Post 256 Birds, birds, birds

A strange short ‘peep, peep’ sound took me out on the balcony early this morning. It took a while to locate the birds in the Jacaranda and longer to find an opportunity to photograph one of the pair. They were, I think, Wattle Birds- a species of honeyeaters. They had a dash of yellow on their tail and lower body. They’re fairly large; I'm guessing about 30-40cm long .

It's interesting to have another variety of bird in the trees.

A bit later a pink-breasted dove arrived, explored the space, allowed me to distribute seed and ate someof it. Blush or Myrtle - I wasn’t sure. Five minutes later a plump bird I assumed to be Turtle. arrived, joined her, then appeared to chase her away.

This, however, soon changed into affection and ‘kissing’. It ended in a clear invitation from the female, mating and a kind of lingering parting. 

It took me by surprise. Given doves mate for life, this was most likely Myrtle and Turtle. The male was large and mature, the female smaller but not necessarily young. Both were pink-breasted. She was comfortable with me around. I checked my previous information about longevity, and consensus seems to be 8-10 years, not the 2 years I'd found before, so I’m going with Myrtle and Turtle. 

I went shopping for chicken Maryland’s for tonight’s dinner and some bakery items for after school snacks. Processing the bird photos took a while but I managed a few rows of the shawl. The pile of works in progress beside my afternoon work chair is growing.

Dinner worked fine. This time the potatoes were more successful than last time. I put them on very early, turned the oven off when they began to brown and back on again with enough time to finish crisping. Control freak!

It was 34C today. The washing dried quickly and the apartment was reasonable with the balcony doors open until about 3pm when the sun hit the western windows and I put the aircon on. 

Tomorrow is forecast to be 36C but Wednesday drops down to 26. The heat is much easier to manage when it’s in short bursts.

Consistent with today's insistent bird theme, my sunset shot tonight captured a bird high in the sky, the tail end of a flight returning to roost.

World Embroidery Study Group meets this Wednesday. I need to send out a reminder. I’ve been thinking about topics for next year. There's a lot of possibilities.