Rambling Readers

Larena Woodmore

It's spotted-tailed quoll breeding season. At this time of the year, the females get chonky necks and develop a pouch.

They only live for about three years, so it's good to see from recent trailcam pics that there are more babies on the way.

#Quoll #Tasmania #Australia #Wildlife #Nature #BreedingSeason #Marsupials #Mammals

Photo of two young quolls playing outside a burrow covered in green grass and moss. The quolls are a rich, dark reddish brown with white spots over the body and tail.

The one in the foreground is side-on, has one arm in the burrow, is slightly crouched and has its extremely long tail held out and up. Its body is sleek and streamlined.

Its sibling is on top of the grassy mound and looking down at the first one.

Night vision (black and white) photo of another female quoll. This one's neck is even chonkier and she has bulges under her belly. This might mean that she's already carrying babies in her pouch.

Photo of a female quoll that's ready to breed. Her pose is similar to the foreground one in the previous photo, but she has a very thick neck and chin.

Larena Woodmore

Another photo of the platypus. This one shows the layer of air between its fur/skin and the water, keeping it warm, dry and bouyant.

#Platypus #Tasmania #Monotremes #Mammals #Australia #Nature #Waterways

Closeup photo of a platypus floating on the surface of the water, showing from the neck to the end of its beak.

It has a silvery sheen, due to water sitting on top of a layer of air that is trapped by its fur. It make is look like the platypus is covered by a sheet of slumped glass.

The full version of the previous photo with the entire platypus visible. It is diagonal with the beak at the bottom left and tail at the top right.

The water is rippled due to the motion of its feet.

ibk

Everyone else is doing it, so why don’t I.
#aurora #hobart #tasmania #unedited

Red, green and purple aurora over the lights of South Hobart and Mt Nelson

We were doing a bit of gardening out the front of our house when we heard and saw some Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos in trees across the road. My wife went to check them out and took this photo of one flying away, with our house behind.

#tasmania #lutruwita #birds #animals #nature

Black Cockatoo with a distinctive yellow patch behind it's eye is in flight with it's wings stretched up. The fingers at the end of it's large black wings can be seen slightly spread. Directly behind is my house, sky blue panels around a white door with a tree filled hill behind it.

chestas@aus.social

Morning river fog

#tasmania #lutruwita #river #fog #clouds #nature #weather

Under blue skies with scattered white clouds sits a covering of fog. Some trees can be seen silhouetted in the foreground, while the peaks of hills are just rising above the fog layer

SeaFury 🦜 🌧️

Hobart is so beautiful. A photo by a friend from the peak kunyani #hobart #kunyani #tasmania #SilentSunday

Sunset of pinks and purples. Looking out over water and land and sky.

SeaFury 🦜 🌧️

A newly finished (today!) mural in Launceston on the Paterson St East carpark. It depicts the extinct striped Thylacine blending in with the environment, entangled with the endangered spotted quoll. #Mural #lutrawita #launceston #Tasmania

The mural is vertical and about 20 metres high. It’s mostly green (the stipey thylacine is green like the vegetation). The brown quoll has spots.

SeaFury 🦜 🌧️

As promised. Photos of cute furry beings. A baby Wombat, Tasmanian Devils and Kangaroos #fauna #straya #tasmania #marsupial

A young chubby wombat snuggled up in an orange and blue fluffy bag that approximates a pouch. His eyes are closed and he has big feet.

A young Tasmanian devil on the ground. About up. She is about cat size. Stout. Short legs. Black with the characteristic white chest stripe. Her snout is dog like.

The same Tasmanian devil posing I. The morning sun next to a sword grass bush. The bush has long stalks, some laying horizontal.

