Autumn Life
One of the surest signs of autumn is the wonderful smell of petrichore - one of my favourite smells, and favourite words - and a flush of mushrooms. I saw some yesterday. Lovely and fresh, but I'm just not that confident in identifying the Australian varieties so left them to be consumed by the animals.
And then I saw this lovely animal nearby, wonder if they would eat mushrooms? It's a wombat outside its burrow.
It was still early morning and quite cool, so I think this wombat was lying sunning itself at the burrow entrance. A sign of autumn-winter? I don't think they need do that in summer here in Canberra.
It certainly wasn't perturbed by my presence, so I took a few shots including close-ups of its face. Something I don't usually see, they tend to scurry off when approached and only show their hind end.
Meanwhile, up in the tree in the background of the first photo, there was another sign of autumn. The local Tawny Frogmouth had settled into his autumn-winter roost. He was sitting basking in the sunshine to warm himself up, strategically positioned on the sunny side of the tree, as they always do in autumn. The only tell-tale sign that he was there was a pile of white droppings on the ground below.
Look how well the plumage on his back and upper parts mimics the mottled dark grey of the topside of the peeling wood to his left, and how his breast feathers mimic the stripes of the grain on the lower side of the peeled wood.
Marvelous.
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