Koel vs Channel Billed Cuckoo

After dinner with our lovely neighbour Irene this evening, I have discovered that I am combining the attributes of 2 cuckoos into one. There is indeed the Channel Billed Cuckoo as shown below but it makes the screech sound not the cooee. The Cooee sound comes from the Koel, a different cuckoo altogether. They have slightly different breeding habits but only in the choice of foster parents. The Koel prefers to choose fig birds, wattlebirds, friar birds and the magpie-lark. Once hatched, the parasitic chick will force the other chicks out of the nest so it has sole rights to parental attention.

Cuckoo Cooee Cooeee Cooeeee

The Channel bill cuckoo has been very vocal this week. His call (if I am identifying him correctly). I have only sighted him in the distance though he is clearly very close to the house, particularly VERY early in the morning. In Spring, the males fly down from Indonesia or PNG to mate. THey first have to fight for their territory which they do by making 'deranged cooeeee calls', each starting at the same base note and subsequent cooees a little higher on the second beat. They hide whilst doing this because according to an SMH article 'all the other birds want to beat the daylights out of you' presumably because of their despicable parasitic behaviour. Eggs are laid in the nests of other birds - currawongs, magpies, crows etc who then act as foster parents, often to the demise of their own infants, whose eggs are not thrown out of the nest as other cuckoos do, but may be damaged by the female. If the foster parent's eggs hatch the chicks tend to starve by coming second in the competition for resources. Despite being fed insects by their foster parents, they somehow know they are cuckoos and know to fly to Indonesia and that they should be eating fruit when they get there. 'mazing.

This is picture of the cuckoo  - not my picture but one c/- google images. 

more news on our snake

After perusing the Australian Museum webiste: http://australianmuseum.net.au/Diamond-Python/ I believe our incumbent reptile to be a diamond python. They kill their prey by strangling them, grow to 3m and although not poisonous, have a nasty bite and can leave a tooth in situ. I think we'll leave him or her alone.

Turn around slowly and walk back up the hill.....

The tank men arrived as I was on way back from the kiosk with milk supplies. As we navigated through the rather labyrinthine pathway to the tank base I noticed the remains of a dead possum to the left of the path and suddenly, one of the men spoke with the urgent, firm tone that immediately captures one's attention: "Turn around slowly and walk back up the hill. Now". I retraced my steps a couple of metres before turning around to see and there was the most enormous snake - a python we think - and about 8 feet long. Not poisonous, I hasten to add. The men were rather shaken but I asked them to take a photo and I will post it when they send it through. I was rather excited. Particularly as it wasn't a poisonous snake. I'll post some more info later once I've received the picture and I'm able to look it up.

First quote for repairing the wall is $15000. Yow.

Here is the beast. Pretty wild!

A misty moisty morning

 Here you can see the two case moths hanging off the grevillea.

 This is our Mandevillea which is growing so profusely. Just delightful.

 And two more I've planted to cover up the pipes and grow up onto the verandah. They are recovering from the possum assault they received when just new.

This poor succulent has been decimated by the possums. I think I'll take it home with me. 

Today is overcast and oppressing. I didn't sleep so well for some reason and I'm finding it hard to get going. I wandered around the garden as a light rain began to fall and managed to take a better photo or two of the case moths. Most of the smoke has gone from yesterday's burning off. Now it is time for some work. Hopefully the tank man will come today and I will get in touch with the roof ventilation people; the bedroom mezzanines are just too hot in summer.

