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Backyard Bandits

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new night vision camera. We occasionally get bats eating our figs in the backyard. We will be ready to capture them on camera next summer should they decide to pay us a visit. Of course, they are not the only animals that help themselves to our produce at the night market. Here is a taste of our backyard fauna.

The brushtail possums are frequent, noisy visitors. Normally, there is a furore after sunset when the possum exits our garage/shed. The dogs go crazy. However, I didn’t really expect the possum to stop by at 2am in the morning.

This photo was taken a couple of years ago. My neighbour has a much better shed but the possums prefer to slum it with us.

Mr Possum, that is not your best angle.

The rodents have been a huge problem over the last few years. We have caught quite a few in a snap trap that my True Love designed. The trap is placed in what is effectively a tunnel. This is the culling method that is preferred by the (Australian) Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (see here). Unfortunately, the rats are very canny and after a successful night trapping, the trap must remain unset for several weeks until the rodents get hungry enough to try their luck again.

Our fig tree fruited prolifically this year, but it seemed none but the rodents would enjoy the fruit. We tried collaring the tree with an Elizabethan dog collar to prevent the rodents ascent. It worked.

Here is a short clip of one of the little bastards. As yet, we have not worked out a way to keep them from our tomatoes.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of the backyard antics. Perhaps we will set up the camera in our banksia rose hedge. It appeared to shimmy with movement this afternoon.

Thanks for joining me.
Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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Ravenous

Ravenous is a great word, don’t you think? There is something quite primal, urgent and debased about it. Or at least, that was its historical context but, at least outside of the bedroom, it is a word that has now attained some respectability and simply means very hungry. According to Mirriam-Webster, the noun “raven” (black bird) and the verb “raven” (from which the adjective “ravenous” is derived) are unrelated. They are homographs, which is a shame because I have a ravenous raven story. This is your chance, squeamish readers, to skip this story.

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The Changing Seasons – April 2022

Canberra (Australia) – Autumn delivers and April visitors.

I haven’t contributed to The Changing Seasons since December 2021. A lot has happened over the past four months, including health issues, poetry, completion of a major mosaic project and the start of a new front garden. Apart from the health matters, the garden has taken priority because we have to get it in now ahead of the next, inevitable, drought. In the regular garden, we had to abandon the tomatoes and beans to the rodents this year. They have been very hungry (we caught three and Makea, our dog, caught one). Nevertheless, we still managed to harvest three pumpkins from vines we did not plant. The fig tree went bonkers and produced two huge bumper crops. The rodents got stuck into the first crop but we managed to score some figs from the second batch by securing Elizabethan collars around the trunk of the tree to prevent the rats from climbing up the tree. I also collected a small tub of feijoa today, our first ever crop in more than two decades that we have lived at our house in Canberra.

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Consuming Passions

Photo by elif tekkaya on Pexels.com

Consuming Passions
Long slender legs to her armpits;
beautiful eyes flashed her carnal intent.
He had been looking for her his whole life.
Their eyes locked,
bodies swaying together in lovers’ embrace.
A question hung between them.
He: “What do you want?”
She: “To devour you.”
And then he lost his head.

This poem was inspired by two mating praying mantises I photographed last week. Sometimes the female mantis, the smaller of the two, eats the head of the male mantis during copulation. The male is able to continue the deed without his head for a short time as apparently he has a separate mini-brain in his abdomen. Talk about being ruled by the little head! I confess that I had to look away.

Today’s NaPoWriMo challenge was to write a poem that anthropomorphises a kind of food, and ask yourself how the food feels about it.

Alrighty, gruesome.

Bon Appétit, everyone.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

NaPoWriMo #20
For information on the copulating appetites of praying mantises, here is an article from The Guardian.

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Aura – It’s All A Blur

Some thoughts on bokeh for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. This is not a tutorial on bokeh.

I once thought “bokeh” referred to the circles, sometimes sparkly, that you often see in the background of a photo taken with a macro or telephoto lens. I’ve moved on from that and I now like to think of bokeh as the aura surrounding the subject of the photo, the bokeh being that little bit of voodoo magic performed by the camera to blur out the background so that the subject has centre stage. That is purely my artistic view and not a technical definition. I prefer my bokeh soft and calm and not swishy/choppy, but this is easier said than done. The exception to that is when the bokeh is being used for creative effect. If for any reason it is not possible to achieve the effect desired, I would rather take the photo “as is”, and enjoy what I’ve seen. Hence, you will see less than perfect bokeh on my site. Hopefully, the photos will still be interesting.

