We are really enjoying the wildlife at our new house, it is in the same street as the previous house but the experience is quite different. This is the quieter end of the road and we have a balcony and a garden with plenty of trees so we get lots of visitors.
The Rainbow Lorikeets came to check us out as soon as we arrived and now turn up at 7am and 4.15pm waiting to be fed, if we are more than 15 minutes late they give up and presumably move on to the next person who feeds them. We can get as many as forty on the balcony at any one time, which brings its own problems poo-wise so Ian is going to make a feeder that juts out from the balcony. The Rainbow Lorikeets are now being joined by Scaly Breasted Lorikeets and Eastern Rosellas, which are more shy and take longer to risk trusting us. They put on a good show when we spoke to my Mum and sister Gill yesterday, we set up a Skype call for 6.45am to make sure they would see them.
The Kookaburras are starting to show an interest in us too, they are meat eaters so we have to be prepared with bits of bacon or sausage. We have seen people feeding Kookaburras by hand but they are a bit big with very large beaks so I don't know if I will be going that far.
We had a real treat a couple of days ago when Ian spotted a Tawny Frogmouth (a type of owl) in the front garden next door, they have such confidence in their camouflage, you can walk right up to them and they won't move.
It is officially winter now but, as you can see from the picture of our evening walk, the weather is still very pleasant. We have acclimatised however and think seventeen degrees is freezing, when we spoke to Mum and Gill it was the same temperature here as in England and we were shivering while they were just thinking they were having a bit of a disappointing summer day.
The big news this week is that the washing machine we managed to drop down seven steps and ended up in several pieces, all dented....still works! Our good fortune doesn't end there either, we won a staggering three prizes in the seafood raffle on Friday, these things are free so what with our regular quiz night prizes we have worked out that Club Lemon Tree had given us more money than we have spent there!
Zoe arrives today and is staying until Tuesday, it is a holiday weekend here for the Queen's Birthday - Australians get a day off for this - so we will see what events we can go to.