I notice, I wonder …
Epilobium canum
Tag: nature journaling
looking closer
I thought I knew the eucalypts on our block! I went out to observe and record the rate of fruit (gumnut) drop, and to my surprise learned that adjacent trees are actually different in significant ways.
This process, and learnings, delighted me … and engendered even more questions, to be explored in the future.
Penstemon centranthifolius
I’m pretty sure these were scarlet buglers (Penstemon centranthifolius) in great profusion in the northern part of Cheeseboro Canyon. We’ll have to go back in spring to be sure.
seasonality journal
Kate Rutter is one of my favourite people in the nature journaling community. She’s smart, creative, generous, kind, and “rambunctiously experimental”. I enjoyed her zoom session today on creating a concertina journal to record daily data relating to weather, day length, moon phase, temperature, precipitation and more. Not sure if I want to do it myself for 2025, but I’m thinking about it.
Acacia podalyriifolia
Many of the green spaces in this suburb have more grass than tree cover. But Alice Mawson Reserve is thick bush. I spent an hour or two meandering through, and when I emerged I was greeted by a couple of kids on their scooters. “Isn’t it great in there?” they yelled enthusiastically. “Did you see any spiders or snakes? Did you see any koalas? Did you see any lizards? How big?”
I pulled out my sketchbook and they exclaimed over it. The boy said excitedly “I draw too! Every day!” Then they were off on their scooters. The whole interaction made me smile. A couple of nascent nature journalers, perhaps?
Entomyzon cyanotis
“What is the name of that honeyeater with a blue face?” I wondered. Oh right, of course …
mrbbg
My sister Cass and I spent a lovely morning at the Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Gardens, birding and nature journaling, while Uncy Dan took the kids off on their own adventure.
Lonchura punctulata
New-to-me bird! The scaly-breasted munia or spotted munia (Lonchura punctulata) is a finch known in the pet trade as nutmeg mannikin or spice finch. The species is endemic to Asia, but feral populations have established in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, as well as parts of Australia and the US.
Here’s an interesting fact: L. punctulata frequently serves as a brood host for the parasitic pin-tailed whydah in Southern California, where both have become feral. In this setting, the munia raises the whydah’s chicks as if they were its own. This interaction is unusual since the two species do not naturally coexist in their native habitats—the whydah is from Africa—and have no evolutionary history as parasite and host. Now I want to see a pin-tailed whydah!
sit spot
At lunchtime, I followed a game trail down to the creek and sat under a huge oak tree for half an hour, in a place where humans rarely go. I wish everyone had the opportunity to do this, to sit alone in silence by a clean creek under an old tree, and just breathe (and listen, and draw, and write). Would we still fight wars, I wonder?
galling
hashiworks 