A messy background, my position and camera shake affected the quality of the bokeh/aura in my photo of this kookaburra below. The bokeh is not to my taste but how could you not love a face like that?

Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), Australian National Botanic Gardens

Now for my photography partner’s photo. He was further up the hill than I was and his extra height meant that he was able to access a much nicer background, and hence, lovely bokeh.

Kookaburra – Australian National Botanic Gardens

Look! Even with my little camera, I can still achieve a lovely blurred background if I am lucky to find myself close to my subject and there is a reasonable amount of separation between it and the background.

Silvereye (Zosterops lateralis) in the Canberra suburbs

It is difficult to capture that lovely blurred background effect with fast moving little birds. A really fancy camera or lots of patience is required. I therefore like to see what my little camera can make of plants. Trees in sheltered spots are great for this. The filtered light provides a beautiful tonal calm backdrop to the bark of this Pinus canarienis at Canberra’s Lyndsay Pryor Arboretum. The dark colour of the bark is a result of being burnt in the 2003 bushfires.

Canary Island Pine (Pinus canariensis), Lyndsay Pryor Arboretum, Canberra)

And below, I couldn’t resist the combination of the young eucalyptus leaves against the muted yellow plants in the background (probably paper daisies like those in the foreground), which were themselves set against the darker green of the heavily shaded area in the far back. I wouldn’t classify this as bokeh or an aura, but without my camera to see this stunning plant against the blurred background, it might not have caught my eye so. My botanist son’s best guess is that the tree is a native of Western Australia, Eucalyptus macrocarpa. WA plants are always show stoppers. What do you think, WA readers? Did my son guess right?

Mottlecah (Eucalyptus macrocarpa) tbc – Australian National Botanic Gardens

And, finally, this creamy milk chocolate background is a perfect complement to the fungi growing in fallen timber. Photography can be such a time waster but there are worse things we could be doing.

Thanks for reading this far, everyone. I have a couple more photos of the kookaburra that I will share soon. In the meantime, take care and take photos.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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Oddly Enough

For the Lens-Artists Photo Challenges – A Special Place and Odds and Ends.

I have been rather quiet over the last few months living my ordinary life in extraordinary times. Ordinary does not mean dull or insignificant. Such is life in these days of extremes. I have spent an inordinate amount of time at my special place, ie. home. It might not be perfect, posh or pristine, but it has everything we need. Every window has a view of the garden and its inhabitants.

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The Changing Seasons – December 2021

Canberra (Australia) – If I poke December, it dissolves like it never was. If I poke December, it stammers and clamours. It beckons and repels. It comes and it goes. Certain and uncertain. Before reaching, a resolution?

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A Night Out

Part 2 of my contribution to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Own Choice and One Image/One Story theme. In this case, it is one photo, three different ways. Check it out.

My True Love and my eldest son recently went on a spotlighting expedition. I stayed home because my night vision is poor and the terrain they were covering is very steep. They went into Greater Glider territory. Greater Gliders are nocturnal. They live in the trees, nesting in tree hollows, and can glide up to 100 metres at a time. I expect the Greater Glider will soon be listed as endangered given the impact of the deadly 2019/2020 Australian bushfires and ongoing land clearing across their range. It was a successful night. The lads came home with a photo of eye shine.

I’ve been learning some nifty PS edits. I added the arrow to the photo! Night photography is not our forté. But hey, this is not a David Attenborough documentary, so we make do. Next, I lightened the image. Ta da!

Let’s get closer.

Here’s what they really look like.

Attribution: JJ Harrison, Oct 2021, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_Glider_9994.jpg

I hope you enjoyed this night out.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

Further information:
https://theconversation.com/australia-has-failed-greater-gliders-since-they-were-listed-as-vulnerable-weve-destroyed-more-of-their-habitat-164872

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The Changing Seasons – November 2021

Canberra (Australia) – A veil of green pools on valley floor. Grey-filled sky billows adding to uncertainty. Will I or won’t I go for a walk? We put on our gardening gear and gumboots to dig in the loam once labelled the garden bed of death. Intermittent sunlight sounds of engines thrumming, dogs barking, bees humming and tiles cracking. Beyond Canberra, on the vast flood plains of eastern Australia, rivers rise, fall and rise again.

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Black and/or Grey – Ode to Cop26

Each month, Jude hosts a colour challenge, Life in Colour. The colour for November is black and/or grey.

This may be my last contribution to this month’s colour challenge. Or possibly not if the sky keeps crying. Today, I have four photos to share. Three were taken by my True Love. I managed only one which is a damn sight more than was achieved at Cop26.

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