Moved house

Goodbye Darlington

As you can imagine it's been a little hectic with the whole house move so apologies for the lack of updates. We've been in the new place for just over a month now and I think we're slowly getting on top of things. Only a couple of boxes of books remain unpacked and the ping pong table has just been installed in the games room downstairs.

Truckload

I'm afraid I don't really have any pictures yet but I've scrounged a couple that Paul took on his phone during the move. Many thanks to him as he gave up two days to help us lug two truckloads of stuff across town.

Good to go

Considering it's summer, it's warm and wet this year, and we've moved to the home of the Sydney Funnel-web spider, I've been fearing the worst. I'm beginning to relax now though as we've not had a single critter invade the house yet. We have geckos under the house and frogs in the letterbox but no sign of the spiders. Yet.

Arriving at the new place

Baby Brush Turkey to meet us

It's just so nice to be among some greenery at last although mowing the grass when it's 35C is not a lot of fun.

 Peron's Tree Frog in the letterbox

Broad-tailed Gecko under the house

It's not exactly quiet out here in the bush either. The tree frogs, the Kookaburras, and the Channel-billed Cuckoo chicks make sure of that. Wonderful!

Deck in the trees

 

My palms

When ticks attack

Fairy Tern

Well I managed to finally make a couple of additions to the list just before the year's end but, considering the previous tick was last New Year's Day, 2020 turned out to be a pretty miserable effort. The pandemic isn't an excuse as it hasn't really affected us too much in Australia. It was simply a very poor performance!

Lake Wollumboola at Culburra Beach

Anyway, a bunch of rarities showed up around Christmas time down at Culburra Beach which is a location that has provided an impressive number of ticks for me in the past. With a possible four new additions it was time to hit the road south. Lake Wollumboola is a pretty large and shallow coastal lagoon with thousands of tiny shorebirds and so spotting the couple of unusual visitors among the enormous flock of locals is a bit of a challenge. Especially when it's drizzling.

Searching the flock

And so, after a full day's effort, I didn't find the Long-toed Stint or the Broad-billed Sandpiper or the vagrant Buff-breasted Sandpiper which had arrived from the States. Instead I had to make do with the uncommon native Fairy Tern #512. It didn't seem to like me too much and, despite me keeping a good distance away, it proceeded to attack!

Attack of the tick

The following week my mother-in-law sent Emily a picture of a strange bird that had just walked into her house. Well goodness me! "Shut the door!", I'm shouting as I run for the car. An hour or so later I'm in Maria's living room and a Painted Button-quail #513 is calmly sitting in the corner. This is a new definition of the 'armchair tick'.

Living room tick

With luck like that the birding gods were clearly smiling on me and so, after staying the night, I headed directly back down to Nowra and Culburra Beach. The drizzle was still falling and the flock of waders was even bigger than before but I managed to find the Buff-breasted Sandpiper #514. The other two can wait...

Another tick attack

Even Emily got a tick over the break. A Paralysis Tick. There we were worrying about spiders, snakes, and leeches but forgot about the ticks. There's always something to take you out over here! Luckily we managed to pull it out of her neck before it did too much damage. A nasty welt and swollen lymph nodes are bad enough from a simple bit of gardening though.