Equinox

 Yes, I'm writing this on the March Equinox, that magical day when everywhere day and night are supposedly each 12 hours in length. It's not really so, though, it turns out. Depending on where you are on the planet it can vary considerably. Here in Perth, Western Australia, daylight lasts 12 hours and 9 minutes while further south in Hobart in Tasmania, it ist 2 minutes longer. That wasn't a surprise but when I looked at the figures for McMurdo Base in Antarctica I was surprised to see that they have 12 hours 40 minutes of daylight. It's probably more accurate to say that day and night at the Equinox are in the vicinity of 12 hours all over the planet. Oh, and as well that day is only when the sun is above the horizon and doesn't include other periods when there's still some light such as twilight.  

This, of course, led me into wanting to find out more about twilight. If, like me, you thought twilight was just that period of the evening which we call dusk you may be surprised to learn there are several periods of twilight. There's what we call dusk and dawn for starters but there are also technical terms for different times during dusk and dawn. There's morning Civil Twilight which begins at the instant when the Sun's geometric centre is 6 degrees below the horizon and ends at sunrise while evening Civil Twilight begins at sunset and ceases when the Sun's geometric centre is 6° below the horizon. This is that time when the sun is just below the horizon and there's still enough light to be out and about to work or play. Civil Dusk and Civil Dawn it turns out aren't time spans at all but the specific moments when Civil Twilight ends and Civil Dawn begins. Then there's Nautical twilight which precedes Civil Dawn and follows Civil Dusk. It begins when the Sun's geometric centre is 12° below the horizon in the morning and ends when it reaches the 12° point in the evening. It gets its name because both the horizon and brightest stars are visible enough to allow navigation at sea. Phew!

If that's not enough there's also Astronomical Twilight which is when the geometrical centre of the Sun is 12-18 degrees below the horizon and is the earliest part of dawn and the latest period of dusk. For most of us living in cities with their light pollution there's little difference between Astronomical Twilight and night. The sky is dark and many stars are visible. Astronomical Dawn and Dusk are the moments when the sun reaches that 18° position. Astronomers can make out more stars in this period but to view fainter and more distant ones they have to wait for night.

I found this all fascinating as you can see and if you want to find out more about such things I found the Time and Date website very informative. It has lots of other interesting topics. The National Weather Service website was also helpful.

Birds Bathing

In my continuing attempt to avoid the mess the world's in - war, climate change, floods I could go on but I won't - I'm soothing my mind with birds.

 I'm lucky enough to live in a suburb of big blocks which is surrounded on three sides with ideal bird habitat. Closest to us is a golf course which was established as a country club back in the days when this whole area was bushland. The golf club has made a serious effort to keep wildlife friendly and the small lakes and bushland within its boundaries houses a resident mob of kangaroos. We don't often see a sign telling you to watch out for kangaroos in the middle of suburbia but there's one on the road behind where we live. Add to this the bushland of a large pubic recreation area, a bushland reserve and another golf course all only a short distance away as well as a park directly behind our block and we have a wealth of natural habitat.

This means wild life especially birds spills over onto the blocks in the surrounding streets. I found a Purple Swamphen grabbing a quick drink when I went out to change the sprinklers early one morning and we've had several ducks nest in and around our place. They were  probably Pacific Black ducks - though it's not easy to tell since they interbreed with other species - and they have a perilous trip to take their ducklings back to the safety of the golf course. As well in the late winter to early the shelducks arrive to graze on the new grass shoots.

To attract birds to our garden we have a birdbath much appreciated by the birds in the summer in particular. It's strategically placed so we can see it and while there are often visits over the day it's late afternoon when it really gets busy. I've been trying to identify all the visitors but that's proved impossible. I unfortunately don't have a great camera for capturing fast moving targets - and some of them are very fast - so many of the little brown birds will remain a mystery. Instead I'll give you a list of those I've managed to identify in the past few days.

The willy wagtail is around the garden most of the time. These are handsome little fantailed birds -  around 20 centimetres -with black backs and wings contrasted by their white chests. We have a nesting pair here and they are incredibly tame, to the point that we have to keep. a watchful eye when we're on the grass hanging out the washing so we don't tread on one. They aggressively claim the birdbath at times and djitty djitty furiously if any other bird however big has the temerity to want a drink or bath. They'll happily take on a raven which at around 50 centimetres is considerably bigger than the willy wagtail and more often than not the bigger bird leaves the defeated. When they bathe they really bathe and come out to sit on the side of the bath wet feathers fluffed out before they shake themselves and fly off.

