SPRING BLOOMING

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
And also part of the Seasons meme

LUNCHTIME

At the Preston Market.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

NIGHT HERON

The nankeen night heron (Nycticorax caledonicus) also commonly referred to as the rufous night heron, and in Melanesia as Melabaob, is a medium-sized heron. It is found in Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, and throughout much of Australia except the arid inland. A small colony has also established near Wanganui, New Zealand.

The nankeen night heron stands about 60 cm tall with a stooped appearance. It is a stocky heron with rich cinnamon upperparts, white-buff underparts, a black crown, and yellow legs and feet. The head is large, the neck short (giving a stooped appearance), and the legs relatively short. During breeding the back of the head bears three white nuptial plumes. The bill is dark olive-green, and the eyes are yellow. 

Young birds are heavily spotted and streaked white, brown and orange-brown. As they mature, the black cap of the adult develops first, with the body plumage remaining streaked for some time. It is not strictly nocturnal. It often feeds during the day, especially during wet weather.

The bird is dependent on a diet of small fish, reptiles, insects and sometimes eggs. It can be seen around freshwater rivers, lakes, bulrushes, estuaries, harbours and in residential fishponds for goldfish. The species breeds in the period from September to April, building a nest platform out of sticks. It nests communally, near water. Two to five light green eggs are laid, with a 22-day incubation followed by a 42- to 49-day fledging period. Widespread throughout its large range, the nankeen night heron is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme

WALK THE HUMAN

Make sure you keep her well-behaved!

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme

AT PRESTON MARKET

Flower shop at Preston Market. Spring has arrived.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

SAD DAY...

Twenty-seven police officers were injured and 42 people were arrested today following a violent anti-war protest outside a weapons expo in Melbourne City.  About 1500 people descended on the City this morning against the Land Forces Defence Expo being held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

It was the city's largest protest in 24 years with about 1000 officers, from both Victoria and New South Wales, deployed. Protesters were accused of throwing projectiles like rocks, suspected human faeces, horse manure and balloons filled with unknown liquids at officers following a clash about 7am. Scenes became more violent throughout the day before dying down by the afternoon.

Violence and war are not stopped by further violence an escalation of conflict. War is a vile thing and it should be stopped. However, these protesters were obviously unaware of Satyagraha...

Satyāgraha (from Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह; satya: "truth", āgraha: "insistence" or "holding firmly to"), or "holding firmly to truth", or "truth force". This  is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone who practises satyagraha is a satyagrahi. The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) as early as 1919. Gandhi practised satyagraha as part of the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights.

Non-violent protesting is more effective in furthering one's cause and making people aware of wrongdoing, than is violent and antisocial behaviour. You cannot purport to be a peace activist by injuring others and putting innocent lives at risk. It is shameful, it is wrong, it is counterproductive. A sad day for Melbourne. More to come this week, unfortunately...

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Nature Notes meme

MELBOURNE EXHIBITION BUILDING

Originally designed for the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, the Exhibition buildings and the surrounding Carlton Gardens are now World Heritage listed. The Royal Exhibition Building is Australia's only World Heritage listed building. Completed in 1880 for Melbourne's first International Exhibition, it was the site of Australia's first Federal Parliament in 1901. With its meticulously restored interior, expansive galleries and soaring dome, it continues to offer a magnificent setting for trade shows, fairs and cultural events.

The Exhibition Fountain by Josef Hochgurtel is of Portland cement built in 1880. Josef Hochgurtel was born in Cologne, Germany, and trained under Herr Fuels, who modelled the Cologne Cathedral. In creating the Exhibition Fountain, he was assisted by August Saupe, who had worked on similar pieces in Berlin, Dresden and Copenhagen. The colossal fountain stands some 10 metres high on the south side of the Royal Exhibition Building, outside the Great Hall. It was constructed for the first of Melbourne’s two grand international world fairs. The fountain’s visual elements were designed to display the young colony’s confidence and advancement, simultaneously signalling the purpose of world fairs to display the produce and industry of nations.

Here it is hosting the Affordable Art Fair held in Melbourne recently.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

GLADE

A digital collage/mosaic of three different photos from the same area, stitched together with Photoshop.

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,

and also part of the Seasons meme.

RUBBISH NIGHT

Taking out the rubbish and enjoying a view of the moon amongst the clouds as it goes towards the West to set.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

GOOD DOGGIE

Lovely dog waiting patiently outside the library.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme

SUNDOWN

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme

SPRING FLOWERS

August 2024 across Australia was the warmest on record by a considerable margin, with a mean average temperature that was 3.02°C above the long-term average, while the 2024 winter was the second-warmest on record nationwide. That's an entire month that was three degrees warmer than average when you factor in both minimum and maximum temperatures at over 100 Australian weather stations across each state and territory.

This may explain why we are seeing early flowering of many Spring flowers in Melbourne, with the gardens already filling with lawn daisies, daffodils, tulips, anemones, primroses, polyanthus, freesias, hyacinths, violets, stocks, etc. In the countryside, one may see three-cornered leek ("onion-weed"), dandelions, buttercups, wattles, gum flowers, and many other natives.

However, every now and then we have a spate of cold, stormy weather with rain, hail, or even snow on the nearby mountains. A couple of days ago a heavy hail storm damaged plants in our garden with hailstones the size of peas. Climate change is a fact of life...

This post is past of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens)

Dandelion

Flowering peach

Buttercup

Sparaxis in the hail

DEMOLITION ZONE

As old buildings get demolished, it is has become important to be aware of potential hazards encountered in the process. Often, crews find caches of dangerous materials lying long forgotten in attics or basements; ricketty structures that could easily collapse and cause injury or damage to workers or adjacent buildings; rotting timbers and mouldy or vermin-infested interiors (rodents, spiders, snakes, termites, ants) pose a health risk to workers or even passers-by.

A special hazard that causes many problems is asbestos, which was widely used in the past as an insulating or building material. Asbestos is a risk in demolition work because disturbance of asbestos-containing material can release countless, deadly, microscopic asbestos fibres. During work, building materials are disturbed, cut, crushed, knocked down. This is the type of work that releases asbestos fibres. You might just see dust and particles, but that dust can kill you if it contains asbestos. Not right away. But years or decades later, causing deadly, highly malignant cancers in exposed people.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Nature Notes meme

IN THE CITY

After the cold, wet, windy, stormy weather we've had the past few days, people were advised to work from home if they could. This is certainly a very sparse-looking City streetscape early in the morning, which means that many people did indeed stay away. Gave me the willies, as it brought back memories of COVID lockdowns...

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

WIRY EGG

Having a bit of fun with some lengths of rusty wire and stones I had found on a walk. I imagined a wiry egg in a stone nest and made it so... I wondered if cast iron ducks lay wiry eggs?

Melbourne is having a severe weather event these past few days - high winds with gusts up to 145 km/hr, wild rain, hail and snow in the mountains, flooding and cold. Winter is leaving us with a vengeance. The days previous to this event misled us into thinking Spring had come early - Wrong!

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.

DAREBIN CREEK

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme