Pretty Polly

Here’s a couple of cheerful Sulphur Crested Cockatoos finishing up their breakfast on the verandah. They’re here every day at the same time screeching to be fed and, amusing and friendly as they are, they don’t half make a racket. In fact they are the noisiest creatures in the forest around here on the outskirts of Brisbane. Big birds they are too, a fair bit larger than a crow they can be quite disconcerting when they swoop down to say hello - and they won’t clear off until they’ve had their morning rations, this particular pair had first peck today but waiting not too far away are maybe another dozen more noisy so and sos all hoping to sweep up any remaining titbits.

Later on after the cockatoos drift away looking for rich pickings elsewhere other less assertive ornithological delights come to the breakfast table. This beautiful King Parrot hops down from a nearby tree bold as brass and touts for the odd nibble. His slightly less red and slightly less brave mate sits back up in the tree closely watching to see if he gets himself into trouble. So idly sitting on the verandah watching out into the woodland I'm not only able to identify a plethora of different bird species but also write an interesting tale to accompany my photos, what a talent to have! The commonest and most colourful parrot to be seen here every morning is the Rainbow Lorikeet which turns up in the dozens hoping for any leftovers that the early birds have missed. 

An Adelaide Stopover

Australia 2025 saw us take an initial dog-leg to Adelaide spending a few days in a new city (for us) before our onward journey to Brisbane. You could be forgiven for thinking that the photo here was taken somewhere like Sicily or Sardinia but it's at Largs Bay, a pleasant spot on the coast just outside Adelaide. The Largs Pier Hotel was built in 1882 and in it's early days was the first view that many immigrants saw of Australia after their long journey from Europe, the more well to do travellers undoubtedly spent their first night here. In the 1970's it was a lively music venue - AC/DC played here in their pub rock days! And it's matured into a grand and welcoming hostelry as we found out when we enjoyed fine food and excellent beer on a couple of occasions. We'd spent a few nights in central Adelaide exploring the compact city but then had a relaxing break by the sea in a well equipped AirBNB cottage round the corner from the hotel

Can the beak of a pelican hold more than its belly can?

For all those folk who fondly imagine Australia to be a land of warm weather followed by hot weather the South Australia coast in June would disabuse them of that misguided notion. It was COLD. Across from our cottage was the beach side boardwalk and on my early morning stroll I was astonished to discover that the wooden boardwalk slats were covered in frost! The chill didn't seem to bother the extensive birdlife - here oceanside of the boardwalkI came across a couple of scavenging pelicans who seemed quite tame. The famous Largs Pier, erected at the same time as the hotel frames the back of the photo.

On our first evening in Adelaide city we ventured forth out of our hotel to find thousands of people young and old all streaming in one direction, they were bedecked in black and white scarves and hats and were heading to the 50,000 plus capacity Adelaide Oval to watch Port Adelaide FC, the oldest Aussie Rules Football team in the country. Aussie Rules in the most popular sport in Australia and we were in the heartland of the game. The game involves a ball and 36 players running around a huge oval shaped pitch, there seem to be very few rules and plenty of mayhem. Despite the violence on the pitch the fans are generally well behaved and, as at Australian rugby and cricket games, they're allowed to drink beer and watch at the same time. Of course in order to provide pints of beer to thousands of punters in a short space of time novel serving systems are needed. I wandered over to the stadium the morning after the game and took this photo of one of the self-service bars just inside the gates - it's not just lager either, Stone and Wood's offering is quite a tasty light hoppy ale.

PS I knew that West End is a standard Aussie lager and had assumed that the drink on the far side was also an Australian style light beer but in fact it's 4.5% alcoholic lemonade - must be very refreshing if that's what takes your fancy!

Back to Oz

Rats beware

  Vermin appear to be somewhat of  a  problem down under. At Australia’s  bigger and brasher answer to B & Q, I  came across  the eradication aisle. All  the items visible in the photo are  designed to eliminate or exterminate rats  or  mice! This includes sonic killers,  electronic zappers, live catch traps  and  of course various very  effective poisons.  Further down  the aisle are specialties for  getting rid of a wide range of other  infestations. Cane toads are a  particular  problem in Queensland.These big ugly  things  are, at six inches long, the biggest  toads in the world. They were  introduced to Australia as a

Ribbet!

means of containing cane beetles which were plaguing the sugar cane fields in  Queensland. This wasn’t a very clever idea because cane beetles live at the top of sugar canes and the cane toads are very poor climbers! However these toads are very adaptable and they have proliferated to the extent that there are now around twenty cane toads for every inhabitant of Queensland. They are quite disgusting and will happily sit in the middle of a pile of dung waiting for dung beetles to come along to be snaffled by the lurking toad.

