Wedge-Tailed Eagles

Wedge-tailed eagles are the biggest birds of prey around here. They can often be seen feeding on carcases of dead animals, and they will sometimes take newborn lambs, which doesn't endear them to farmers...

Birds and Trees

Can you see the ducks in the tree in this photo?

The other morning after I dropped the girls at the school bus, Hugh and I had a slow trip home, stopping to look at the birds and trees.
Mountain ducks are pairing up, and preparing to nest in the holes in trees. There are lots of old trees around the farm with nesting holes for parrots, cockatoos and mountain ducks.
One of the trees we looked at had quite a colony of pardalotes or tree-creepers. They were high up in the trees and hard to see without binoculars, but we could hear them.

Maybe this could be a place for a nest...

Two maned geese or wood ducks on a dam bank.

More ducks on the dam bank.

Then they flew away...

Where we stopped, with some big lone Marri trees in the front paddock.

Pregnancy Scanning Ewes

With a late start to the season it becomes important for farmers to manage their precious feed resources. One way to do this is to ensure only the most valuable ewes - those which are going to produce a lamb - receive the best nutrition. To this end we had our sheep pregnancy tested on Tuesday.
A team of workers and dogs push the sheep through a race into the scanning crate.
Pregnancy scanning is carried out by ultrasound, and the operator separates the non pregnant ewes through a drafting gate.

Nan filling the yards with sheep.

Yesterday Nan Lloyd (http://www.sheepdogs.com.au) came over with some of her dogs, to help Roger keep the ewes up to the guy who was doing the scanning. A couple of good dogs can make a big difference to the flow of the sheep. We also had a friend's son, a young school-leaver, helping get the ewes into the scanning crate (that's the sort of thing I used to do before children and before photography...), and everything went quite smoothly. Thanks Nan and Fraser!



Mike from Tim Stevenson's Sheep Services came to do the ultrasound scanning. He is from New Zealand (what we call a "Kiwi"), so he has had a lot of experience with a lot of sheep, and he worked really quickly. And he was quite photogenic, but he was a bit worried the photos were to go into a glossy women's magazine!! Sorry Mike, you're not that famous, but I'm sure the three followers of my blog will appreciate your photos.









P.S. Sorry about the quality of the photos. I have a new computer and I didn't transfer the presets for the photo editing from my old computer. Now that I see them here they are far too dark.

Trip to Perth

I used the time-lapse feature on the Canon G9 camera to film my trip to Perth on Thursday evening. The camera was jammed on the dashboard of the car, so there are a few smudges visible on the windscreen. You have here about 2 hours worth of travel in just under six minutes. What I noticed most in watching it was that the roads are tree-lined nearly all the way.
I left the farm at 4:50pm and the film finished at 6:50pm just before I reached the first traffic lights of the metropolitan area at Armadale.

Hollywood

I have been to Hollywood! OK Hollywood hospital is not so good as going to the real HOLLYWOOD!
The only bright lights shining on me were the operating theatre lights.
I had to have bilateral duct excisions (bits cut out of both breasts). I have been extremely stressed about going to have the operation done. It was basically the same thing that I had last March, but on both breasts. Last year I didn't worry at all - it was just a little inconvenience which delayed our departure for France.
Anyway, no use worrying! It has been done, and I have a follow-up with the surgeon on the 19th of May.