Sunday Swan Watch IX: The Way of the Pelican.

I spoke too soon when I said my computer is back to normal. It has been crashing when I have had more than a couple of windows open at a time. I’ve checked it through and I don’t think it is a hardware problem. Methinks the time has come to reinstall Windows. I have all my data backed up (mostly 1,000s of photos and multiple copies of all my writing), so I’m not going to loose anything on a reinstall. What a headache in any case.

Now to the birds.

As you know if you are following my Swan Watch series I didn’t see them at all last week, in fact the last time I saw them was about two and a half weeks ago.

Io has taken the swans to heart and spends as much time as I do (actually probably more) looking for them.

Any way yesterday she reported she had spotted them, so when I headed out I went pretty much straight to them. They were on a pond just down below our house, where we haven’t seen them before.

I got quite a surprise as they came steaming in my direction. In two and a bit weeks, the cygnets have grown an amazing amount.

They have grown from cute and fluffy to gawky looking teenagers.This piccie shows just how big they are now, in comparison to their mum.
A few portraits.

MumAnd babiesI think the babies are still quite cute (in an ugly duckling kind of way)
And they continue to show more of the graceful form they will have as adults.

A new arrival turned up, an Australian Pelican.
The lighter feathers on these guys are actually snowy white but this fellow was painted by the rich golden light of the early evening.He/she had a bit of a stretch and then Hopped up on a rock to do a bit of preening.I was briefly distracted by this chestnut teal.Then this noisy fellow made a bigger distraction.When I turned back the pelican was busy.
Busy doing Pelican Tai Chi !

He settled down again and seemed to inscrutably say “What are you laughing at?”

Now finally, this may be my last post for at least a few days.

I will be away in the north of NSW for most of next week. It’s my mum’s 81st birthday so I am going up to pay her a visit.

She has an internet connection, but I am not sure if I will be able to upload much.

At least I should be able to get some time for writing in the evenings.

Sunday Swan Watch VIII: Substitute Cute and Little Monsters.

Well thank goodness our internet service came back to normal at midnight last night.

Unfortunately, Oz doesn’t have many ISP companies and one of the ways they have come up with charging more than you should have to pay is by putting a download limit on your account. They have ‘better’ (read more expensive) accounts that have faster access and larger download limits. Deb and I have a middle range account for which we pay $79 per month. In the past the 25 gigabyte download limit was more than we ever needed (our connection isn’t fast enough for movies etc). Recently however Lu our youngest, discovered online Anime and Manga and has been pulling down so much she has used our quota.

Fortunately, there is a little more competition creeping in to the system and we will shortly (when our current contract expires) switch to another provider who will give us nearly ten times the limit for almost the same money ($89/month).

Now to the Swans, once again I have had no luck in my hunt for them. They seem to be amazingly mobile and there is quite a large area they can use. Thinking about it I guess this behaviour would be a defence mechanism to protect the cygnets. If the parents keep them moving they would be less likely to come to the attention of a predator than if they remain stationary.

As my title suggests I caught some other cute young things to share as a substitute for swanlings.

Ducklings!Two female chestnut teals have some brand new ducklings down on one of the ponds the swans call home. Unusually the two mothers seem to be sharing a single brood of eight ducklings.

Here is one of the females nervously eyeing me. They tried to urge the babies away but the ducklings are so new (I guess only hatched a day or two ago) that they weren’t very good at listening to either of their mothers.

Rather they were excitedly dabbling around in the water.I was able to get close enough to get some lovely shots with my telephoto lens.The mothers fussed around trying to lead the babies to the safety of some of the reed beds.Finally, they got the message through to the babies and the whole flotilla steamed away from me.Not far away Io pointed out something she has found recently.
A bull ant nest, not all that long ago I posted a piccie of a bull ant and recounted an anecdote about jumping around with one up my pants.

I guess I must be a glutton for punishment because I went close to get some shots. Bull ants are amazingly aggressive, but it was quite cold so they weren’t moving very quickly.

These guys are a black species (the last one I photographed was from a red species). They are huge, nearly as long as my thumb. These photos aren’t crystal clear because I wasn’t getting very close (they have a nasty sting) but I was happy enough to post them.
In the above photo you can see how large their mandibles are. They can give nasty bite, but their real weapon is their sting.

In these couple you can see how glossy black their abdomens are. Then I noticed if you look closely (I’ve blown it up so you can see) you can see me reflected in the shine as I take the pic.Now I promised Cockatoos and Parrots before my internet went on the blink so they will be my next post (assuming nothing else goes wrong).

Sunday Swan Watch V: Cuteness Overload

Inevitably I found some minor errors with my proof copy of Veiled in Shadows. So I have uploaded a corrected version to LightningSource (my printers). No doubt when I check it again there will still be minor issues. Unfortunately, the reality is that no matter how many times you check a book there will always be more things you can correct.

However, I guess that this time it will be a case of enough is enough and I will approve the proof. This means that the book should be available in print in two to four weeks.

In the mean time I have begun reformatting (again) the corrected copy to get it ready for a Kindle (and other e-formats) edition. It should be ready for e-readers at about the same time the print copy becomes available.

Now to Swan Watch for the week.

I found our swans with much more ease this week. The little family was grazing on the lawn bedside the pond.Mum (dad was close by) would walk a short distance with the babies waddling behind. Then the cygnets would flop down on the grass.The babies have grown, but they still resemble cute fuzz-balls more than anything else.
The cygnets look intently at blades of grassbefore reaching across with their necks, that are hinting of the sinuous length they will one day have, to pluck one that looks appetising enough.

Meanwhile mum fusses around to make sure they are safe.While dad keeps both eyes on me to make sure I am not getting too close.Another close up of the babies.On another pond a few hundred metres away a chestnut teal is also raising a family.When she realised I was watching she quickly lead her brood into some reed beds. I wandered around to the other side of her pond to see if I could get a closer shot. This gave me a bonus, I spotted this white-faced heron hunting in the thicker vegetation.He/she was quite successfully catching little fish.