The Silly Season

This time of year has been called the "silly Season" for all sorts of reasons - usually because of the quantity of alcohol that is consumed. Yesterday I found examples of three people who took the name very seriously and I am unable to show you a photo of any of them because I was driving the car at the time.
The first was a man who must have been building his own home because stretched from the back seat and out through the passenger window were at least ten dark stained planks of wood of various lengths.
The next was also a driver with something reaching through the front window, this time a roll of carpet. The only thing is that as the car moved forward the pressure of the air pushed the extension almost to right angles beside the passenger window. The extension would have been over a metre long.
But everything comes in threes and the third driver stupidity came as I neared home and turned left on a feeder lane to be confronted with a car in the other lane with a passenger leaning body length out of his window guiding two (TWO) inter - linked shopping trolleys beside the car..
He let go the trolleys with one hand to frantically gesture for us to go past faster and by doing so lost direction with the trolleys and they swung into the car (his not ours), in the rear view mirror I could see them pulling into the side to see the damage!
So now I think I have seen everything! Pity the camera was in my bag on the back seat! I would have loved to have shared those with you - especially the last!
AJ

Amazing skies

The sky can be really beautiful and here in South East Queensland there is so much sunshine that very often there are no clouds in the sky at all. Blue skies are great when you want to take a single blossom on a tree with a vivid blue background but when taking scenery the monotone of the sky seems a little uninteresting. Being in it is wonderful, don't get me wrong! But in a photograph a few clouds counter the entertaining foreground. Knowing this I have created dozens of cloud "brushes" so that I can add all kinds of clouds of many different shapes and opacity - however when I saw the sky in the photograph that I have included here, the sky was definitely the focus of interest. I could NEVER have created a sky like this in Photoshop!
This was one of those occasions when I had the camera when the opportunity presented itself. How many times have you wished you had a camera at a particular moment? So a lucky shot! Lucky too that I went outside and actually saw it!
AJ

King parrot once again

We had a pleasant surprise the other day, a king parrot flew onto the rail of the veranda and showed no fear of our proximity at all. Having a collection of seeds for the lorikeets and finches who regularly visit, I decided to tempt our brave visitor with some sunflower seeds.
To begin with I held my had on the rail about a metre away so see if he would come any closer. He didn't. I then edged my hand along the rail until I was actually touching the bird. He didn't attempt to fly away or even lean away from my approaching hand. Once my handful of sunflower seeds was under his beak he started to eat from my hand.
It is more than possible that this bird has been caged for some reason or other and has become very accustomed to being near humans. it is not normal for a king parrot to be this trusting.
Only a few hundred metres from our home is a property where injured birds are rescued and then released once they are whole again. Maybe this bird has been looked after over there. I haven't asked!
After a good feed of seeds our new found friend flew off - we were hoping he would visit again but so far we have neither heard nor seen him. Maybe he is visiting someone else with a seed supply!
AJ