Current weather

Hot and sunny, occasional rainy days

Recent birds

Morning in Bright

• Today we spotted two bronzewings on the ground near our car park! They froze when we saw them, and eventually we just moved on. After not seeing them or hearing them for weeks, that was a nice surprise.
• We have been regularly seeing cormorants, either in Morses Creek or the Ovens. But they will probably be fewer now that tourist season has started.
• Still seeing roos in the usual garden.
• Lots of large duck groups now, no more ducklings. The old apple tree on the corner near Star Bridge has a pretty constant flock trying to get into the fruit on the ground, which is a bit of a hazards as it means they are all across the road there.
  

At home

• We've been seeing kookaburras almost every day on our side fence.
• There has been a koel singing in town for at least a fortnight. We laid eyes on it this morning, through binoculars in the gum tree behind the white house.
• We've had many evening visits from superb wren families. A couple of times we've sat out on the back lawn and had them zooming back and forth and foraging in the grass. They perch in the front tree, the side grevillea or the guttering, and sally down to our plants or the lawn to hunt. Often there have been two males in full plumage, elbowing each other around, and a harem of females, nonbreeding males, fledgelings. 
• We've got a wattlebird policing our fenceline almost constantly - so we wonder if there's a baby being fed somewhere there.
  
• There are still lots of birds calling - yellowfaces, pardalotes, fantails, blue faces, thornbills (loudly!). The friarbirds have moved into the large grevillea trees in the area, so we hear them but don't see them much at home.
• We are starting to see more corellas and white cockatoos in town. A small group of corellas were hanging out behind us this morning, including foraging on the path.
  
• The magpie family is still around - at least one juvenile among them. They enjoy our fresh water bowls.
• And we a re still occasionally spotting a spinebill on the kangaroo paws out the back.
  
• We are occasionally seeing ibises overhead, mostly straw-necked in large flocks circling, but we also had four white ones fly low over us a couple of evenings back, heading towards the dam.
  

Other notes

• We've been visited by a bluetongue! Not sure whether it's semi-resident or just passing through, but I spotted it basking on the garage step.
• Our paper wasp nest has definitely been abandoned. 
• I cleaned out the wasp home a bit - removed the sticking-out grasses and pulled out a little bit of the grass clumps. I brushed off the spider webs and brushed away as many of the ants as I could. I was mainly trying to get rid of the ants, and they do seem to have left, I haven't seen them for a couple of weeks. BUT now it's wasp heathrow! There are many wasps building their nurseries now. The most obvious are the big grass wasps, coming and going with their grass stems - but there are also pottery wasps and others in and out having a look and building. I even spotted one of the grass wasps with a big green caterpillar, so the larder is on the way for their young.