Welcome! Come on in for a cuppa & reflection on the recent happenings in our backyard that shocked hubby & I.

But first grab your cuppa, a treat & get comfy.  I’m having an ol’ favourite today, a mug of Earl Grey tea with slices of Banana & fresh strawberries picked from our strawberry patch.

Have you noticed that life & death can play out in front of us in quick succession?

We have many visitors to our property, some native others are migratory from other parts of Australia or the World.

We get so much joy in seeing each new visitor enjoy our property as their sanctuary or as a stop over. Let me share some with you.

Our Visitors

A Koala came to visit one night on his way through to the Bush Reserve across the road, he was a big Buck & it was mating season. He was calmly sitting at the side gate looking up at my husband imploring him to open it & when my husband did he calmly walked through the entrance & didn’t look back!

Then there was a huge Goanna on our Carport roof one day looking for delicacies & several Diamond Pythons have slithered in, two of which consumed two of our Cockatiels in the Aviary!

A few weeks ago a Red Belly Black Snake visited my husband in his workshop, hubby just told it to move on, it turned around & left his workshop.

We have two resident Blue Tongue Lizards who have lived under our garden shed for the past two decades & always give me a fright every time they stick their head out from under a pile of fallen leaves, because they look like a snake at first.

A family of cute Long-nosed Bandicoots like digging for worms in our lawn some nights.

And Flying Foxes love our Palm fruit visiting when the fruits are in season, we hear them high up in the Palms fighting & squabbling over these treats. The Brush Tail Possums often compete with the Flying Foxes with the fruit but mostly the Possums like raiding our Compost Bin!

There are cute little Ring Tail Possums who we don’t often see but leave clues behind.  We also have many birds that come & visit, some nest here raising their chicks while others just pass through.

There are regulars; Doves, Willy Wag Tails, Satin Bower Birds,  Wattle Birds, Noisy Minors & Eastern Rosellas (pictured below).

Black Cockatoos fly in when rain is on its way. And every Spring a pair of Wood Ducks rest up in our yard, on their way from the Bush Reserve across the road to the waterway behind us, with up to 12 ducklings in tow, unbelievably cute!

Fig Birds enjoy the berries on our fig tree & Honey Eaters love the nectar from the Bottle Brushes when flowering out the front.

A family of Kookaburras permanently live in the neighbourhood, enjoying the worms & grubs from our lawn each day. Often perching on our clothes line looking at me as I hang the clothes out to dry (pictured below).

And most recently a family of King Quail came for a visit, shared in last week’s;

A Gobsmacked Moment

Unfortunately, our neighbourhoods pet cats also like to congregate in our yard, much to the annoyance of my husband, not because we don’t like cats but because their owners are not responsible pet owners.

Cats are expert predators which need to be kept inside at night & not roam freely around neighbourhoods.

Sadly, these particular cats are allowed to roam killing wildlife at whim, my husband has found dead Nocturnal Ring Tailed Possums, tiny Little Forest bats & birds. Some half consumed & others just killed for the fun of it.

And shockingly the day after I shared about our new Quail family my husband found Mama Quail dead on the back lawn, we had already protected the family a few times from the cats stalking them.

A post mortem wasn’t conducted but the evidence was bloody, my husband buried her near the Bromliad garden where she loved to hang out. This greatly saddened us as two little chicks had now lost their Mama.

Also the sad conclusion to this story is not only did chicks lose their Mama but we found out that this little Quail family were actually a little girl’s birthday gift, that kept escaping from their aviary, next door!

The following words of Jesus came to mind;

“What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.”

Matthew 10: 29 NLT

With this life & death drama unfolding in our backyard, I’ve been reminded just how precious life is to our Heavenly Father & how precarious it is on this planet.

May we never take life, any life, for granted my friend.

Until next time,

Jennifer

You’re most welcome to join me in The Reading Nook

or in Prayer

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© 2024 Jennifer M. Ross, All Rights Reserved.  Photos by Pixabay, Tom Materne,  Suellen Barker & Thomas Holmes on pexels.com

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