Tawney Frogmouth in January......

It is hard to believe that our Tawney Frogmouth Dad has again sat on his nest in the Ashtree and produced another offspring in the height of summer....but he did and yesterday morning I saw the little chap peeping out from beneath his Dad's hot body. It was creeping up to 40* C yesterday but luckily there were no fierce northerly winds. Also ,of course, the Ashtree is in full leaf so there was plenty of shade. It is interesting too, that when I first saw the chick it was quite white but this morning it had turned gray.
Last night we had another amazing sunset but when I went to take a photograph the battery in my
 Nikon 80 was flat and could not fire.There are plenty of dramatic sunsets and sunrises in my photo stash so here is one from an earlier time.
I love the outlines of the gumtrees now they are mature sized, we planted them twenty five years ago and they have grown without a great deal of extra water except perhaps for the first few years when they were all on drippers.

We have been seeing quite a few bunnies this year as the wet winter has encouraged them to breed up. they are cute creatures till they start to decimate one's vegie patch and nibble on the rosebushes . We have had Mr Hare lope through the front garden also but I don't mind him or her as they don't seem to do much damage here. They will chew the trunks of small trees of course so we did have to  protect them for some years.The vignerons don't like them at all because they will chew through the dripperlines.

Kangaroos do so too, I am told, to get at the water.
Our garden has been looking very good this year with all the rain we have had. The pond especially has become a mass of water lilies and the surrounding plants flowered so well.
It was such a wet winter and spring with the cool weather lasting till Christmas when it certainly told us not to be complaisant and fired up to 40*C on Christmas day and we had our lunch inside in airconditioned comfort....no standing in front of a hot wood stove in one's knickers to cook the Christmas goose nearly fifty years ago.....was I really that silly in my younger days?