18.4.26
A little walk around Croke Place Wetlands
Gold whistler
Bin chicken in flight
Little pied cormorant
Dusky moorhen
Grey fantail
Sulphur-crested cockatoos
31.3.26
One of our earliest birdwalks this year, before I got my big lens.
A young magpie
Grey fantail
3.4.26
We went back again, this time to try out Stu's new camera. These are my photos, not as good as some of the ones Stu got.
Red wattlebird
Red-browed finch
King parrot
Silvereye
I was awake from around 4:12 this morning. After three quarters of an hour of lying in bed not sleeping I remembered that Jupiter and Mars are close together in the sky at the moment. So I got up and photographed them. They were taken through the lounge room window. I wasn't going outside because I was in my pyjamas and it was (almost) freezing. Also I only used a 2 second timer not 10, so there's jiggle in some of the pics. So they're not the best.
Callisto, Jupiter, Europa, Io and Ganymede
And Venus came up as well
Mars and Jupiter get even closer over the coming week, getting their closest on the 17th.
I've been playing a lot of Nonograms Katana lately (due to the ad experience in Candy Crush and Happy Colour being way too trash these days). A few weeks ago this one came up. Such a tiny little puzzle (only 10x10) but even only part way through it I picked what it was. Fun stuff!
Went to Sydney on Saturday. Went to the airport on Sunday. Our flight was cancelled. Spent two days in Sydney. Went to the airport on Tuesday. Went to Tamworth. Came back to Sydney. Caught a bus home. You can read all about it here (photos to come soon).
Wednesday. 4th.
Unpacking, blogging, processing and backing up photos. I'm worried my little PhotoMate GPS logger is dying. On day 2 of the holiday I swear I turned it on and off for the day but there was no track. On day 3 of the trip I know I started it in the morning, but it skipped a whole bunch of the morning and didn't start tracking until later. This would be devastating if it died. Then for the flights on day 4 it's not displaying the track as a red line, but a series of "marker" points (it was fine until just before we took off, and also fine around Tamworth). I can't see anything wrong with the GPX file, no idea what's going on. Upsettingly I seem to have lost a decor container. It had snackages in it I took away, but I don't remember packing it at Mum's or unpacking it here. I literally can't remember the last time I saw it. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, just a container and some snacks, but it also had an old-school mercury thermometer in it, which I'm upset about losing. Why is everything so awful? Pizzas for dinner (since we planned to be out tomorrow) and Stargate.
Meatlovers and Moroccan lamb
Thursday. Didn't sleep very well. Was awake from around 3 for ages, mostly stressing over Qantas being turds. Stu didn't sleep well either. Around 6 he was like, wanna go birding? So we did! Didn't see the caspian tern that Stu wanted to see at the Fyshwick sewage ponds, but we did go for a wander around Jerrabomberra wetlands and saw a few interesting birds.
Got home and called Qantas again. Did some catchup blogging in the afternoon. I'm also annoyed at IFTTT (which I use to save Foursquare checkins to a Google docs spreadsheet). They suddenly started using up credits to do this, but they charge like 30 credits per checkin and you only get a couple of hundred per month. So it died after just a couple of days of them starting this new system. On a lighter note, Foursquare have fixed their checkin RSS feed which was broken for years, so now you can get it via RSS feed. But I bet there's still no easy way to backup the checkin history without a lot of hacking of APIs. Sigh. For dinner we finally used the gift card Stu got for Raku for his retirement. Very nice but very expensive dinner. Came home and watched V for Vendetta. Also - I saw Chrissie's clown loach today! Haven't seen it in weeks, was worried it had died.
Friday. Up early and headed out to Tidbinbilla to do the cascades walk. All. The. Kangaroos. !!! So many kangaroos around on the drive in, although didn't actually get any photos of them, and they'd literally all disappeared for the day by the time we left. Had a lot of frustration trying to get bird photos because of the little turds sitting in trees in the bush with all different levels of trees and the camera struggled to focus. Nice walk otherwise.
Stu's phone GPS app had a couple of brain hemorrhages and sent us in the wrong direction *twice*. Retarded.
