too much caffeine??

this spider web is in the top corner of our kitchen window (this is the best photo i could get in the awkward place it was but the whole web looks like the bit you can see against the dark window sill background). i think the spider may have had some coffee before making this (if you google images of "spider web caffeine" it shows drawings and images of spiders affected by various drugs- the caffeine one looks a lot like this).

mallacoota

last weekend we went to mallacoota with zac's mum (she has been raving about it for ages so we finally made the effort to get out there-- soooooo worth the long drive).
wombat had the best weekend ever! she has never been able to run so free on a beach before usually when we let her off near barwon heads we play sort of "pig in the middle" fetch with her and we're constantly watching for other dogs. here there were beaches enclosed by high cliffs with only one set of stairs coming down and rocks going out into the water to keep her from running off forever. she got to run and chase crabs and swim.

(click on the photo to see it more clearly-- the top left picture of wombat is pretty funny)
we found a great, warm river to swim in at one beach so we took wombat in there and discovered she can swim better than we thought she could but she is pretty top heavy and struggles a bit with it. she would go swimming for a stick though.
i love pelicans:

so amazing something that big can actually fly (and do it gracefully).
we stayed at the adobe mudbrick flats. zac's mum had stayed there several times before. it's a pretty amazing place. we tried to get the penthouse but it was already booked so we stayed in one of the other units. floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ocean with a large bird feeder and tons of seed. the mudbrick walls had bottles embedded in them to make great designs.

wombat enjoyed spending her time watching the wildlife (the place is very wildlife friendly as well as pet friendly). she loved the watching the brown antechinuses (a marsupial mouse). she also enjoyed bird watching.

just some of the many birds we saw from our window:

wombat was exhausted after her weekend of running on the beaches, swimming and animal watching. i came back feeling much more relaxed and ready to face the few busy weeks of work before i have 6 weeks off for summer.

only annoying thing that happened was my camera lens decided it was no longer going to auto focus for me (i think it's the motor in it) so it made it really hard to take action shots (i have lots of great shots of wombat running but she's blurry). fortunately i have an old (not quite as nice) lens from the camera zac drowned a few years ago so i can use that until i can find out how much it's gonna cost to fix the better lens.

spring!!

i was sorting through my pictures on my phone and came across this one i took a week or 2 ago at work. my phone takes great pictures outdoors (not quite as good indoors with low light but still ok). it's a very "spring-y"shot. we have lots of these flowers at work. i'm gonna try to take some cuttings and propagate them for our garden at home (not sure yet where to put them in our garden because they grow to be a fairly large bush with lots of daisies but i'll find a spot).

case moth

this case moth lives at work:

one of the children found it one afternoon last week. the 2 afternoon staff didn't know what it was but one of the other children told them it was a case moth. the teacher (very gently) squeezed the case a bit and decided it was empty so they brought it inside. the next day i noticed it sitting on the edge of the counter. i asked one of the staff about it and asked her if that was where they put it when they brought it in (it wasn't-- the larva inside had moved the case along). i took it outside and just placed it in a large planter box of lavender. a couple days later we noticed it attached to lavender near where i'd placed it. today it was hanging from the outside of the planter box on the opposite end (about 2m or more from where it was last week)-- that's where i took the photo above.
a bit later, i was standing near it with some children and it popped its head out! i've never actually seen the larvae before, just their amazing cases.
it carefully unattached it's case from the wall so it could move. unfortunately a gust of wind came past and knocked it to the ground. that scared it and it went in its case. we moved it back into the box so it could come out and move when it felt safe.

what is it?

does anyone know what this is? we (everyone at work and zac) all wanna say witchety grub but we don't think i actually is that. a child we had at work last year knew what they were called. we have a lot of them living in the soil under the tan bark at work (and this one was in the soil in our digging patch).

huntsman

saw this huntsman at work the other day-- trying to camouflage on a camouflage-print tarp. wasn't really working for it. i think he/she needed to find a tree.

macro and goats

i got a macro lens off ebay last week. i haven't got a chance to play around with it too much but i did get a few pictures of the dog chewing a ball:

and what i'm 99% sure is the exoskeleton of a huntsman spider:

i took a couple shots of the spider (which was in a plant pot in the backyard) and sat down to have a smoothie nearby. when i got up to take more pictures it was gone. i'm pretty sure the wind blew it somewhere (i had moved the pot into the middle of the yard just before i sat down and there were gusts of wind blowing around). i couldn't find it anywhere though (i knew it wasn't the actual spider and if it was, it was definitely dead cuz i tapped it with a stick at one point and it just tipped forward in it's position).

goats seem to be following me everywhere. i went for a bike ride to the collingwood childrens' farm with a couple friends and their dog yesterday afternoon. this is robert:

i wish i'd been able to get a shot of silas (my friends' dog) meeting robert but i missed it.