A mother and offspring Forester Kangaroo. They are grey about the size of a medium dog. Big ears. Sensitive faces. very small thin arms and oversized powerful hind legs and long tail.

chestas@aus.social

Echidna are monotremes, or egg laying mammals. There are four species of echidna but in Tasmania we only have short nosed echidna, and a Tasmanian subspecies which is endemic to the island. Monotremes are pretty rare, the only other species being platypus 🙂

#tasmania #lutruwita #australia #animals #nature #photography #naturephotography

An echidna with a short black beak coming out of a round brown head. Behind the head is matted spiky fur which alternates a dark brown and pale yellow in colour. A sharp black claw can be seen facing backwards from its hind leg

chestas@aus.social

Yesterday I went to Cradle Mountain (where I saw a baby wombat) and noticed a plant on the Dove Lake track that I didn't know. Turns out it is a Green Mountainlily, a plant endemic to Tasmania that has only one close relative species which grows on New Caledonia.

It is an ancient species, dating back 120 million years and is easy to miss as it doesn't look anything special.

#tasmania #lutruwita #bloomscrolling #nature #flowers #EndemicFlora

Green Mountainlily has six green petals surrounding six pink stamens. The petals are darker green near their centre. Only four of the stamens are fully developed. The flower sits on a thin burgundy coloured stem

chestas@aus.social

Lilies and reflections on the Meander River.

#tasmania #lutruwita #river #reflections #naturephotography #bloomscrolling #flowers

Lily pads with some white and yellow flowers. They are sitting on a blue river with reflections of the trees on the far bank

Ooze 𓁟

Deosil is anticlockwise

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how the Sun travels through the sky, and specifically about which way it goes. In fact I wrote my Honours thesis about it, which I will put up here in the not too distant future. But I digress. The direction of the Sun’s movement is usually described as clockwise. But why is clockwise clockwise? Which is to say, why is the direction we call clockwise turning the way it is? No one will be surprised to know that clocks go that way because they are mimicking the direction of the Sun. This is based on a person facing the direction of the sunrise and seeing the Sun gradually move to their right over the course of the day; east, then southeast, then south, then southwest, then west. This direction is also referred to in English as deosil, a word …

Deosil is anticlockwise

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how the Sun travels through the sky, and specifically about which way it goes. In fact I wrote my Honours thesis about it, which I will put up here in the not too distant future. But I digress. The direction of the Sun’s movement is usually described as clockwise. But why is clockwise clockwise? Which is to say, why is the direction we call clockwise turning the way it is? No one will be surprised to know that clocks go that way because they are mimicking the direction of the Sun. This is based on a person facing the direction of the sunrise and seeing the Sun gradually move to their right over the course of the day; east, then southeast, then south, then southwest, then west. This direction is also referred to in English as deosil, a word with Gaelic roots. It is from from Old Irish, dess meaning right and sel meaning to turn.

However this situation does not obtain the planet over. Indeed where I live the Sun absolutely does not do this. My Sun rises in the east and then moves northeast, then north, then northwest, then west. I remember trying to explain this to a bunch of northern hemisphere Pagans at a Glastonbury solstice vigil one time, and they fully thought I was mad. They were unable to separate the concept of deosil from that of clockwise for the same reason I was unable to reconcile what I saw when I looked at the sky with the representation of that sky on an astrological chart, i.e. it just didn’t look that way to me. It took me a very long time to learn any astrology because of this. My breakthrough came when I eventually found some astrological software that had a feature to display the chart wheel as it appears in the southern hemisphere. It was a revelation. Suddenly the framework I had been taught to work with accurately reflected the reality of my sky, where deosil is anticlockwise.

So me and the bloke made a thing to help us austral dwellers see an astrological chart that shows our actual sky, with things moving in the direction they move for us. Here is a still from our real time, live updating chart for Hobart (42°52’48.0″S 147°19’01.2″E), Tasmania, Australia. You will have to go to the blog to see the actual live one.

Read the rest of this piece at;

https://ooze.net/deosil-is-anticlockwise/

P.S. If anyone knows how to italicise text in a toot please let me know.

#Astrology #Astronomy #Religion #Pagan #Tasmania