Mammatus clouds over Sydney
Weathering storms with Debbie’s Saturday Challenge
Tag: Nature
An occasional visitor : channel-billed cuckoo
Watching out from a high branch!
The Channel-billed cuckoo is a bit of a villain. Native to Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, it is is the largest brood parasite in the world, and the largest cuckoo. This is a juvenile male that stopped by our neighbourhood this week.
Perched on Debbie’s Six Word Saturday
Lens-Artists Challenge : Blue
The Blue Mountains National Park is about 1.5 hours drive west of Sydney. With peak heights just over 1000m, they are not particularly tall by global standards!
Distant views take on a blue hue, especially in summer. The main cause is attributed to volatile terpenoids released from the native, mainly eucalyptus, forest. In 1813, the crossing of the Blue Mountains by Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson heralded the opening up of the fertile plains to the west, lands which would be rapidly exploited by the early colonists. Today, the Blue Mountains are a must for tourists, for spectacular views of the escarpments, for the clear mountain air, for rock climbers, canyoners and bushwalkers.
A contribution to Patti’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Blue. Other entries will be found here.