Ya silly Drongo!

 The Strine title reflects the use of the Spangled Drongo's crazy behaviour when catching insects as indicating it is a few kangaroos short in the top paddock.  Some friends spotted one at Bucklands car park on the evening of 10 May.  They got some phone photos ...

.. but as I arrived a muppet drove a car past and scared it off.  😞

So I was down there again on the morning of 11 May before the sun got its act into gear.

I patrolled the general area for a few minutes and pretty much as soon as it was possible to see a black bird against a burnt tree there it was!

An astonishingly cooperative bird I was able to get with 2 metres.  The light was still pretty naff so the spangles are only just visible.

Then the sunrise got happening (my guess is this view lasted for about one minute)..

More celestial stuff.

 Having found that I could get a fair bit of detail in a moonshot during the day I decided to have another go on 9 May.  The first image was taken at 1727 hours, so getting towards the evening but still quite light.  For reasons best known to Panasonic the background was darkened considerably.  However there is still quite a lot of detail of the cratering close to the terminator.

I had another go at 2030 hours, by which time it was, of course, dark.

I have no idea of the physics/astronomy to explain why the moon is on its back!  Again there is quite good detail in parts of the image.

Things in and out of the sky

We are back in Mallacoota.  As we drove down the road a few burns were visible but from Mallacoota the only impact was a colourful haze to set off the crescent moon.

On the next day (May the 4th be with you) a visitor from the sky flew into one of our glass doors.  A White-headed Pigeon: from the grey on its breast probably an immature.  No idea why, it can't see through the house and the door is sheltered by a 2m deep veranda.  After wandering around looking a trifle concussed it then hopped up on the railing for a while ...

.. before going back on the deck and wandering around.  By that time I had got a camera rather than my phone.

As the afternoon progressed some interesting clouds built up.

But then cleared off (with no precipitation) as the evening came on.

Interesting celestial sights continued on the 5th.  As the sun set the cloud cover appeared to drop some virga, but no rain was recorded.

The crescent moon is putting on some weight.  Memo to self: find a tripod attachment for my camera - I know I have one somewhere.

The sky was generally above average interest on the 7th.  At some point I took these sunbeams, which in family mythology are likened to a bible story of prophets ascending unto heaven.

Later in the day, beginning at 1722 hours, the clouds and setting sun gave some nice views.

Mount Imlay (~40km North) 

Mount Waalimma in the background (~35 km NW).

These last two images are from 1747 hours, looking NW.

The moon was fairly obliging with much detail available in a shot while quite daylight (1722).

After dark (2058 hrs) there is less detail available through my camera (allied to my low skill level in mucking about with exposure etc) but an interesting effect with the clouds.

April 2022 Weather report

 For reasons that escape me, and thus probably summarised as "it seemed like a good idea at the time" I compiled the weather report as a Google Document rather than a Blogpost.  

Having done that once, I think I will go back to blogging in May.  As is so often the case with computer applications, Google Docs does not play well with images.