Non-book post: Spring is here!

Yesterday was our first nice weather day, with a high of 21C (70F) and full sunshine.  We’re still in total lockdown, but the government amended the rules a few weeks ago to allow us to drive to our exercise, as long as it’s within 5km, so I dragged MT out to a new-to-us park known as Willsmere Park or Kew Billabong.  For those who may not know, a billabong is a backwater or stagnant pool, made by water flowing from a main stream or river during a flood. We had no idea it was there until recently, and it’s lovely.  We got there ‘early’ by MT’s standards, a bit later than I wanted to, but in time to have the park to ourselves for about 45 minutes, before everyone else in a 5km radius descended.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures, mostly because we were busy checking out the lay of the land at first, and then, well… people.  But we did chat (at a distance) with a lovely woman for whom the park was obviously her ‘local’, and she pointed out a pair of Tawny Frogmouths sleeping off the day, though one woke up long enough to shuffle his feathers and sun himself for a moment before dozing back off.

She also pointed out a nesting box for a pair of sugar gliders and told us if we were there at dusk we’d have half a chance of seeing them depart the box.  Guess where we’ll be at dusk sooner rather than later?  (Sugar gliders, if you’re unfamiliar with them, are the cutest damn tiny possums that fit in the palm of your hand.)

We’re only allowed to be out a couple of hours a day, and by the time I’d done the circuit there were hoards of people socially distancing, and cyclists trying their hardest to thin the herds (a major bike path goes through the park), so we headed back to the lot in time to see that it wasn’t only the humans enjoying the sunshine and cavorting in the spring weather:

I suspect, if you asked the neighborhood dogs, they’d say that water bowl was for them, but I doubt any of them would try to tell the cockatoos that.

8 thoughts on “Non-book post: Spring is here!”

    1. They never fail to crack me up. Australia might have cornerned the market on comedic birds. Like, Laurel and Hardy comedic. 🙂

  1. Love your pictures! One side effect of the lockdown was we did so many more hikes. (I try to focus on the positives. )We went on a hike this weekend too, I will post pics! When we began to come out of lockdown I was amazed at the wildlife that seemed so happy we had not been around for a while. lol

    1. Yes please – pics! I don’t get out often enough and I need to live vicariously through friends hikes too. 🙂

      My husband has noticed the biggest difference in downtown: no people, total ghost town, except for the birds. He says they’re everywhere and fill the streets with their squawking (cockatoos and corellas sound like prehistoric beases) and chirping. They have to be loving not choking on car exhuast.

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