VALLA BEACH VIEWS

Taken a year ago in January 2023... Great place to visit

 

MONOTREME MONDAY

Recently, some of my platypus video was used in an episode of Worlds Most Scenic Railway Journeys on SBS which featured the Spirit of Queensland. In the episode Neil Andison of Platypus Whispers Guided Tours was interviewed.  I was asked if they could use some of my footage as I was around at the time so, of course, I agreed. It was an interesting episode and Neil did an outstanding job. To celebrate, I thought I'd put some more footage up here...

The cormorant and platypus had quite a bit of interaction, hard to keep them both in frame.

Divebombed by an azure kingfisher, not sure who got the food...

The creek water was quite shallow when this was filmed.

This one was giving itself a good scratching...

Lurking in the weeds...

BACKYARD BUGS, BUTTERFLIES AND BEES!

Look closely around your garden and you might be surprised at what colourful critters are residing or visiting.  

These are Cotton Harlequin bugs and they love hibiscus. The orange are females and here one has laid a LOT of eggs.

The males are smaller and perhaps even more striking as you see above.

I love blue banded bees. They make such a loud buzzing. Here one almost seems to be comparing its beak with the tomato flower. 

This honey bee has collected quite a bit of pollen from what I now class as a weed, Seaside daisy, which has gone berserk in my garden. Once you've got it, it's a hard job to get rid of it.

This is just one of a few ?house flies? that were seemingly pollinating the daisies. They don't look like hover flies which love those daisies.

A female orchard swallowtail was resting up.

 Sleepy small green banded butterfly must've slept in. It didn't fly off when I came close the other morning.

Another of the small blues, a white line-blue. 

This small and slightly tattered brown butterfly was more colourful flitting around but I was too slow to get a shot with the wings open. Some kind of skipper I think.

I present the Splendid Ochre butterfly. Quite small but cute isn't it?

GALAHS LOOKING FOR REAL ESTATE...

I was heading home from Maleny Precinct a couple of weeks ago and spotted a couple of galahs in some almost dead trees along the way...

 

so stopped for a closer look because it'd been a while since I'd seen any galahs. They were checking out the middle tree at the time.

I realised they were looking for a nesting spot around the back of the tree...

Noticing the heart shaped hole in the tree later I thought it was a shame these love birds weren't looking at that as a potential nest. Perhaps someone else had already put down a deposit...

How fitting would that have been?

Not sure if the bird trying to enlarge that small hole is the male. They were too far away to check the eye colour (female's having a pink iris) but it seemed like one was urging the other to try harder. They flew off shortly after, perhaps deciding against that bit of real estate.

EVEN MORE PLATYPUS...

It was very entertaining watching these two platypus navigate the small cascade. The first and larger animal is a female (bald spot on the tail). When the two come together in the last 3 videos (sorry about that, file was too large to put up as one video here for some reason), they disappeared for about 20 minutes before coming back down.  Probably a tunnel under there where they were exploring or probably mating. The water was so clear that week we could watch them swimming underwater quite easily.

So fast I almost lost sight of her then I thought she'd disappeared under that rock...

This time I was ready for her to swim back out...

Sorry about the audible gasp and loud commentary... pretty exciting.

And they continue...

They came out around 20 mins later...

Such clear water...