We have invited a few emus to live on Raakajlim. Job description: “Eat, walk and poo”. And now we have giant Quandong-filled poo all over the place!

Bee-eaters are colorful birds that migrate to the southern states in Spring and Summer. How consistent is their early October arrival date?

Dark emu is in the sky, the emus have laid their eggs, but I’ve been looking at their poo.

A mob of 53 Pink Cockatoos feeding on native Pine and … grapes

Finally we have the trifecta of Fairywren photographs! These three beauties are all found on Raakajlim.

Juvenile birds can have odd colors, stripes or weird bits, totally different to the adults, just to make things tricky.

A bird which eats, sleeps, drinks, mates and bathes on the wing and has a strange affinity with radar-shielding fluff.

These colorful birds migrate to the southern states in Spring and Summer.

The Little Button-quail bred in the grasslands on Raakajlim in 2020. Very exciting to see them.

The Zebra Finches are here in numbers which means the Porcupine Grass seed is ripe. Porcupine Grass (Triodia scariosa), sometimes called Spinifex, has an interesting story …

A Collared Sparrowhawk showing its distinctive long middle toe.

The emus have hatched their eggs, leaving two eggs behind.

A Nankeen Kestrel and thoughts on bird photography.

Pink Cockatoos can struggle to find a suitable hollow tree. This pair nested in our creekline!

The sad demise of the Southern Whiteface

The Purple-backed and Splendid Fairywrens are putting on a show this winter.

A welcome visitor

We’re trying to establish a colony of Sugar Ants so we can observe how this hero ant raises the caterpillars of the Arid Bronze Azure butterfly.

Dragonflies dragging each other around by the head, psychedelic Damselflies, and an epic battle with a Mudeye.

A rare plant called Boerhavia coccinea, the food plant for the Striped Hawk Moth caterpillar Yeperenye.

My 2021 entry for the threatened species bake-off. The annual baking competition is held just prior to Threatened Species Day on September 7th.

A rare chance to see the bats of the Mallee up close.

Well, we made it to number seven. But I’m not sure the list of Australian butterflies most likely to go extinct is a list that you want to top.

If you’re a cicada, this is the last thing you’ll see before half of your head is ripped off. This Katydid is a unique example of “aggressive acoustic mimicry”.

This Spider Wasp dragged a Wolf Spider for 55 metres to stash it in her nesting burrow.

Is the colonising flight of thousands of termites a good or a bad thing?

These are the geckos which live on our windows and doors, hunting for moths attracted to the lights.

The sand turds are everywhere in the Mallee and this is one of the beetles responsible!

A 67 year-old mystery has been solved by citizen science and social media, and a lost Jewel Beetle has been rediscovered.

A burrowing snake, rarely seen above ground. Completely harmless and cute.

We dug this Pobblebonk out of our vegie patch today. He posed for some photos to show off the identifying features.

On the first day of our Spring bird survey, I couldn’t resist these Stumpytails and Central Bearded Dragons.

Episode 2 of “They’re not all the same skink!”. This glossy, sand-swimming skink was in our vegie patch.

It’s amazing who visits a waterhole when you are not watching …

Here is the Arid Bronze Azure butterfly immortalised in cake-form for the Threatened Species Day bake-off.

Oh what big eyes you have!

Not a snake … a legless lizard.