Magpie

 

Everybody knows about Australia's kookaburra, but the humble magpie is prevalent everywhere.

 Magpie calls, from YouTube.

The Motorbike Frog

This little creature visited us the other day.

It is absolutely tiny.

You can see its size in relation to a 230mm (9 inch) long brick in the following picture.

 

I did not know what kind of frog it was, and after consulting a Perth online forum, I found that it is a very common frog (of course) and known as the motorbike frog.

 To know why it is called by that name, you need to listen to the following sound file of its call, which has often been described to be like a motorbike changing gears and revving.  (Sound file from the web, not my recording.)

Update:  Some people has trouble playing the sound file, so here's a link to a YouTube video instead.

We're Flooded In

 A typical forecast for a rainy day here in Perth would be for 0 to 10 mm of rain.

 It started raining from about 6 pm yesterday, and the forecast was for 30 to 60 mm of rain.  I cannot recall ever seeing such a prediction before.

This morning, I woke at about 6 am to an exceptionally heavy and long lasting shower.  

A little later Grandma C woke up and told me there was water entering the bedroom.  I opened the back door to get the mop and this is what I saw.

The whole path running the length of our house was under at least 75mm of water.

It had started seeping in under the back door.  And the bedroom was wet because the water had worked its way in through the sliding door frame.

I had a look at the front yard:

And the back of the house:

In the 40 years we've been here, this has been the heaviest rainfall ever.  

I checked the Bureau of Meteorology's figures, and we appear to have had 28 mm of rain.

Imagine if we had the full 60 mm forecast!

Thankfully there was a break in the weather, and the mini-flood soon subsided.

The Bees are Back!

About seven years ago, I blogged about a beehive I saw when taking my dog to the dog park.

Since then, the bees left the hive for whatever reason, and the branch on that dead tree rotted and fell.  Time takes its toll.

The old rotten branch

 One morning, this sign suddenly appeared at the foot of that same dead tree.

The local Council had put up a warning sign

There were no bees buzzing around at ground level where the sign was.  But on looking up, this was what I saw.

High up in the tree

A large number of bees ...

... on a beautiful hive

 

A happy sight, having the bees back.

And these were my two companions enjoying the park that day.

Molly

Ripper

Africa

Does this look like Africa to you?