Entries Tagged 'NATURAL HISTORY' ↓

Of course, when you think about it, the cuckoo’s laughing. For starters, one can’t fly over a cuckoo’s nest if they don’t exist. And just how many years has it taken this (Australian) Iconophile to work that one out? According to the all-knowing Wiki, the famous quintuple Academy Award winning film’s title is derived from an (American) children’s rhyme:

“Vintery, mintery, cutlery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

This Common Koel (a member of the cuckoo family) doesn’t understand our problem. Let me explain. We have learnt three crucial things about the Koel in the last few months. One is its very annoying wake-up call. The Koel migrates to Canberra in the spring time. One day it starts calling at 4.00 am and then it continues without pause for three months or so. Second, when you are finally of a mind to silence it, it becomes invisible, it resorts to its powers of ventriloquy, and continues to drill its penetrating call right through your semiconscious brainbox, from who-knows-where. Evil to the core, we suspect it uses this capacity to focus a wall of sound to drive other birds from their nests. Then (third point), in its own sneaky cuckoo way, having outsourced its rearing responsibilities to our local wattlebirds (fat baby Koel is peeping continuously in the trees in our front garden as I write this story) the mother hangs around to make sure the foster parents do the right thing! So yesterday we saw the mother in the same bush watching the wattlebirds feed her very chubby progeny. Holidays are over. Handover day is nigh. Time to collect junior.

Sociological Metaphor Tags: Anthropomorphism. Unethical Behaviour. Bad parenting. Cross-species exploitation. Excess sugar in the diet. Childhood training.

Trees in fiberglass Fiat-shaped planters? Only in Milan. Thanks to Neil and Karina for the lead…

Remember the evidenciary significance of the reflection in the eye in Twin Peaks? Well I’m not sharing the backstory here, and neither is The Sailor, whose sees all… (but please remember to turn off your flash if you wish to try this experiment at home).

We encourage the visitation of Goanna, the natural enemy of Snake. Goanna loves Egg. Spot Egg next to the bottom of Rope in the picture below…

It’s too easy to just leave Egg on the ground, says Pammy Faye. So for four days she left Egg on Bear’s floating flotsam before she relented and built a bridge.

It worked! Using the scent  glands in his tongue, Goanna found the first Egg at the base of the bridge, crossed the bridge, stole the second Egg, and then took the third Egg without the bridge!

Now Goanna makes his own bridge!

I wasn’t aware until this morning that Pammy Faye’s thongs were desirable. And I had no idea there was a thong brand hierarchy. To me they were just Pammy’s old thongs. Until, that is, our first night camping under the Sacred Thong Tree at Penders, on the NSW South Coast, when the name Havaianas first entered my consciousness.

This complex of intertwined Mahogany Gums has for some years been identified as a Sacred Thong Site by Marr Grounds, the custodian of this beautiful stretch of coastline south of Bithry Inlet. Here it is shown in its sacrilegious campsite glory.

And Havaianas? During the early hours of the morning of the 29th December some indigenous creature – no doubt attracted by the aroma of toe jam – neatly consumed most of the stem on one Havaianas, and half of the other. The result? Rodent with Havaianas Hangover 2 – Pammy Faye 0.

Who (Jan 4, 2010, p.103) lists Havaianas as one of the top trendy items of the noughties, and quotes Marc Newson as citing the flip flop thong is “one of the top four designs that cannot be improved”.

Or, maybe not… It sure seems to Iconophilia that our first encounter with the PALR suggests that this may not be the panacea for the Global Financial Crisis after all. It just may be a tad too transparent…

Here we were in Nimmitabel last weekend, in the center of the bellwether seat of Eden-Monaro, face to face with the groundbreaking Fourteen-Silver-Birch-Tree-Led-Stimulus-Package. Yes, there are fourteen new bits of steel, concrete and Birch Tree in the main street of Nimmitabel, all in the name of the Government’s Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan.

You’d want to ask, wouldn’t you, what is the contribution to the nation’s productive capacity in projects such as this? Surely little bits of public consumption like this is little more than the ol’ pork-barrel? I would have thought this was a risky vote-losing strategy in this revisionist economic climate?

Adding insult to injury, each year Canberra celebrates Hay Fever Day by filling the thousands of empty hoops which are attached to every static vertical thing in Civic with petuniae. For eight months of each year these rusty coloured rings stand in idle anticipation of November 12, awaiting their plastic tubs filled with petunias to pretty up our manifestly dull metropolitan ambience. And see how sensitively relevant they are to our urban environment?

Of course these thousands of pots require twice weekly watering, which provides employment, and makes good use of our dwindling water resources. The petuniae, you’ll be please to know, have been genetically modified so that they do not release any pollen into the air. The only remaining question that worries The Iconophile is: what does the petunia farm produce in these idle summer months?

It’s true! Those Masters of Disguise, the Tawny Frogmouth, do return to nest on the same branch in the same tree each year. Last October this pair produced three nestlings – although whether they survived the marauding Currawongs is an open question. Let’s hope they left the nest after dark… In windy weather they sit like a weathervane – beak to the wind!

This nest is two thirds up Mt Ainslie – due west of the track – 55 m below the Eora Creek plaque – follow the three-stick-and-rock pointer below!

Who says the Night Parrot is extinct? One example was scraped off the front of a road train near Boulia, in northwest Queensland in 1990, and more recently another was found dead after apparently having decapitated itself flying into a barbed wire fence. But this fabulous painted ceramic vessel suggests the ladies of the desert at Hermannsburg know more than we give them credit for. Sure, they’ve included many exotic species in their repertoire over the years, and yes, maybe some well-meaning whitefella bought them a book of bird pictures to work from – but. But it’s highly likely they know what they’re talking about. Who else, you might ask, knows more about poking clumps of spinifex grass than these naturalists? Is this evidence, or just nostalgia? This example of their trademark ceramic art was made by Sonia Davis in 1996.