Category: Earth versus World

Caterpillars

Six of these little critters are chomping down on my bolwarra bush. Not their usual food as far as I can make out.

Reading Helen Scwenke’s & Frank Jordan’s Create More Butterflies tells me that an Orchard Swallowtail will lay her eggs on any tree or bush in the citrus family.

Yet I thought I saw a large blackish butterfly in this bush. The caterpillars somewhat resemble the instars on p33 and there is a very small sandfly bush beside the bolwarra.

The caterpillars as you can see have a much closer resemblance to those of the Fuscous Swallowtail on p20. There’s only the lime berry mentioned for host plants for thst variety of swallowtail.

Here’s one doing its weird standing-up-in-the-sun move. Never seen that before.

The whole event is pretty exciting and was one of the reasons—the possibility that butterflies would visit my balcony garden—that I decided on a level two apartment rather than, say, a level seven place.

To top it all off, me getting an in house companion in the form of a cat is what made it possible for butterflies to visit. Before I got Moggy noisy miners, a pernicious sort of bird visited the balcony despite my efforts to keep them away, and clean out all insects good and bad. They even had a go at catching my fish. Moggy keeps them away and the caterpillars are safe.

The Build 7: Nov 22, 2024

I see it’s been over a month since my previous post about the build. On the 28th of October there was a day of excitement as topsoil from the Banchory-Court-side of the site was piled onto the Carindale-Street-side of the site. One of the large old excavators in charge of the spreading and piling, while the two dump trucks took turns dumping their loads, while perhaps the other old excavator worked the loading.

In that time the majority of the work was done in the section nearest the gate into Surbiton Court. Pipes of several sizes put into the ground … huge concrete pipes in the pic below

And much smaller diameter, some kind of plastic. These often used as guttering drainpipes, in my experience, but here with the red coloring I assume are to house communication and electrical ducting.

Every time it rained work had to stop every second day unless there was a storm as well. The back lot–the parts that I can see from my balcony–filled with puddles and finally a pond-like sheet of water. The pic below is a couple of days later, with grass now growing well.

Birds are starting to congregate though I think it’s more likely that they are snacking on worms rising up and drowning, than fish miraculously appearing in the ankle-deep water and mud. I saw an ibis arrive this morning as well as a stone curlew. The plovers never went away. The approximately forty strong murder of Torresian crows that live in the trees alongside Carindale Street don’t seem to care who visits their grounds, I guess they get enough food across the road. (Carindale Shopping Mall)

 And finally, a mystery object pulled out of the ground?

Well, I know what it is. It surprised me to see one so near to a city center … Cattle grid? I wonder whether when the first village was built back in the 1980s, cattle roamed along the creek?

Another Day, Another Storm

I’m really enjoying them …

Holey moley I didn’t even see this develop

Only a couple of minutes later the outlook was this …

I head to retreat indoors, found the perfect viewing gallery with the windows in front and the dark curtains at my back …

Be warned, it’s a mite long but I dearly wanted to catch a lightning strike …

The sound is good too … and all this before sunset … The following clip after sunset. Even darker

And all this with just an old iPhone!

Wilderness

My car-less wilderness starts twenty metres beyond my front entrance …

It festures long vistas of bounteous greenery, exotics mixed with native trees …

Impenetrable matted jungles of grasses flow over the contours of Bulimba Creek’s floodway …

The creek itself is almost hidden between the overgrown banks where ducks, dusky moorhens and waterdragons make themselves at home

Lodestar 61, Scrim

About five years ago, I reworked what would’ve been the next couple of chapters to submit to Worldbuilding Magazine, for an installment they were running on relationships, V3I3: Gender & Relationships

Since I was extracting the story from an ongoing Lodestar Saga and wanted eventually to be able to come back to it—as I am doing now—I changed Srese’s name and backstory. But, although she is called Kate in this chapter and has a whole different history, she is still Srese. As you will see.

Scrim’s parts in the whole deal have not changed, and that part of his life–as it is described here–fits in well with what’s coming for him.

Enjoy!

61. Scrim & Kate (aka Srese)Download

The Channel-billed Cuckoo

I was amazed to see one of these yesterday along Bulimba Creek, getting into the ripe native figs everywhere. Only seen them once before, in my previous stamping grounds.

Picture naturally not sharp, bird was too far away and the photo completely unplanned.

After I took ten photos, scoring an image just twice, the noisy miners took note of me and chased the big bad bird away.

Noisy miners are so aggressive—a channel billed cuckoo doesn’t impinge on them at all —it eats figs too large for them to tackle and lays its eggs in magpie, crow and currawong nests. But still the miners need to chase it away, it’s like they own this stretch of the creek.

A slightly better shot, the bird’s bright red eye put me wise to its identity.

These birds have the loudest most amazing trumpeting calls though this one just said kwark kwark kwark.

They migrate to North and Eastern Australia from New Guinea and Indonesia in spring and stay till autumn/fall.

Urban trees seem to be so confused that a lot of figs are bearing good crops of fruit.