Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Each of the headline’s descriptors applies to one or more of this post’s species – all blooming a deal less than a kilometre away from both a large shopping centre and one of Perth’s arterial roads.
For just about any “exceptional”, “extreme”, or “weird” form of flowering plant behaviour, southwestern Australia is the global hotspot.
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Unsurprisingly, southwestern Western Australia produces many different honeys, each deliciously distinct.
The most prized varieties are produced from rare, endemic species.
However, Western Australia’s southwest also has the world’s highest proportion of flowering plants that do not feed and/or seduce/deceive insect pollinators; these flowers (all, endemic species) favour birds.
(a few rely also/instead on particular, very small, also-endemic mammals)
WA’s floral emblem is bird-adapted.
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Above: dude running after “his” dog, as rain dimples the surface of Smiths Beach’s shallows,
Below: Big, wintry sky, Indian Ocean.
Both are colour photos, taken when shades of grey “ruled”, briefly.
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A surfer-dude’s dog has no difficulty amusing itself, alone on the shore, whilst its “owner” is “out there”, riding the waves.
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Imagine the image above, devoid of context, and subjected to a “caption this photo” contest.
A suitably cornball “winner”:
a quiet drink with a few mates.
The featured image was taken with a long lens (560 mm) at 11.12 am on 20 February 2020.
The photo immediately below was taken just a few seconds later, from almost exactly the same vantage point, overlooking a pond/reservoir, a few minutes away from Khichan…
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Cranes: in this case, Demoiselle cranes, the world’s smallest crane species,
Jains: adherents of Jainism, an Indian religion which is older than Christianity and Islam.
The practical application of Jainism’s central principle/vow has produced an astounding result.
For Demoiselle cranes (and for human admirers of one of the world’s more elegant birds) Khichan – a modest village in the Thar Desert – is now the world’s most rewarding destination.
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WA’s emblematic flower may be synonymous with Springtime, but it is no slave to the calendar.
Well before Winter 2022’s alleged end, it – and not a few other “iconic”, “Spring-flowering” WA endemics – were already very evidently flowering in the quasi-natural bushland section of Perth’s Kings Park.
It is an easy walk – or an even shorter free bus trip’s distance – from the CBD.
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The only Hollywood to have repeatedly appeared in Pelican Yoga is a small but significant piece of remnant bushland, adjacent to Perth’s Karrakatta Cemetery.
Until 19 January this year, the organism pictured above was a fine, living example of a weird, wonderful, and very rare Western Australian Acacia species.
When I photographed a few of its “leaves”, glowing in bright winter light at 2.33 pm on 01 July 2022, it and they were as dead as the many thousands of entombed persons, nearby.
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As is often true of Tachybaptus novaehollandiae, our hero/ine was repeatedly disappearing and re-emerging.
Every time s/he resurfaced, the excellence of his/her feathers’ water-repellence was readily apparent.
Incidentally, as highly responsible parents, Australasian grebes sometimes eat their own feathers; click here to discover precisely why they do so.
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