Rather large aren’t they!

I do like to be beside the Deeside

That's me!

Well I've been trying to upload new content to this blog for a couple of months without success but after lots of tinkering around I finally uploaded one photo so I might as well make some comments on it. This is me at the end of one of the Deeside Off-Road Thursday night race series. I'd not done any of these for eleven years so I thought I'd give it a go. 

It’s a four race series of weekday evening events on fine summer evenings, (well it does rain sometimes). For refuelling purposes there’s a very handy Wetherspoons pub a sort distance away.  And here’s the dinky over 70 trophy I won for completing three of the races! Can’t be bad 😎

Vicky meanwhile continues to dig in and accumulate different parkruns under her belt. The photo beneath is from the course at Ellesmere Port, one of our favourite away fixtures.

Well this posting worked after a lot of tweaking and messing around, I’ll post it and move on to the next catch up, wish me luck🍀. 

Cruising.

Warbling in Ohio

17 roller coasters!!

 So where would you go  if you were in Southern  Michigan and had a few  spare  days at short  notice? It had to be no  more  than a couple of  hours or so driving, and  by the shores of one of  the Great Lakes would  be nice. When I looked  at the map Sandusky,  Ohio looked just the  job, and  doesn't just  about everyone come  for Cedar Point, one of  the biggest amusement  parks in the world? We didn't and thank goodness it was still closed for the winter break although the forthcoming reopening was already being vigorously promoted, the hotels were being scrubbed up and prospective employees were queuing up for interviews for summer jobs. Sandusky is a pleasant lakeside town in its own right but the huge amusement park over the bay dominates the local economy. However at the end of April there are few visitors, we were able to find a lovely AirBnb cottage close to the centre of town.

Sandusky has quite a history, in the 1850's it was the last stop on the underground railroad for refugee slaves on their way to Canada and freedom. Local families would take them in hiding them from the authorities until they could be taken across the lake by boat. By the early 20th century the town was booming, freight trains from all over the Mid-West would bring vast quantities of coal and other goods for onward shipment from the huge docks. We visited the local museum to see a working model of the gargantuan coal loader which has been transferring coal from trains to ships for over 70 years. The industrial side Sandusky is all on the west side of town now and today it's a tidy town with wide streets and plenty of greenery, which seems to suit the large numbers of Canada Geese raising their young in and around the houses (we saw more than one chain of goslings following their parents and stopping the traffic as they crossed the roads.) 

We discovered a couple of local breweries peddling their wares in town, the closest, just ten minutes walk away,  was the Bait House Brewery. Based in a largish shack this fine brewery and restaurant was formerly a fishing tackle store and indeed has a fish oriented menu. However I ignored the lake perch sandwich and had a nice beefy burger accompanied by a hoppy Bicentenniel Ale brewed on the premises - fab! 

Our neat little cottage was on the east side of town and was a steady walk away from the Pipe Creek reserve right by the lakeside where bird watching is very much on the menu. We'd already seen plenty of interesting birdlife such as terns, waders, finches and even vultures but this was the time and place for spotting warblers! We were very lucky to be in town for the visit of thousands of American Warblers on their way from Central and South America to the vast forests of Canada. Having forsaken their wintering grounds for the northern summer, they traverse the US until they reach the Great Lakes, pausing for a breather before they set off across the water. For a couple of weeks they settle down in waves sheltering a places like Pipe Creek attracting the attentions of twitchers from all over North America. So what's the fascination? Unlike the rather drab warblers of Europe, where it's not easy to tell the different species apart, American Warblers (only distantly related to the ones we see back at home) are much more colourful as you can see. Around 30 different types of warbler pass through Pipe Creek in spring and autumn and the game is obviously to tick off as many as possible. Some of the watchers we met had rather expensive fancy looking binoculars and cameras, but yours truly was quite happy using pocket bins to spot just four different warbler birdies (not the four illustrated here but as soon as I sort some decent photos out I'll post them.)

