The Black Ducks and other Wildlife

We were delighted on Monday morning to see the pair of Black Duck back on our little pond. They seem to come here every year around this time and we watch their antics from our kitchen window. I was so pleased to get a shot of them displaying to each other by showing their green flashes on the under wings.After all this energetic splooshing about in the water they have an attempt at creating a duckling. She just about drowns in the process as it all takes place in the water. After all that excitement they go into furious splashing and cleaning mode and then sit apart, no doubt pondering how they are going to provide a home for these eggs they will produce.

We always hope they will nest here somewhere under the low shrubs but till now they have not done so. I took the photo on the right from the verandah as they didn't worry when I opened the door, they just look surprised.
That same morning we had a large white egret land next to the pond, viewing our large school of goldfish. As I came to the other window to get a better photo of it, it spotted my movement and flew off.It has not been back unfortunately.
We get the white faced heron quite regularly and they seem to nest in the sugar gum by the gate.

When I went for my walk late yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the few remaining almond trees have started to blossom. What wasn't farmland in the eighties, were almond groves and of course Willunga became the center of the Almond blossom festival. They still hold it and it will be on again next weekend. Most of the almond growers pulled their trees out and planted vineyards during the early nineties or olive groves a few years later. A lot of the almond growers went to the Riverland and created large groves there as the water was available then. I'm not sure what has happened about water there now, since the terrible drought just past.

Just past the Almond trees is the neglected vineyard which seems to have great attraction for the mob of kangaroos. They would not let me approach very closely though, so it is not a very clear photo, but you can see they are kangaroos.
If you click on the photo it is enlarged.
We have had some of them in our paddock in times past but the feed in the vineyard is abundant so they need not look further and also obviously there are no pruners or machines to worry them.

There was a lone magpie on a post preening itself when I walked back towards the house.Very often there are a half a dozen or so sitting about but not this time. There used to be a lot of Ibis in amongst the vines as well but they seem to have gone elsewhere too.They would have done a lot of good I imagine by eating all the crickets and other insects that attack vines.I do remember seeing a White faced Heron pick up a mouse and making a meal of it one summer when we had a mouse plague here in the nineties.
The Willunga hills in the background are green and the trees are really showing up now. It is not easy these days to take a photo without some man made object in the back ground, phone towers seem to have crept in without too much protest.Some years ago it was proposed one of those towers would be built at the end of our road, but my neighbour organised a protest rally and we all dutifully voted against it and it did not go through.

So I did take a photo of our Sugar Gum showing all the electricity wires and the huge poles marching off down towards Aldinga. It would be great if all those things could be put underground now. One day it will happen no doubt!!
By the way, the foxes which plague my neighbour so much, didn't get my two chooks when the dead willow tree fell onto the chookyard fence and made a huge gap for a fox to get through. Our sharefarmer, bless him, chainsawed the tree and put the fence back up for us.
The Tawnys are sitting in the pepper tree these days......