The Stick Case Moth

The other interesting find this past weekend was two case moth cocoons on the grevillea at the front of the house in front of the gas canisters. I recognised them as the 'sleeping bags' that Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie had purchased with the money they always kept under their caps. My mother called them 'stick insects'. I can't find any record of them in the Australian Museum site - my usual first port of call for understanding NSW nature. But there are several entries describing them in Queensland and a lovely Aboriginal story about a father who goes on a long journey with his son who becomes weak and sick. He build him a shelter out of bark and sticks and rucks him up in his kangaroos-skin rug. He went away to find food and returned after some days with a possum. On return, his son and his protective 'gunyah' was gone. He leant against a tree and found a loose nob of bark and twigs on the trunk. On looking at it more closely he realised it was a replica of the gunyah he had made his son. He opened it up and found a grub inside and he knew the spirits had taken pity on the boy and saved him from him from death. To this day the grub of the Case-moth always has a gunyah which it builds to protect it and remind it of how, long ago, a father cared enough for his son to build a shelter for him while he sought for food. (www.aboriginalartcentre.com.au/dreamtime%20stories/moth.htm).

From www.brisbaneinsects.com:

The case moths are of the family psychidae. The moths apparently live in a mobile case. The case is made of silk and plant materials. There are a number of different species with different case designs, all of which apparently have an opening at the top and bottom. Most of them feed on a variety of plants. The caterpillar comes out of the top to feed and ejects the waste out the bottom end. The bottom end, which is smaller, is also the exit hatch for the emerging adult. they may take several years to reach the pupation stage. They pupate within the case. The female moth does not develop wings in most cases, but waits for a male to visit her. Females lay eggs in the bag. Baby caterpillars lower themselves to the ground on a silk thread and make themselves a case. Case moth adults do not feed.

I think these look like clania lewinii or something very much like it. I'll try to get a better picture tomorrow.

Welcome to the 10 Cottage Point Road Blog

This is the first post on our brand new blog. I hope that his blog will provide a diary of experiences and impressions of Cottage Point for our family and for our visitors. This week I am staying in the house on my own - a most unusual and strange state for a busy Mum cum professional cum student. My dear mother is looking after the children whilst I do some intensive thesis and paper writing. We have been here since Saturday and I've been alone since Monday morning. Yesterday was the first really hot, humid day of the Summer. One of those days when you don't feel like wearing ANYTHING. I heard the first cicadas of the season tentatively exercise their voices and was woken to the screeching of the cuckoos who come down from Papua New Guinea for the Summer season. I must find out more about them. One of the purposes to which I would like to put this blog is to document the wildlife that we encounter whilst here. Over the past few days we have seen 1 echidna, 1 lyre bird (racing across the road as we drove up Cottage Point Rd on our way to dinner in Terry Hills on Sunday Night and 1 goanna, which helpfully agreed to pose for several would be artists. It climbed the almost dead casuarina in front of the kitchen and sat there, resplendent in its spotty glory whilst it was admired by several adults and children armed with their respective sketchbooks.

Today, Tuesday has been a very pleasant cooler day marred (but made quite interesting) by the first burn off of the season. At about 1pm the sky began to fill with thick greyish-red smoke and the smell of burning bush filled the air. The flames were visible across the water on West Head and although I had received prior warning from the local residents' association, it was still a little alarming. I hoped that they had made their meteorological predictions accurately. They had. The afternoon has been very smoky and it is now very windy and I am even wearing a cardigan.

Even up at Cottage Point there are many, mostly nice interruptions. There have been a few maintenance jobs to attend to: the garden, the retaining wall, which we suspected and now have confirmed, is about to fall down, the tanks, which need one new top, two new taps and various other things doing to them, the washing and several visits from the neighbours. Grace, who lives next to the yacht club, works at the Inn and has aspirations to greater things when she finishes her arts degree dropped by to warn me about the fires and provided good advice about the garden. Down at the kiosk, where I am having a change of scene, I had a good chat with Geoff Russel, co-owner and manager. There was a long chat with someone from Vodafone to try to get the mobile broadband working - turns out they don't supply ANY of the critical pieces of information for setting it up yourself. No wonder they have long phone delays. Appalling customer service. Then there was Michael the retaining wall man who shook his head and looked very serious when he looked at our splaying dry stone wall at the bottom of the garden. He thinks that it will ALL have to be redone. My poor garden. I shall have to try to move everything. Just as it was getting established too. He was, however, extremely impressed with the house and is contemplating a January rental!