Red Poppies and Crimson Rosellas

One hundred years since the Gallipoli landing, and I loved the kindness and care in the hand-made poppies. Remembering with love. 

Then this afternoon, looking out the window after rain, I saw the Crimson Rosellas.

The second rosella can just be seen at the far right.

The instagram effect is not deliberate - just an inept photographer.

Cockatoo lace

This morning  I stopped by this old house in Sturt Street which I love for it's unusual iron trim around the front verandah.

Here is the central pillar.

Left

Right

If this were my house I'd be tempted to paint the cockies' crests yellow - they have to be sulphur-crested cockies, which hang around here over summer.
There's a lovely 1920s letter from  an old man who came to Ballarat as a boy in the 1850s, saying that flocks of cockatoos filled Sturt Street in the early days of the town. Lovely birds!

Although some people hate their noise they have a lot of fans - why else were these patterns made and then chosen to go up on the verandah?
If you haven't seen the house yet, it's beside Rosenhart's bakery.

A puzzle for you

Remember the children's book 'But Where Is The Green Parrot?' - can you find this one, extremely bright bird in a  bare  tree?

 I could easily spot this one, back for the winter pickings, flying across the street, but I can't work out how its vivid red, green, yellow and blue became instantly invisible in a leafless tree!

Wide awake

We drove the eldest boy to the Break O' Day pub in Corindhap, about 30 minutes out of Ballarat along the Colac Road, and found these two. No doubt they were kept awake by all the activity in and around the pub as the place was got ready for a weekend wedding and celebration.

I've never been so close to owls before - nor seen them awake in the daytime, except for tawny frogmouths. Are tawny frogmouths owls? I'm not certain.
So despite their lack of enthusiasm I had to get some pictures of them.