more molting

when i was looking at my spider exoskeleton pictures i remembered i had these pictures from the nite before i left for canada.
i wish i had something in the photo to compare size to but cockroaches gross me out so taking pictures was almost a little too much for me, no way was i gonna hold an object near him (he was on the side of a shelf in the laundry) to show his size and risk him running away (zac got him in a container after we stared at him and photographed him and then he was relocated across the street).

it was a pretty big cockroach to start with (the dark exoskeleton) and it was HUGE coming out of it (hard to believe it actually all fit in there). i don't know if it's new outside shrinks down at all as it darkens (?) but if it doesn't, it would be the biggest cockroach i've ever seen (and i've seen some really big ones).

where's the rest of it?

for show and tell (where we only show books and nature for the most part) a child brought in the flattened head of a cockatoo. it was in a tall box that opened at the top and the main teacher actually got it out and showed a group of 25 children (she did put a latex glove on first). i had to photograph it for the child's folder (i won't be posting that photo here). i'd assume the head was flattened (and kind of disfigured) because it had been run over by a car but what happened to his body?
i do have this other cool nature photo i took at work (that is a bit much if you don't like spiders up close):
the spider actually ate the entire caterpillar (it took him/her a half hour or so). when i looked at the gum tree over the next few days the spider was always in the same spot. i gave her a bit of a nudge with a stick and she barely moved. the next day there was no movement. i don't know if the caterpillar killed it (poison or just gluttony) or if it just died. now, over the dip where the spider is sitting a web/cocoon like thing is being formed. we can't figure out if the spider is alive and doing it or if another animal is making some sort of coocoon type thing over it. there's all sorts of other interesting things happening on this gum tree too (and meanwhile kids are going unsupervised while i'm fascinated by tiny insects doing their thing on a tree).

random flowers

a few pictures of flowers i've taken in the past few weeks (well the first one was a couple weeks ago or so and the last 3 were today)

i wish i'd taken more pictures of these irises before they started wilting (i do have more photos on the old computer but i haven't had the energy to deal with the annoying computer the last couple weeks to actually get the photos off):

i LOVE their amazing (almost unreal) blue colours

today i noticed this succulent has some amazing bloom going on (i must not have looked at it for a while since i don't remember seeing any sign of this before):

gianormous

this "little" guy was in our house last week:

i started to take photos but only got 3 (and no really good ones) and then i started getting creeped out that he was gonna jump at me (as far as i know they don't jump but maybe this one knows how to do things the others don't). i would have tried to put an object next to him for size comparison but that would have required putting my hand close to him since he was on the wall. for an idea of his size, that rectangular shaped dent in the door frame that his back left leg is just touching is about 10 cent piece size across (nickle sized in north america). he was one of the bigger ones i've seen in the city (the get MASSIVE compared to this in the country).
today on facebook i saw this:

definitely looks like a huntsman but it's legs are HUGE! very creepy.

the one in our house-- i used a cup and piece of card to get it outside to the far end of our small garden and hoped it crawled into our neighbours shed and hid to avoid death by the neighbours hand. zac won't go anywhere near 8 legged things so that's my job. he does the cockroaches because for some reason they creep me out more than spiders.

creatures

we've spotted a few creatures in our house in the past week. of course i had to pull out the camera and get some pictures.
zac spotted this black house spider eating a fly:

its a fairly big spider (that fly was a decent sized fat house fly)

i'd briefly seen it a couple days earlier when i walked into the kitchen and the vibration of my foot stepping on the tiles sent it running up its web into the corner of the window frame where i couldn't see it (they're very timid spiders). you could tell it was very wary of me with the camera so close to it but it must have been really hungry cuz it kept working on its meal.
today i spotted a ladybug (or ladybird as they call them here) while i was in the laundry room. it let me pick it up and carry it around the house so i could get the camera and set up a good photo setting (white paper) but then it got all fussy about the white paper and just wanted to crawl on the carpet:

little visitor

we've had a spider hanging out by the kitchen window for a few days. i kept meaning to have a closer look (its always upside-down in its web) and try to figure out what it was in my melbourne wildlife book. today i looked at it a bit better and noticed a red spot on its ass

flipping thu the spider section of the book the only one that has a red spot like that is the redback (i always thought they were bigger and most of the time they're completely black not black and brown-- although they can be brown).
then i noticed the bottom of her abdomen-- she (i assume she's most likely female-- apparently males are rarely seen):

(click to enlarge if you're not creeped out by large spider photos)
she's got the hourglass so she's a redback. she'll be re-located later today (most likely across the road).
i always thought redbacks hung out in dark areas. i guess not.