Photos taken from our back yard today.

This morning at about 8 am, we heard a commotion in the back yard. We went out to find 4 kookaburras, 3 currawongs, 2 magpies, 2 lorikeets, and assorted doves and noisy miners - all competing for space on a small table where I'd placed a bowl of water and some seed. Later in the day a pair of gang gang cockatoos came in. This is surely a sign of things to come; we used to get the occasional kookaburra here; currawongs and magpies are rarely seen together, and the other birds usually chase each other off until one species wins the battle. To see them all together indicates that they are now competing for space and food.

I chopped up some raw meat (Topsy's dinner) and took it out to the table. The kookaburras flew down immediately, even though I continued to stand there. Ken came up, picked up a piece of meat and held it out on the palm of his hand. One kookaburra approached him confidently and took the meat from his hand. Three of them had been cackling, but the fourth bird sounded as if it had a sore throat. Their feathers looked as if they'd been singed, so perhaps the bird had scorched its vocal chords. If only Ken had his phone or video camera handy! The way things are, I'm guessing we'll get many more opportunities.

I've got a bit of a variety here. The first two are of the sky and sun at around 6 pm tonight. Under normal circumstances, I would not point my camera directly at the sun and take a photo! But I was able to do this because the smoke haze over Melbourne is so thick, it has all but obliterated the sun.
The dangly bits are our Xmas lights which haven't been taken down for two years.

Same shot, but using the zoom. The galahs had come down for a drink at the water bowl I have on our verandah all the time for the birds.

Our poor garden. Along with most other people, ours looks like God took a blow torch to it last Saturday. The 100 year old Staghorn fern on the tree may come back to life, but I'm not holding my breath.

Our new 5000 litre rainwater tank, installed yesterday. The plumber is coming tomorrow to finish the job with the pipes. Then all we need is some rain to fill it up. If we'd had this installed a couple of years ago when we first started talking about getting one, our garden might have looked a lot better.

On a lighter note to end this post, here is our poor gazebo, which literally blew to bits during the wind last Saturday. I'd warned Ken that it wasn't meant to withstand high winds, but ah no, he knew better. Still, if that's all we have to complain about, we are doing well. We've still got our house and everything in it. Latest figures out today indicate that nearly 2000 (yes, two thousand) houses were burnt down last week. Seven thousand people now homeless. Is that what it was like in London after the Blitz?