I try not to visit the bowers too frequently as I don’t want to deter the birds from the area.  But I am continually fascinated by the activity around the newest bower.  My friend Carol from LiBode suggested that it may be the interaction of two juveniles, jockeying for position while working out the intricacies of attracting a female.  The more I observe their activity the more I am convinced she is correct.

So now a neighbouring child's play dough cutter has been stolen.

North End May 13 01

North End May 13 02

North End May 18 Each time I go down there is a subtly difference in the arrangement of the pieces.

South End May 13

South End May 18

The Bower

The musical prompt for week six of Part II of Weekly Art Date was Kimbra ‘s Good Intent.  I enjoyed playing with layers in photoshop to have part of the photo in colour and the rest in black and white.  I have started a new journal, the double spread is only a little larger than a single page from my previous journal so it was interesting working on a smaller canvas.

I have finished my art journal.  I have covered it with painted brown paper and some beautiful double sided ribbon that Annette from Too Many Ideas very kindly gave me.  The pages are all made using the process described here: http://loriidae.livejournal.com/104746.html

The prompt for Weekly Art Date Week 2 was “What have you lost?”

The lyrics are from Dido – See the Sun

Yesterday morning I was on the deck enjoying my morning cup of lemongrass and ginger tea, when a spotted turtledove flew straight at my face.  I don’t know who was more surprised him or me.

He was a juvenile and veered off at the last moment to land on the rail less than a metre from the cat.  I grabbed her tail and held on to her, to stop her from pouncing, and called to my husband to bring the camera out.  This is an introduced bird and its numbers have steadily increased over the two years since I first noticed a pair in our street.

Spotted Turtledove After he collected himself and flew away and I was able to let go of the cat’s tail much to her relief, I was visited by a blue-faced honeyeater

Blue Faced Honeyeater and a helmeted friarbird.

Helmeted Friarbird

So there appears to have been a coup at the bower.  Previously I have seen red and purple decorations, now there are green and white.

One of my neighbours is missing a spoon. and a measuring cup.

I am near the end of my current journal and was paging through to see if there were any blank pages, when I re-discovered this page.  It was one of those, which was ok, but not really going anywhere, no zing, it needed something more.

I began thinking about some of the prompts that Moira from Weekly Art Date has been giving us.  I began looking back over the posts and found right back in week six of part one (mid- February) Up up and away, and suddenly this page clicked for me.