Yellow Tailed black Cockatoos

Each January and early February we are visited by a mob of raucous black cockatoos which spend a couple of weeks in the area working over the cones that have developed on the slash pines. This is the only saving grace in my opinion for keeping these introduced pine trees on our place (well that and the considerable cost to cut then down).

This year the mob was in excess of 50 birds, and the mob always includes a few youngsters that make a relentless raspy squarking for their parents to feed them. It's hazardous to stand beneath a tree that they are munching their way through as they let the pine cones that they are finished with drop to the ground with gay abandon (so to speak) and you wouldn't want one to hit your head.

Once they finish they fly across to another part of the property or neighbouring properties, usually calling their sombre 'funereal' like call as they do so. I can remember the very first time I saw these birds in the wild, when I was 14 or 15, and it was a grey wintery day, when I was with my mates, Waz and Flip, in the Watagan Mountains, just west of Lake Macquarie. We were walking along an old logging track in dense forest and we heard this strange bird call kind of like babies crying. Before long a small flock of these wonderful birds flew over us and landed in trees quite close. We were also lucky enough to be visited by a couple and their youngster a few years in a row when we lived in inner Newcastle. These birds had discovered the white cedar that grew at the front of the house and they would appear around August to tear open the branches and extract the juicy plump borer larvae that would be inside.  I'm very glad we share our place with them here at Larnook as well.

Some fruits

When we bought our place here at Larnook, the fruit trees which were already here were: a lemon, tangello, mandarin, mango, grumichama, persimmon, mulberry, loquat, longan and pear.  We've added: finger lime, banana, lime, orange, lemonade, sambol, guava, feijoa, paw paw, black sapote, Davidson's plum, grape, blueberry, grumichama, Brazilian cherry, mammy sapote, yellow sapote, white sapote, another lemon, wampi, pomegranate, peanut butter tree and giant lau lau.

 So we had a big mango season - apparently mangos fruit only every second year so it will be 2015 again before we get to gorge ourselves on our mango fruit (although Shane wisely froze quite a bit of mango pulp this time).

 Davidson's plums, a native rainforest fruiting tree, the fruit of which grow from the trunk. Although edible, they only become so with a heap of sugar and stewed into a jam.

 We have a couple of grape varieties

 This is one of the two fruit on my wampi tree. It has now turned a yellow colour so I'm going to try it in the next few days.

And OK, not a fruit, but gee it's been a great season for basil. Shane made a very delicious pesto which we had with pasta last night.

Banksias

These are just some shots of various Banksia species that we have planted in the Big Bush Garden to highlight the wonderful textures and colours of the flowers/cones and leaves.  Most of the Banksias flower in autumn and winter, along with most of the Grevilleas, which create wonderful warm tones of oranges, reds and creams.

 A swamp banksia, Banksia robur

 Another swamp banksia with younger cones

 hmmm not sure what this one is, but you can see the seed capsules developing on the outside of the cone

 another swamp banksia flower just starting to develop (we do have about half a dozen different Banksia species, honest)

I think this is a Banksia ericifolia (I think)...love the texture of this....

Lovely summer's weekend

 After last weekend's deluge, the weekend we've just enjoyed was almost sublime. Temperatures in the high 20s, lots of blue sky and sun. Steve and I shared the rather challenging job of getting the lawns back under control and these were finished off this afternoon. I love mowing the bottom paddocks, though I'm not sure the cane toads of various sizes that start crawling and hopping out of the grass as I cut it, do.

 Shane had bagged up as many of the mangoes as he could last week to protect them from the hungry mouths of the flying foxes and possums (and, I suspect, rats as well). He picked as many as he could earlier in the week and Steve made a delectable mango cheesecake last night when Glen came over for a spa, wines, dinner and movie.

And over the past few weeks we've been visited by a flock of more than 30 yellow-tailed black cockatoos which enjoy crunching up the young pine cones, to extract the oily seeds, which they seem to love. This pic is not very good but it does give you an indication of the number of cockatoos that have been snacking on our cones.