USA via Iceland

 

Well we certainly didn't expect to be in Iceland in early May. However a hastily arranged trip to the US saw us booking flights with Iceland's national airline and travelling to Detroit via Rejkjavik. Not only is it a shorter overall flight time but it's a good price to boot. Our visit to Iceland consisted of a brief spell at the main terminal of the airport but that's enough to get a hint of what Iceland's all about. For example just half an hour's car journey from the airport is Grindavik and in the vicinity of this harbour town there have been volcanic incidents and seismic activity occurring for the past four years. In fact as we descended out of the clouds the pilot took delight in pointing out the plume of smoke emerging from the latest eruption. Grindavik currently has a population of zero as it was evacuated in November 2023, in addition to this I discovered that it's twinned with Penistone, South Yorkshire. I wondered about this connection and did some internet digging and found that both towns have (or did have) mountain rescue teams which seems to have something to do with it.

As I have indicated this wasn't a planned trip but on arrival we made our necessary visits in Michigan and then headed south to Ohio where, yes you've guessed it, we found a parkrun. This was an event in a nature reserve a few miles east of the fascinating lakeside town of Sandusky. The event director, also Martin, had come across parkrun in England near Southampton and decided to start his own one in the US, I'm not sure if he'd just misinterpreted something I'd said but Vicky was looking very puzzled in this photo. So Osborn Metropark parkrun was great, it was a low key affair with just 19 runners who mostly turned up about five to nine. Following a short briefing we set off along a green track into the distance. I was a little worried when I found myself in the lead but after about one kilometre the short athletic looking chap who'd been stalking me took off into the distance. So another possible first evaporated but I was happy with second place. 

Edmund Fitzgerald - down to a watery grave.

Vicky had travelled out a few days before me and had taken in the Canton Lower Rouge Trail parkrun, an even more low key event where she finished in third place behind our Lyndall who came in second! The trail runs along the Rouge River between Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan and further towards the city is the town of River Rouge. It all starts to get a bit industrial here and Rouge River was where the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was built, this ship capsized in a storm in 1975 and is the largest ship to have sunk in the Great Lakes area, perhaps the largest boat ever to have gone down in fresh water seas. By the way Edmund Fitzgerald was nobody particularly famous but happened to be the chairman of the ship's owners' board at the time.

And I couldn't resist including the Osborn parkrun facebook page which has us starting off on this very pleasant Saturday morning ramble. Vicky is hidden directly behind me and slightly further back in a pale coloured cap also mostly hidden, is the guy who caught up with me, ran alongside me for a while and then took off like a whippet.

County Towns of England Part 2

 

Church on Bridge.

Warwick was a stop off for us on the way home from Oxford. It's definitely a town, a county town no less. It's quite a grand little town with a fine extensive medieval castle, much visited by tourists who take lots of pictures of this very photogenic and much restored structure. The remains of the town walls include Eastgate and Westgate which for some reason that I have not been able to discover, have churches built on top of them! This photo is of Eastgate and maybe the congregation didn't enjoy worshipping above the street because St Peter's was only used as a church for about 150 years -from the 16th Century until around 15 years ago it was a school. You can now rent the building as holiday accommodation! And note the red pillar box standing between the pedestrian arch and what was formerly the archway for wheeled traffic which has been standing there since 1856.

Here's another 1856 pillar box in Warwick, this time at Westgate, where again there's a church (St James's) on top of the entrance arch. The two post boxes in question were among the first to be erected in Britain and are very rare examples of the very rare 'Doric' style named for its  fluted design as found on ancient Greek columns. Vicky was very happy because she was wearing her pillar box red shoes that day. Curiously despite not having a cathedral there is a Bishop of Warwick (or rather there isn't at the moment because the post is vacant.) The position is actually that of an assistant bishop (or suffragen bishop) at Coventry Cathedral. I know a little about suffragen bishops having met the Bishop of Oswestry earlier this year at a church in Northamptonshire - it's a long story which I'll maybe expand on another time.

And guess which new up and coming band are coming to Buxton this month. Just two weeks ago they'd released their first LP  'Please Please Me' and they were riding high in the charts (girls were screaming!) Of course this all happened 61 years ago in 1963 and that year The Beatles hit Buxton for a second time returning in October. That must have been fun, and quite a late one by Buxton standards as it was scheduled to finish a bit before midnight. How did they all get home, and who went to these early gigs? (And who remembers The Trixons?) Buxton is neither a county town nor does it have a cathedral but it is a rather special. In April 2024 we ourselves returned to Buxton for a long weekend involving pottering round Buxton Brewery pubs and generally re-exploring old haunts. We found this Beatles poster on the wall at our AirBnb, a handy apartment close to the Pavilion Gardens, handy because it was less than 5 minutes from the start of the Pavilion Gardens parkrun which turned out to be a pleasant saunter round the park on an early chilly spring morning.

Thanks for the photo Eamon!