Once aloft, a wedge-tailed eagle generally appears “effortless”.
However, on the ground, wedge-tails are quite “clumsy”, and getting airborne again is decidedly (and obviously) effortful for any eagle in flattish terrain.
Comments closedTag: South Australia
The wedge-tailed eagle is Australia’s largest raptor.
It is one of the world’s largest raptors, and is almost certainly the most abundant of any of the world’s big eagles.
Wedge-tails range across almost all of Australia.
They are, however, very “difficult”, photographically speaking.
Until the fifth afternoon of June 2023 I had never taken a “successful” photo of an airborne wedge-tail.
One CommentAs previously reported, I think that – within the so-called “First World”, at least – South Australia is the world leader in poor signage on roads and tracks.
Often, necessary signage is non-existent, or impossible to read until/unless one is within a metre or less of the ludicrously tiny and/or long-faded signpost.
Not uncommonly, signposts are entirely illegible.
Very often, signage is maddeningly inconsistent.
Picture yourself in rural or “outback” South Australia – or even in a near-Adelaide place where you have dared to “get off the freeway”.
Your intended destination is bigger than Woop Woop but much smaller than Adelaide.
At the first relevant turn-off you are pleased to see a legible sign which points to “bigger than Woop Woop…”
However, none of the next six crossroads carry any legible signage whatsoever…or their legible signs make no mention of your destination.
What should/could have taken you 30 minutes and 40 kilometres, instead devours 70 minutes and 90 kilometres.
Another South Australian specialty is the placement of “No Through Road” signage only at the relevant road’s dead end.
Having traversed thousands of SA kilometres over 68 years, I had assumed that South Australia’s signs – and their oft-ludicrous absence – had long-since exhausted their ability to surprise me…
As I recently discovered, in a “remote” place, I had underestimated them!
The relevant sign was very well crafted, easy to see and read…and utterly superfluous.
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The featured image looks across the eastern part of Deep Creek Conservation Park, the farmland beyond, and further east, along the southern shoreline…
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The old-growth forest’s floor in Deep Creek Conservation Park is almost certainly South Australia’s finest winter location for fungi-fanciers.
It is also spectacularly well-endowed with successful predators who lack legs and teeth.
They can photosynthesise…
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The pictured mushroom (i.e. fungal “fruiting body”) has a cap so shiny that parts of it act like a “funhouse mirror”, yielding what look like distorted reflections of its forest home’s canopy.
To see them, you probably need a good quality screen – bigger than a phone’s…and/or you may need to zoom in on/enlarge the mushroom’s shiniest surfaces.
In any event, you should have no difficulty “discovering” an ant who made a fatal mistake.
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Deep Creek Conservation Park is circa 110 kilometres south of Adelaide – 90 minutes driving time, almost all of it on good roads.
One of South Australia’s better kept “secrets” includes SA’s best remaining (tiny) remnant of a once relatively common but now very rare type of forest, spectacular coastline, lovely bushland, wildflowers, many birds, and lots of ‘roos,
And that’s not all…
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South Australia’s longest chain of mountains is named after Matthew Flinders, not by him; “the navigator” did not impose his own name on any natural feature.
One of the Flinders’ gems is Parachilna Gorge, on the mountains’ western side.
Very soon after you drive back out of the gorge, you look across a seemingly-endless, flattish plain.
Sitting in it, nearby, is the almost-town of Parachilna; effectively, its excellent pub is the town.
Lake Frome’s vast salt-flat is a deal further “out there”, due west…so too the setting sun, at 5.19 pm on 06 June 2023.
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Do you fondly imagine that Australia has overcome its “rabbit problem”?
This post’s 2023-vintage photo was taken recently in a “well-managed”, much-loved National Park.
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To my eye, Coober Pedy is an ugly town, albeit a singular one.
So, I was delighted to see something so lovely, growing not many footsteps away from a hideous shopping venue and car park.
I love the way such tall grasses look, especially when wind whiffles through them.
Alas, however, I was admiring a very “bad” plant.
Buffel grass – Cenchrus ciliaris L, pictured above – is “arguably the greatest invasive species threat to biodiversity across the Australian arid zone.”
Some beef producers, however, still view it fondly as “great cattle feed”.
The relevant legal requirement in South Australian Arid Lands:
Land owners in this region to take reasonable steps to kill plants and prevent their spread. Enforceable by the South Australian Arid Lands Landscape Board.
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