Post Venus Meetup

[skyring]

Bloody thing. Early arvo and I set up the telescope outside, get a nice crisp image projected onto the side of the shed, where I've stuck up a white sheet of paper. At ten minutes to three there's a few thin clouds making the projected image a bit fuzzy, and it didn't get any better from there - solid cloud cover rolling in from the west covered up the whole bloody event until a few minutes before sunset when the sun peeped out from under the edge, but by that time low trees were breaking up the image and I couldn't get a clean image.

They did better on top of Mount Ainslie for those few minutes, and one of those shots made it onto the front page of the Canberra Times - an ordinary camera with a telephoto lens was used. With a welder's mask held in front.

Double-header evening just on sunset so I was rushed. SQL SIG meeting at Microsoft HQ. Security against hacking attempts using SQL injection and related stuff. Interesting and a bit of a worry.

Starting immediately after was the Canberra Meetup, this time at Starbucks in Civic. Only two others showed - this is my third and every time it's been a whole different set of Bookcrossers. Dunno what this says about me. Carol an ex-Wisconsinian and a local young lady - the same one who released those three books in Kingston that I found when looking for a PIF-RABCK last year.

We had a good old natter and swapped books.

Got home and found a 13YO girl had journalled one of the copies of Jaws I left in the orthodontist's waiting room a couple of weeks back. Sweet!

And Sonora has journalled the copies of my book sent to St Louis. Six weeks after the event. Must have had a lot on her plate, which is fair enough. Apparently one's been autographed by all present and is being sent back to me! Others are here and here and one has been kept by the Bookcrossing team.

I've been watching the birds on my feeder. Rosellas, mainly, and the odd crested pigeon or two on the bricks below, picking up the spilt seeds. Yesterday the cockatoos discovered the feeder and tried hard to get aboard. These are big birds, powerful birds, noisy birds, playful birds responsible for an awful lot of vandalism on street lights and so on. They waddled out along the dowel supporting the hanging feeder and tried to swing themselves down, but found the job too difficult and flew away. And then one decided to play with the string holding it up. Just a snip of that powerful beak and the whole thing came crashing down, spilling seeds everywhere. Cockatoo flew off happily. Lucky the terracotta bowl stayed intact and I was able to set the whole thing up again, this time using a cup hook on the end of the dowel, with a bit more cord to hold it on.

I've started a gallery on Yahoo to save pictures of the birds feeding. Please forgive my tinny little camera.

Comments

[gorydetails.livejournal.com]

Those darned clouds! Judging by her portraits and statues I wouldn't have thought Venus was so modest {grin}.

I'm glad you found out where your convention books are; I wanted to tell you about the autographed one [I'm in there somewhere] but didn't know if you knew about it already and was afraid of spoiling a surprise!

Nice bird pics, too. Other people's birds always seem so much more exotic than mine - although I suppose a cardinal or even a bluejay looks pretty snazzy to someone who's never seen one before. [I am rather glad that we don't have wild cockatoos here; the starlings can be enough of a nuisance just by flocking and screeching, and the crows, while sometimes unnervingly bright, never seem to commit actual vandalism. (The squirrels, on the other hand, do; do you have squirrels, and if so, do the cockatoos eat them? she asked hopefully...)]

[skyring.livejournal.com]

I knew that one had been signed. I originally planned to have a dozen printed up by Lulu and asked for one of those to be sent back, but in the event I had to get them printed locally by Officeworks and I could only afford four what with the cost of FedExing and so on, but Sonora, bless her heart, remembered that I wanted one. I'll treasure it all the more.

Cardinals and Blue Jays would look pretty exotic here, I'll certainly agree. One day I hope to see them in real life, possibly together.

We have flocks of starlings here. An introduced species, they are a bit of a pest, and Western Australia is fighting a battle to stop them crossing the Nullarbor Plain from our side of the island.

The cockatoos are seed eaters and unlikely to eat small mammals, though I must admit they look every bit as ferociously armed (if that's the right word) as birds of prey with their huge beaks and strong talons. We don't have squirrels, thank goodness. Their niche is taken up by possums, which are marsupials, sort of a small treegoing wallaby with more normal legs and tail, a flexible bushy tail which curls around branches.

They are really just balls of muscle with claws and teeth sticking out, and I make very sure that they have something to eat before trying to stroke one. Not that there's a real lot of love in any of our marsupials - they keep their emotions in their stomach, seemingly.

Nor would I taunt one with a bit of tucker held aloft - they would see and smell the food and start climbing up me as if I were a tree.

They only come out at night, spending the day tucked up somewhere. A hole in a tree or inside someone's roof. There's one sometimes finds a corner above our toolshed in the carport and we beguile it with apple cores or bits of sweet biscuits.

There was a galah - a pink and grey small cockatoo - feeding yesterday, but I didn't want to get too close in case I scared it off on its first time, so i didn't approach the window for a photo.

I'll add to the gallery as opportunity permits. It's drizzling today, so I wouldn't expect much in the way of bird activity.