Then there are the honeyeaters, the largest of which is a pair of red wattlebirds. These are some of the biggest visitors at around 33 centimetres and can feel entitled to have the bath to themselves as well while they have a thorough bath. The smaller honeyeaters usually wait until the wattlebirds are shaking themselves on the side of the bath before they begin to come in. They fly in and out so fast and often in small flocks making it very hard to recognise them. So far I've managed to identify these: New Holland honeyeaters - these are resident here and we often see them out in the garden. Then there are the singing honeyeaters - also common here and extremely fond of our grapes. We're being visited by brown honeyeaters, too, as well as occasional white cheeked honeyeaters. 

There are some other tiny birds which had been defeating all my efforts at getting a close look at them until yesterday. They come in a small flock, flying in at great speed to flit around in the water then leave just as fast which means getting a good look is all but impossible. They remind me of a flurry of little brown leaves caught up by the wind. Yesterday, though, one of them stopped for more than a second and I think I can confidently say they are weebills. This is the smallest of the Australian birds and I'm pretty chuffed at having finally being able to identify them. We've also just had another unusual visitor, a striated pardalote. I knew these were occasional visitors to the country club golf course but I have never seen one here before.

Along with these we get Australian magpies and magpie larks from time to time as well as the odd pink and grey galahs - these all live in the park we back onto - and, of course, the ubiquitous (and feral) laughing doves and spotted doves. These last two were released over a hundred years ago around the then newly established zoo and have since spread all over Perth to the point that many folk think they are natives.

Well, It's Been Interesting

That's me trying to be positive which is not easy when there's all out war between Russia and the Ukraine, we've just sweltered through the hottest summer on record and there is the worst flooding in recorded history in Queensland and northern New South Wales. All these are things I can do nothing about unfortunately any more than I can about the rapidly rising numbers of Omicron which have hit the state. We've been largely protected from COVID until now by our hard border policy but this variant is so virulent that once someone brought it in  - who knows how - it's spread like wildfire. The border restrictions are soon to go there being no point in the community being isolated when the virus is already here. It's expected to peak at the end of this month and as our vaccination rates are very high  - the majority of people like Pisces and me are triple vaccinated although there are still some holdouts - this should mean most who get it will get it mildly. Let's hope this and the mask and social media distancing mandating will work.

To add to our woes the federal government is in election mode - even though the date for the election hasn't been announced. It will have to be done soon because the election needs to be held no later than 21 May which doesn't give much time for actual electioneering. We can be sure that it's coming sooner rather than later because with the government having had a less than successful time in the final sitting week of Parliament distraction is at work. We were treated to the PM at home with his family recently during which he strummed a ukulele apparently unaware of how that reminded many of us about how he holidayed in Hawaii while Australia burned under wildfires in the 2019-2020 summer. He's not the only one giving us a glimpse into his family life with the leader of the opposition party doing a photo shoot for a popular women's magazine and there will no doubt be more of the same right up until election day.

In something even less entertaining I have spent some time looking at my poor garden. Although Pisces has tried he's not a gardener and that combined by wave after wave of temperatures in the high thirties and low forties Celsius, almost continually since the week before Christmas until now, means the garden is a disaster area. Before everything went pear shaped the garden was looking the best it had in years. I'd got a number of different heritage vegetable seeds and they were already planted out and starting to produce, various cuttings I'd nurtured had also been planted out and everything looked green and lush. Now it looks like someone took to it with a blow torch. My brother had warned me that it would be bad - burned to a crisp was how he described his garden and he and his wife had been nurturing theirs, but mine is even worse. I hardly know where to start with it but, on the bright side, now my knee has stopped folding up on me and my back and leg pain have eased I can actually, albeit slowly, start doing something out there. I've brought plants back from the brink before. There's no reason why I can't do it again, is there.

In more positive personal news I've been writing every day and since Christmas I've added two more first draft stories to those I'm writing about the women of ancient Greek mythology. I started the first story back in about September and got three stories done to first draft before I got stuck on one story I really wanted to tell. I finally finished that a couple of weeks ago which freed me to move on to the new ones and I've now started a third. Where these stories will end up I have no idea but I'm having a ball writing them.