Week Two
This morning we headed out to Herdsman’s Lake again (twice in two weeks! I’m impressed!):-) It wasn’t nearly as chilly as last week (could have been because we were an hour later, but I think it’s also just hotter this week:-( )

I’m not sure which of the factors was the cause (I’m assuming it was one of them!), but we saw a number of different birds this week, and the distribution was also quite different (lots of Swans, not many Ibis‘ or Purple Swamp Hens and no Dusky Moorhens that I noticed).

We did see a Yellow Billed Spoonbill (just one), as well as quite a number of Australian Shelducks (including one that appeared to have only one foot—we noticed it limping, and then a more attentive look revealed what appeared to be a stump!) We also saw what might be a Grebe or Cormorant… but I don’t know enough to identify it (and there was too much else for me to remember!) (We also saw a lot of Pacific Black Ducks, but we did last week as well—I just didn’t seem to mention it!)

When we first arrived we heard a lot of bees in several of the Eucalyptus trees. It was a good opportunity to remind Puggle to listen carefully. He (actually, both of them) certainly did a lot better at being quiet and moving slowly:-) We were actually able to listen a few times along the way, and he spent a lot more time watching rather than chasing the birds:-) Today’s big activity was finding a stick to sweep the track after himself.

After last week, I thought I’d try using the stroller. It definitely made for a more pleasant time. Bilby was able to walk and be put in the stroller and taken out again much more easily—and I had put our drinks and snacks and my nature journal and the camera in the stroller basket… more stuff than I had last week, because I wasn’t as worried about carrying it all and carrying Bilby later when she got tired (and I was also tired!) As a result, I took a number of photos (although, I’ll have to wait to upload them, until the film is developed) and even tried a drawing!

We ended up being out for nearly two hours! It was rather longer than I had anticipated, but we were enjoying ourselves, so there was no particular reason to stop:-) It did mean that we came straight home to lunch and naps… so there was no time for Puggle to draw/colour (I had forgotten to take paper for him… I think I need to assemble a nature walk bag, that has journals and pencils and his mini-binoculars… so that they’re all ready to go). We did talk over lunch about our walk.

I asked him for the 1/2/3 words in response to the prompt—but he struggled a bit (even with my modelling) because he’s not used to counting the number of words:-) But after a while he came up with some phrases:-) One word for something he heard was quite easy (although, not for me to write!) “eee-ee-eee”—a pretty good mimicing of one of the birds we heard. I chose “chirruping”, also a bird I’m sure, but I don’t remember it from last week. Two words for something he saw was either “Purple Swamphen” (it’s sometimes written as two words!) or “Crab nippers” (we saw just the nippers, on the trail… being eaten by ants), mine was (somewhat fudged!) “Synchronised-swimming Swans”. There were a group of about five swans who were obviously eating. They kept turning themselves upside down, tails in the air and feet kind of dangling and waving. There were a number of times where two or three of them were either upside down together, or were alternating almost rhythmically… It made me think of the Olympics:-) Three words for something he felt were “Sun and breeze”, I chose “Stamens raining down” for the bits of gum flower that dropped all over us when we stopped to listen to the bees. Interestingly, the sense he seemed to be most ready to note was smell… he frequently paused and asked me to smell something (we’re working on not picking stuff!). Mostly, I couldn’t identify anything (or even smell anything distinctive), but he was very interested in something.

I spent last night wrestling with the .pdf of The Handbook of Nature Study (it’s really long! Nearly 1000 pages—and I think probably more than that if you count all the blank pages at the start.) I’m printing out the bits I’m reading, but it takes a bit to work out which pages they actually are! Now that I have the index out though, that should be easier. I think we’ll just focus on birds for now. They’re definitely what Puggle’s noticing (aside from excavators and ditch diggers… sadly they’re very visible from the lake:-( ) I need to read up on them (I got as far as printing those pages last night, but was too tired to read them then. It should be easier if I build checking the next Green Hour assignment as part of my Sunday prep for the week… that’ll give me more time to read and digest so I can use the new information for the next walk:-) )

I should check what state the “Parts of a Bird” cards are in—I may actually have finished laminating them, and that might be a good thing to introduce to him about now.

And in spite of my good intentions, he’s napping now (he’s essentially given up his naps… and while he does still occasionally sleep, that usually means he doesn’t settle to sleep in the evening—and we’re out tonight…)