Avian Beauties

I had another trip to Perth last week, the main reason being to visit a certain little girl who was turning a great big 7!  Happy Birthday to you dear Riley, it was wonderful to see you and Stevie-Lee xx.  We had a little family gathering at Paul's house with pink cupcakes :-) I was pleased that Riley liked the dreamcatcher I crocheted for her very much indeed, and even more pleased when Stevie-Lee asked if I could make one for her birthday!

On my last morning in Perth I had a wonderful treat, a visit to the zoo!  I haven't been for years and years and it was a grownups visit so was done at a leisurely pace ha ha.  I was thrilled to see Tricia the elephant.  I remember her from when I was a small child and it's so nice to see her in a gorgeous habitat, most unlike the awful concrete enclosures from the sixties.

 

I was really impressed with the African Savannah area.  In fact I was really impressed with the whole zoo, it's so good nowadays that zoos carefully create ideal habitats for their charges, and find ways to keep the animals physically and mentally happy. 

 Zebras are the most beautiful creatures.

 Even the hyena looked happy and contented.

 I loved how these tortoises all had a big cuddlefest in one corner.

 Meanwhile, the creatures at our place are also happy and contented.  The new chickens have finished moulting and look so much better covered in beautiful red feathers.

 And they bless us with a couple of these every day.  Grateful.

 We had a few visiting avian friends too, this splendid peacock and his two lady friends are from next door, and for some reason they decided to pop in for a visit.  They eyed off Steve's newly growing broccoli plants, Steve was a bit nervous about that, but they left them alone, and contented themselves with scaring off the kangaroos instead!

 The small birds still abound in the back garden, this handsome fellow is a Red Winged Fairy Wren.

 And this is one of his females.

 And this is a White Browed Scrub Wren.  I love their white eyebrows and how they look slightly cross!  It's interesting that both the Red Winged Fairy Wrens and the Splendid Wrens will tolerate the White Browed Scrub Wrens feeding alongside them, but if the Red Wings and the Splendids see each other then all hell breaks loose!

 We could hear the gumnuts raining down from high in the Marri trees this morning.  That can only mean that the black cockatoos are here for a visit.  Recently we have seen mostly the Red Tailed Black Cockatoos, but today we were thrilled to see about half a dozen White Tailed Cockatoos.  There are two varieties, Carnaby's Cockatoos and Baudin's Cockatoos.  They look almost identical, the only difference to their appearance is their beak.  We have mostly Baudin's White Tailed Cockatoos here, they have a longer beak than the Carnabys.  They spent about half an hour here, munching their way through the seeds within the gumnuts.  The ground is now littered with well chewed, seedless, gumnuts!

 And then there are the wonderful kangaroos.  This is Patience. 

 And here is a zoom in of her belly.  Look who is peeking from her pouch!  Such a tiny little thing, barely any fur yet, and so far I've only seen it poke its head out this far, no sign of ears yet.  So gorgeous xx

 This is Rabbit, Lucy's last joey, she's the one who lost half her ear, which doesn't seem to trouble her at all.  Rabbit is a two year old now, doesn't she look grown up!

Look at the difference, this is her with her mum in March 2016.  She has only just started coming out of the pouch and learning to hop, she was the scrawniest joey we've even seen.  Can you see why we called her Rabbit?

 

 We are patting ourselves on the back today, as a long overdue finale to a task is now complete.  This is the 30 metre long fence at the rear of my back garden.  Steve fenced the back garden 2 years ago, and after completing 75 metres of digging in poles and bolting poles to the top and adding miles of wire, he ran out of puff before the wire was finished along this back section.  So it has sat there for 2 years with ugly temporary wire stuffed in there to keep the roos out.  Steve got very busy this week, and with a little help from me too, the job was finished.  It looks so tidy!

 I am poodling along with my crocheted squares for our bedcover.  This is a square that has been blocked, nice and square and exactly the right size.  It requires pinning to size then hovering the iron over, giving the yarn blasts of steam to dampen and relax it, to get the size right.

This square is waiting to be blocked, see how out of shape it is?  It will be square and magnificent once it has been pinned and steam blasted :-)

 My houses embroidery is slowly coming along too, I'm inventing it as I go along.  It's just the sky to do now although I'm not sure if I'm happy with the chimneys, I think the lighter thread I used is perhaps too light?  It may be that they will stay simply because I can't be stuffed pulling them out and redoing them though ha ha.  Anyway, I am quite pleased with it on the whole, I had in my mind for it to look like an English seaside village street and I'm happy with how it looks.

Well, we have a forecast for days of rain starting tonight, but the sun is shining now so I might have a wander in the back garden and do a bit of pruning.  Until next time xx