 8 - I'm laughing

Roxie always makes me laugh! - even when I feel blah - less blah than yesterday. We did see kangaroos on a golf course recently (as we were driving by, not chasing a funny little ball with dimples around) but we have none in our neighbouhood; we do have flying foxes in the neighbour's huge mulberry tree when it's fruiting and they crap all over the car and the washing when I leave it on the line overnight; yesterday when I was watering the same neighbour's plants (NOT the said muberry tree) I saw an enormous fat blue tongue lizard - I swear it was 2 feet long - maybe more - maybe as big as that fish that got away - I didn't know they grew that big. We haven't seen them around for years (as the neighbourhood has become more populated and there have been more cats around). We do currently have a possum living between the ceiling of the bathroom and the floor of the bedroom above - although I swear it moves into the wall cavity some days. We hear it scratching itself. I think it has a baby. The other night we had two mothers with babies on their backs prowling around the house (outside, thank you). And yesterday I had a noisy miner (bird) wander into the house off the deck, crap on the dining room chair then proceed to get agitated because it couldn't fly through the glass windows. Eventually I was able to shepherd it out. But the really big wildlife news of the neighbouhood is that two echidnas have been spotted wandering around - once in my yard (while my neighbour was watering MY garden - damn); once at that neighbour's and once by other neighbours - I'm the only person who hasn't seen them. We have lived here for forty years and this is the first time that they have been seen - maybe it suggests that the termites are increasing - most houses have had some problems with them. We also have rainbow lorikeets, sulphur crested cockatoos, eastern rosellas, crimson rosellas, very occasional black cockatoos and today I saw five gang-gangs (another type of cockatoo - very pretty with grey tipped black feathers and some brilliant red markings) do a fly by in formation while I was having my breakfast on the deck. We usually only see gang gangs when there is a drought - which there is at present and has been for a long time.

It's past my lunch time - I shall leave you in suspense about Baby Flea and her Dada.