85) Our backyard

A Satin Bowerbird carefully arranging sticks to construct his "Bower." Note the eye-catching blue decorations he has gathered and strewn attractively about.

Life outside of Robina carries on...we decided to take a break from our neighborhood noises of barking dogs and screaming teenagers and racing cars and leaf blowers and lawnmowers and head for the hills to our 'backyard' of Springbrook National Park: only 45 minutes, but a world away.

Almost as soon as we arrived, we spotted a very handsome Satin Bowerbird in the rainforest trees! His plumage is glossy blue-black, he has a bluish-white colored bill, and his eyes are violet-blue. We were quite happy with simply identifying him (after using the handy reference in my bird book which has a diagram silhouetting the relative sizes of the 'black' bush birds of Australia), but the best was yet to come.










From "Birds of Australia" by Simpson and Day




When we returned from our walk, I just happened to peer into the woods and see a bowerbird bower that probably belonged to the bird we had seen earlier. We had been shown a bower down in the Blue Mountains, but hadn't expected to find one on our own. And shortly after our inspection, our Bowerbird flew down and busily began adding more sticks to his elaborately constructed bower and rearranging items in the courtship area to make them even more attractive!


He's hoping to entice a female bowerbird into his bower, after she has been impressed by his decorating panache and fancy dancing. These birds are quite behaviourly advanced, and are closely related to the Birds of Paradise (http://www.wiresnr.org/satinbowerbird.html). We were charmed by his earnest efforts as he placed a stick just so, eyed it, and then moved it to a different side of the bower. No, not there either! It goes...here!! At just this angle. Aesthetically motivated with an eye for soaring verticality! We wish him well in luring the ladies into his boudoir! We compliment him on his choice of blue bottle caps, blue pen caps, blue bits of plastic, blue feathers and even.. some blue flowers -- which are really rare! (what they did prior to plastic we can only guess!)


A contemplative moment...so nice to hear the birds sing and to luxuriate in the greenness of the forest!
















Last week Dirk was getting antsy because there was no wind, so we went to work on board skills at the cable ski park--a highly entertaining alternative when there's no wind! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Kind of like wakeboarding or waterskiing without the boat. Think of using a rope tow with a snowboard, and getting hauled in a circle around the perimeter of a lake! I'd say 75% of the people splatted right off the deck, but Dirk stayed up his first try, and even made it around the lake once before winging off at the farthest point on the lake away from the loading dock on his second round. Some guys were quite the hotdogs, catching huge air, doing jumps and spins and all sorts of tricks. See video, below, for some action (well, it's Dirk puttering around- not quite up to the jumps yet!!


Who says Aussies don't celebrate Halloween? So what if it's sunny and 25C--we've got ghosts on the loose! These were supposed to be for a party we were invited to, but they weren't done in time. Instead, Dirk took them in for the graduate students who will eat anything...even cooked eggwhites mixed with sugar (merengues) with eyeballs!



On his last jaunt up to UQ, Dirk thought this bridge looked like an avant-garde ship super-structure; it is the new pedestrian bridge over the Brisbane River (photo taken from the CityCat ferry in Brisbane).














Nancy is taking an "Aussie Wildlife" class at the local Wildlife Refuge, Currumbin Sanctuary. There are alot of wildlife injuries happening around here, where cars/people/wildlife clash. I wanted to know what to do if I came across somebody and didn't want to feel helpless. The class is primarily enthusiastic teenagers who adore animals, so it is a very positive environment. Once a week, we get to "handle" a different animal. The first week, we passed around Larry the sugar glider with his ear of corn (he and his corn fit into the palm of my hand). Next, we studied reptiles and here I am with Vader the Carpet Python (pronounced Pieth-un, as in un-Cola).








These birds are "Tawny Frogmouths." They are insect eaters, and have impressively large mouths--they are not owls. Put your hand up to the perch, and they will step back onto it. You don't need a glove, they are very gentle. And then give them a mealyworm for a treat! When scared, they turn their face to the sky and get very skinny. And they look exactly like a stick. We almost ran into a camoflauged one on Fraser Island--before it flew away and scared the heck out of us because we hadn't seen it!









A shy "Barking Owl." She was embarrassed to eat in front of us (wouldn't you be nervous about eating a raw chicken leg that is as big as your head in front of a bunch of teenagers?) and wasn't up to any handling by neophytes.