My early Sunday morning walk to Billen Cliffs

 I have been trying to get up early on Sunday mornings over the past few months to walk to the entry to Billen Cliffs. I'm not power walking by any means but rather I do more of a brisk stroll and it takes an hour for the round trip. I begin by bidding my early morning hello to the boys, who then get terribly excited in that loveable bovine way of theirs and begin mooing for their morning treat of lucerne. I feel a bit guilty about this because it means Steve and whoever else might be staying with us is woken up by the boys' incessant mooing.

 Once I get on to Martin's Road, who knows what I might see or hear. Unfortunately on my last walk a few weeks ago (yes, I've been slack) I found a couple of casualties along the way. This black shouldered kite (which is a surprise because I wouldn't have thought it would have been a likely car victim) and

 this eastern swamp hen, which unfortunately do get hit from time to time as they like to wander out on to roads as if they own them. And often suffer the consequences. But happily, not all the fauna I saw on this walk was ex-fauna.

 And this is an example of being in the right place at the right time. I had already passed along this part of the road about five minutes prior to returning to it on my way back. No python on my first walk past. And python when I returned. The road surface was quite warm and so this fella had decided to stay put and soak up the warmth. Given that it was close to two metres long and stretched out across the middle of the road, I was concerned that it could have been run over.

So I urged it gently off the road in the direction it was travelling. Which was fortunate because two cars passed by within a couple of minutes going both directions and I suspect that this python would have joined the swamp hen and black shouldered kite as an ex-python. Carpet pythons seem to be very common in our valley. Will they stay common in the next 50 years I wonder.  I hope so.