Oh yeah, I have a blog to look after!

Hey folks.

Sorry I forgot about the blog for the past few weeks, but my job has been occupying a lot of my time - plus there have been some other developments that needed attention:

• My uncle passed away in November. He had been unwell for some time, and was living in a care home, but he was admitted into critical care in late October after his lymphoma started affecting him badly. He spent about six weeks in hospital. For a while, he started to get better, responding to treatment and gaining weight, but it unfortunately didn't last. He was a quiet, kind and generous person, and we will all miss him.
• One of our pets has been diagnosed with FIV (which is like HIV but for cats). He had been looking unwell for the past few weeks, with a skin condition that made his fur look shabby and start to fall out. He has been treated with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories which seem to be helping with his skin problems, but we are unsure what will happen after he finishes the course of tablets.
  
• We lost a key member of staff at one of the places I work, and so I have been stepping into the breach until we get a suitable replacement trained up and ready. It's kind of screwed up my plans for the rest of the month, but we cannot foresee this sort of thing, and we can only go with the flow. sigh...
  
• I turned 31 this week. There was no special fanfare this year (unlike last year's three-party extravaganza) because let's face it, 31 is NOT a milestone year. It is however a prime number, in case you wondered.
  
• Aaaand, of course... the horror of eXcemas is close to hand! And, once again, it looks like I'll have to work over the Christmas period, and once again my family is unhappy that I will be spending yet another holiday season away from them. :P

All up, it's been a rather chaotic couple of months, and I'll be glad when everything settles down again. In the meantime, I have a housebound cat and too much work to deal with.

See you in January, most likely!

Bird Disturbing

As you probably noticed, I've retired Dinkycam because I have a nicer camera now.

The other day I went for a walk around town to try and take some nice photos of the area I live in, especially since the weather has been warm enough for me to do so.
I figured I'd be able to get some pictures of the many birds and animals that come in to town. I've seen many different ones, like rosellas, cockatoos, kangaroos and koalas, but have never had a camera handy.

So, I set out for the bushland on the edge of town.

There's a trail that goes up behind the scout hall, through the trees. You'd expect it to go on for some distance, but suddenly, when you reach the top, you get to a barbed-wire fence and you see this:

It's an empty field, that goes on to - nothing. You see nothing but the grass. It's eerie. It's like you are almost on the edge of the world...
So I turned around, and took some pictures of the bushland, which looks nicer than the brown grass in the field.

Much nicer. There were heaps of birds flitting around on the ground and in the trees. There were many rosellas hiding in the shrubs, but I couldn't get close enough to take a decent photo of them. The camera only has a 3x zoom on it, which meant I could have taken a photo of some blobby thing sitting something in a tree, but nothing better I'm afraid.

After trying unsuccessfully to capture a decent bird picture, I gave up. I figured pictures of trees were easier to get, the subject not being fussy about posing for me:

I kept going around the town, and eventually took some photos of less-colourful birds, such as this magpie who wasn't sure what to make of me:

I then heard a strange bird call coming from one of the trees in front of me. I looked up, and saw a black feathered head peeking out from the leaves, and I realised that it was a black cockatoo! These are supposed to be really rare, almost an endangered species! So I quickly tried to turn my camera back on... but before I could hold it up, the birds (there were two of them in the tree!) flew off behind me. (sad)
Here's a picture of the tree where they used to be:

Onward, and I found some more birds in a different area. Mostly magpies and other common types:

But most of the other birds flew off before I could get a good snap of them.

But, it seems that not everything was scared off by me. A little green bug landed on my hand while I was taking pictures:

It was so tiny! I tried to make it fly off, but I guess it didn't want to leave me so easily. I managed to eventually coax it onto a fence post, as it wouldn't have been very convenient for the bug if I'd squashed it or something.

Then, I saw what I thought were a couple of birds, sitting under a tree! I went closer, and they seemed unafraid of me:

Then I found out what they were actually doing:

I disposed of the "birds" thoughtfully.

By now, I had just about given up on seeing any decent bird life. I had plenty of trees to snap, but who hasn't seen a tree before? But then I remembered that there were usually lots of birds down by the lake!
So that was where I went next.

As you can tell by these pictures, it was starting to get late, so I headed off back home.
On the way, there was another little pond where water birds were gathering, so I took a couple of pictures of those - but it turned out that there was someone else watching what I was doing:

I moved around so that they could get a better look at me:

I left them to mind their own business, and took some pictures of an old house down by the lake:

And then I decided I'd had enough fun walking around town, and headed home (taking some photos of ducks on the way):

By the time I got back home, my feet were so sore, they were glowing (I could tell, it was really dark by then). I didn't mind - it meant that I managed to get some exercise, and have something to put up on the blog that wasn't just me bitching about my teeth or whinging about work.

If you want to see some more photos of the part of the world I live in, [here's the link to the Picasa album that contains the rest]. It also contains some photos of our backyard, and our cats, if you're into that sort of thing.

I Saw A Turtle!

I went for one of my round-the-town walks yesterday, while the weather was still good. I really need to get some more exercise, so I've taken up a semi-regular stroll, just so I can get used to the idea of leaving the house.

I walked past the man-made lake by the high school, and I saw some ducks (no real surprise there)... but I saw something else which struck me as unusual. There was a greenish helmet-shape sitting about six feet from the edge of the lake. At first, I thought it was a piece of rubbish, or someone's hat, but I crept up for a closer look and...

Hey! I saw a turtle! =)

I'm happy to see real live creatures up close, but I didn't want to disturb turtle too much. So, I took a couple of pictures, and then crept away. Unfortunately, I took said pictures with Dinkycam and they really didn't work out at all:

That greyish smoosh in the middle of the greenish smudgy stuff is the turtle. I really really have to get a new camera! Once I took the (cough cough) "photos", I crept away, and watched the turtle as it plodded off back to the lake.

Okay, so I'm getting over excited over a damn animal. It's just that I seldom get to see non-domesticated animals so close to a built-up area. (There have been a few kangaroos sighted in the empty field between the CBD and where I live, but they have been there for a while.)
This makes me both happy, and a little sad, too. A lot of other people who would have seen this would have tried to disturb the animal somehow, by either trying to take it home, or injuring it somehow. The closeness of the high school to the lake also brings some nasty possibilities to mind... though I assume the turtle would have the sense to keep away from people at a set time (who knows?).

I also saw some birds with long black curved beaks by the lake. I think they are either a type of ibis, or a jabiru, but I gotta do some research. Damn, I wish we still had that bird book we used to have years ago, but I think my Dad took it with him to Queensland...
PS. Yep. They were definitely ibises.