Creatures

Spring time and the garden is full of life. A variety of bees buzz around the guava flowers in the morning, dragon-flies have started to make an appearance, and grasshoppers are chomping away at okra and sunflowers.

One insect that took awhile to identify hung around my pumpkin plants for a week or so, but have since disappeared without appearing to have caused any damage.

After tossing up between an assassin bug and a brown bean bug, I asked the Discovery Centre at the Queensland Museum and their opinion was that it was a Clown Bug (Amorbus sp). which sucks the sap of eucalypts.

On the amphibious side, our garden is visited nightly by a cute but slightly pudgy tree frog. He does not seem to mind my presence, and lets me get within one mm of him (?her).

Cane toads also make a nightly appearance. I have been culling them for a couple of months but there are always more to replace them. Lately I've been rather reluctant to dispose of them and are leaving them be for the meantime and will assess the situation in the future. The main reason for being wary of these creatures is my curious Jack Russell who will play with anything (playing usually ends in the play-mate being eaten).

A blue-tongue lizard was on our lawn one day when we returned from a day out. It was motionless and covered in ants, and we assumed it was dead, but when we approached it started to move. It had been injured (face and belly), ad was extremely lethargic. We looked after it for a few hours until the RSPCA could come and collect it. Fingers crossed that it makes a full recovery. This experience has made me interested in looking after injured wild-life and I'm looking into how to become a volunteer. In the meantime I've taken to cleaning up our local beach - there is so much fishing line, beer cans, plastic cups and other junk that is being dumped into the sea. I'm embarrassed to be a human sometimes, the way we treat our environment and our fellow creatures.

A new bird has made its presence felt in the neighbour's mulberry tree. Those of you familiar with the common koel will know how annoying its call can be, repeated over and over again in a very demanding manner, usually from the wee hours of the morning. Other birds in the garden include rainbow lorikeets, crows, noisy miners, and the occasional ibis.

Queensland has such richness in wildlife, and I certainly hope we can protect it for future generations.