Wildlife Wednesday - chiton

Hold on tight... I got an ID correct first go!

Yesterday, I was snorkelling in the local rockpool with my niece and nephew who are visiting. We were checking out some awesome things, including this 'underwater cockroach', and I said I thought it was a chiton.

Anyway, you know how bad my ID is, so I just wasn't sure.I worried about how on earth I'd dreamed up such a name, and why I'd just blurted it out to kids when I should have been teaching them the correct thing and not making something up.

But ahoy! I was correct! Blow me over with a feather.

So there's some information here on the Queensland Museum site if you're interested in more about chitons.

They're a mollusc (so an animal in a shell) and they like crevices and dark spots. You can see it here tucked in tight next to a rock, in a little crevice with a snail and some barnacles/top hat snails.

Their shell has 8 plates, held together by a girdle around the outside.

They eat algae and small invertebrates from rock platforms.

And I'll bask in this for a while now... :)

Fearless Friday - bodies #2

I didn't think I could write a scarier post than last Friday's but here we go...

In January last year, I was lamenting to a friend that men can just go to the beach in shorts, with a towel slung over their shoulder, and they rarely gave a damn about the gut that may hang over the waistband of their shorts.

Women, on the other hand, although they reach some age of invisibility, become visible if they do the same. But, why is that so? Why shouldn't women be able to wear a bikini with their belly protruding and their aged body showing? Why is that so terrible? Isn't it worse that we struggle into a full piece swimsuit, where we swelter before we get wet and then again as soon as we dry?

She suggested I should be brave and stride out for all womankind in my bikini and a sarong.

All year, it's sat in my head.

In winter, I bought a bikini online because it was cheap, and it was a step towards being brave.

This week, it's hot. And I know it's summer and it's meant to be hot, but summer on the coast can sometimes be hot, cold, or somewhere in between. At the moment, we have a hot spell. And that bikini called...or rather, the one piece repelled

So, I was brave - in a timid way! Late in the afternoon, I went to my beach, to my usual spot which isn't near the flags (and although that sounds dangerous, it's not really because the flags are only there for a few weeks of the year and when I have a dip outside of life-saver season, I swim here, so it's where I know. When kids visit, I go to the flag area and sometimes it seems much worse than my spot!) and I swam. I took off my sarong, and bared my belly to the world.

And that the 'world' was devoid of people, that was only a good (and lucky) thing!

It was freeing, wonderful, cool, refreshing. It almost felt like I was naked.

And when I told my friend, she told me that a whale to one fisherman was a mermaid to another - it just depended on how long they'd been at sea!!! :) :) :)

That's my fearlessness in the Christmas-New Year period. And when I retell this story, I may leave out that the beach was deserted!

Note: There are no photos of this event. No photos of the bikini either. The bottoms look like they could house a small family!

Wildlife Wednesday - immature Koel

 I have quite a 'birdy' backyard because I chuck out seed randomly and because we've got lots of trees around us, and I've got no pets.

Between October and December, we have Koels and Channel-billed Cuckoos and Wattlebirds arrive with all the raucous squawks and squeals and yells associated with them. The mornings become quite deafening, and take some getting used to for me who likes my morning sleep in!

The male Koel is black with a red eye. In most birds, the males are beautiful and the females dowdy, but I don't think this is true of the Koels. The female and immature Koel are very similarly colours. The adult female has a red eye, and the immature Koels have a black eye.

In the top left image, there are two Koels sitting on the waterbath and I can't decide if it's a Wattlebird or another Koel in blurry flight. In all the other shots, the Koel has a black eye, so an immature bird. I have seen the black male (but no photos this year), so I hope one of the two on the waterbath may have been the adult female.

I think this immature bird, and the female, are stunning. Those gold feathers on the head glistened beautifully in the sunshine. The banding is quite spectacular.

I'm so impressed that I was able to get these shots. I had to creep out, and I've cut away a lot of the image to show them up close, but the birds must be getting used to me, because I was probably within 7 m of him/her.

Have you ever seen such a pretty bird?

Happy 2019

Happy 2019!

As we wave farewell to 2018, I think many people will remember it as a year when the world seemed to turn upside down!

I'll be remembering at the year when my health improved, when I embraced alternative  / complimentary therapies and found some relief. The year when I didn't lose my voice - not once! The year when a few repeat events came around and I handled them differently. The year when I did a lot of work and reading into alternative practices, and stepped more closely towards all sorts of right-brained beliefs. The year I spent with Tarot cards, self-reflection, past lives, fears, dreams, memories, oracle cards, self-help books, and dancing along the edges of science and magick.

What does 2019 hold?

There's always a moment as the year clicks over, when it's like starting a new story - there's a whole blank page/notebook, just waiting for characters and adventures and romance and action. But for me, until I start writing the story, I have no idea where it may go! Sure, I'll have a few thoughts, but no hard and fast map or plan.

My thoughts for my 2019 are:

• get a few self-published stories out
• focus more on my writing career, and less on the every day tasks that consume me (but somehow still pay the bills)
• remain healthy
• keep exploring all aspects of the world
• keep exploring my right and left brain, and working to see if they can balance better
• run my OWL on Getting Comfortable Writing Sex
• do a few local workshops
• put together some 'help for writers' tips/articles
• work with other authors
• keep enjoying the amazing creatures in my backyard
• meet more readers and writers
• enjoy every day of life!

Do you have plans for 2019? Or any thoughts of what you'd like to achieve/do?