Tawny Frogmouth Puzzle

The Tawny Frogmouth is proving a real puzzle. I first saw him on the nest on the 8th of August and it is now the 4th of September and he is still sitting there. Surely they don't take as long or longer than a domestic fowl to hatch their chicks? As you can see the Ash tree has sprouted and the Murray Magpie has built a mud nest in the next gumtree. All the birds seem to be busy nesting now and the blackbird is singing his lovely mating song in the morning and late afternoon.

The blue tongue lizard has appeared again after his winter hibernation and came under the door into the laundry so I had to pick him/her up and put it outside. It finally decided to soak up the sun by the house wall. Last night when I came back into the house as I opened the door, a small lizard on long legs dashed into the room ahead of me. I couldn't catch him of course and I have no idea where he went. As I said he had long legs but was not a skink so I wonder if he may be a juvenile bearded dragon. This would be so good as we used to have a few of them in the garden when we first came here.

I confess to being an aracnophobic so I feel quite proud to have taken a close up of an orbweaver spider clinging to the studio window yesterday. He was gone this morning and I had wondered why he was there in such an exposed position and a bird hadn't taken him. I remember a huge orbweaver in one of the erosion gullies at Hughes Park. Its web went from one side to the other and it would have been meters wide.
I often wonder why we have these particular fears, I am not the least bit afraid of snakes and lizards or mice and rats.
Funnily enough we haven't seen any snakes here other than a young one under a stone near the gate, I lifted the stone to mow closer to the gate post.
The mowing is taking me most of the time at present, the wet winter has made the weeds grow to amazing heights.
The burning of the heaps is a real chore as they are still wet underneath.

Yesterday morning I saw this white thing from the kitchen window and thinking it must be a tissue blown onto the dicondra I went out to pick it up. It stopped me dead in my tracks as it is something I have never seen before. It wasn't frogspawn as that was my first thought , but it seemed to be some sort of fungus instead.Remember you can click on the photo if you want a clearer and closer look, then press escape to get back to the blog.
I hope my friend Cher, who was able to tell us about Kenny's Nob at Pt Elliot and is very knowledgeable on obscure things may be able to identify this......