Stopped at Murray's Corner on the way home for snackages.
Had a look at my raw GPS tracks from my PhotoMate. It's meant to do "smart logging" where it will log every 30 seconds if you're going lower than 6km/h, every 15 seconds between 15 and 60, and every five seconds over 60. But it's only logging everything 30 seconds no matter what. It seems to have changed some time between December 2025 and March 2026. Before that it was logging every 5 seconds no matter what. Every 5 seconds makes for much bigger logs, but is much more accurate. I dunno what's changed or why. Maybe another sign that it's dying. Also, our new neighbours turned up today! Looks like a young couple. Kievs for dinner and Black Mirror.
Saturday. Awake from around 3 for ages, mostly stressing about Qantas. Did some food shopping in the morning. Called Qantas after lunch (third time lucky?). Might get some resolution on that. Did some culling of the trip's photos. Kievs for dinner then watched The Manchurian Canidate (I'd still like to see the original film one day).
Sunday. Early night and slept relatively well for a change. House, photo and hobby day.
On a lighter note, Windoze has been remembering my folder view settings for the past week or two. I wonder how long that will last...
On Thursday the sweetie and I went to Raku. When he retired he'd been given a voucher for $150 to spend there and we'd been meaning to use it for a while. We'd last been with Annie and Stu back in May 2024.
We were sat at the preparation bar so that was cool to watch them work.
I put Stu in charge of ordering food.
He ordered two of the 6 piece signature selection nigiri ($75). Yes these two little plates of food cost us the entire voucher. It was quite a bit cheaper to order them like this. We had Aburi otoro (seared bluefin tuna belly, normally $30), I think it was Tenaga ebi (scampi, foie gras, truffle oil, soy jelly, normally $34), and Aburi wagyu (seared Tajima wagyu 8+ striploin, garlic soy, fried leek, normally $30). All delicious (except for the wasabi flavour on the scampi), but I was like, well that was a nice entree (for $150), what's for mains?
So we ordered more food.
First up though, a cocktail!
Nekuta martini - spiced rum, passionfruit liqueur, peach and basil syrup, lime ($27)
First was kumogani tempura (soft shell crab, potato starch w kimchi mayonnaise $30)
And then probably the highlight of the night - Jidori karaage chicken (soy marinated free range chicken, bonito w yuzu lime mayonnaise & chilli ponzu $26).
So with a prosecco each it came to something like $274, with $150 off, so about $124 for the night out.
We may or may not have gone to Anita Gelato for dessert afterwards!
Super quiet quarter. Too fricken busy. Both of these were done at work.
This one came from another floor. It was a bit of fun.
I think this Where's Wally jigsaw came from the Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction. Lots of missing pieces too. It took ages!
14.10.26
Stu had already been out here to see the painted honeyeaters, so with excess flex to burn we headed out one Wednesday morning so I could see them as well.
Noisy miner
Eastern rosellas! Eastern rosellas!
Galah
Buff-rumped thornbills
Weebill
White-winged triller
Grey fantail
Black-faced cuckooshrike
Superb fairy wren
We think this is a female rufous whistler
Grey shrike-thrush (we think)
There were a pair of wedgies flying over, and nearby was a huge next with at least two "baby" wedgies
There were several new birds for me.
Apparently this is a Horsfields bronze-cuckoo
Dusky wood swallows
Oriental dollar bird
And of course, the painted honeyeaters!!
28.10.26
Here we went looking for scarlet honeyeaters and a few other things, none of which we found, but did find plenty of other stuff. On a weekday morning pretty much the only other people in the gardens are other birders. All looking for the same birds. Funny stuff. Talked to a lovely lady Andra who showed us a tawny frogmouth with chicks!
Superb fairy wren
Eastern yellow robin
New Holland honeyeaters
A satin bowerbird and his bower
Eastern spinebill
Galah
Tawny frogmouth and chick
28.10.26
We headed out there because some birders had spotted a whiskered tern, which apparently is rare here.
I didn't any good photos - too far away and looking into the sun.
