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Corvid-2020 Weekly Challenge #2

It may come as no surprise to you, ladies and gentlemen, that I am not as clever as I think I am.  Now I am in a bit of a pickle corvid-wise.  You see, I have a lot of currawong photos that I hoped to share with you for the Corvid-2020 Weekly Challenge, but eek, I’ve discovered after starting this challenge that currawongs are not actually corvids (of the family Corvidae).  In fact, the only corvids in Australia are the crows and ravens.  Unfortunately, I have limited raven photos.  Do you think that the powers-that-be will consider, in these dark Covid-19 times, the scouring of the city for ravens to be an essential activity?   I guess we shall find out.   I fear I might have to resort to some very bad poetry for this challenge. Read more

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Land Of Milk And Honey

It seems an age ago that the aphids were attacking my newly sprouted garlic chives.  Now as autumn makes its long anticipated appearance in the temperate areas of Australia, the black aphids are back.  This time they are attacking a beautiful succulent that my friend gave me last year.  The ants are milking the aphids for honeydew.  It is a good system. Read more

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Journeyman

I feel rather odd ignoring the big issues.  It seems wrong to post pretty pictures when really all I want to say is that I hope you’re okay.   Nevertheless, there is a challenge on and finally I have some of my own photos to share with you. Read more

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Suck It Up

For Sunshine’s Macro Monday #32

It was a public holiday in Canberra today to mark the anniversary of the official naming of Australia’s national capital in 1913.  And a beautiful day it was.  It is such a privilege to live in this gorgeous city.  As well as being the seat of the Federal government, Canberra is the home to a number of research institutions and universities, so we have an abundance of very clever people living here.  Some of those people have developed and maintain the Canberra Nature Map, an online map of Canberra’s diverse flora and fauna.  It is a live map updated regularly by members.  As a result of this wonderful resource, we now know the name of the funky fly I posted photos of recently (see original post). Read more

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To Behave Or Not To Behave

Human behaviour is a funny thing, isn’t it?  I suppose that is because we are all different.  Some of us are naturally very organised.  Some of us aren’t.  Some of us are thin.  Some of us aren’t.  Some of us are old and some of us aren’t.  Some of us are fearful and some of us aren’t.  There is a spectrum, isn’t there?  Also, how you might feel on any given day might depend on whether you managed to buy a few toilet rolls before they all sold out.  It is all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

Welcome to my regular Friday song day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.  I am also combining my song day with the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge — Change Your Perspective.  Let’s rock ‘n roll. Read more

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Funky Fly

Sunshine’s Macro Monday.

Welcome to the photo blog of Tracy’s husband.  Just kidding.  I did have an anecdote to go with this announcement but I will save it until another day.  My bed is calling.  Today I’ve got a couple of photos just to prove that we are still alive.  Take care, readers.  Rest easy. Read more

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The Changing Seasons – February 2020

February (Australia) – another month of what Tracy does best.  Catastrophising.  Still, I’ve included a few nice photos.

After so much stress last month, it was not surprising that I seemed to have more than my fair share of illness.  I started the month with a terrible head cold and I am finishing the month the same way.  Lucky me.  Many of my fellow Canberrans have been similarly affected by the strain. Read more

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Bee-tiful

My contribution to Sunshine’s Macro Monday #30.

Hello readers, you all know how I love to share my True Love’s beautiful photos.  He took this photo a couple of months ago.  The photo was lovely in colour but someone else invited me to participate in a monochrome photo challenge, so I played around and converted it to B&W.  I’m not sure if B&W conversion is allowed in macro photography?  Any idea?

Anyway it was a very windy day so the photo is a little blurry, but still turned out nice, don’t you think?

bees

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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Turning Flowers into Pumpkins and the Death of Holden

I got very excited this morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Looking out the back window, I could see that there was a male and female pumpkin flower open at the same time.  Because of a hail storm last month, my pumpkin vine has only one pumpkin growing at the moment.  So I took this fleeting opportunity to fly outside and manually fertilise the lady.  I found the flowers crawling with bees, which was also very exciting, because the numbers of bees have been much fewer due to the recent hot weather and smoky days.

It was lucky I did because a bee was trapped below the stamen of the boy flower! Read more