April 2011

April

What the frack! ‘Gasland’, Sunday night on SBS, May Day (coal seam gas exploration)

Anne Kennedy writes that the director, Josh Fox says the situation is much more serious here: "In the U.S. we have plentiful surface water, we have mighty inland rivers, mountains (with elting snow), and reliable rainfall. But in most of inland Australia, you are entirely reliant on your Great Artesian Basin and underground aquifers - which is what coal seam gas mining will destroy. You don't have the inland rivers and mountains that we have - and CSG mining is far, far more serious for Australia than for the U.S." See the Great Artesian Basin Protection Group

As in the USA, mining companies are exempted from all the Water Acts and legislation, leaving it basically a self-regulated industry – and we know what happened in the banking sector and the BP oil disaster with self-regulation. See The Politics of Global Regulation, Princeton UP, 2009, Eds., Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods for the lack of accountability with globalisation.

After all the rain, plenty of fungi on our walk this morning:

Chantrelle

Most of a tree’s biomass in underground and nearly all fungi is too. Fungi is essential for the health of the soil and the forest. Mycorrhizal associations are vital for plant nutrition and are present in nearly every plant we know of, and they are, as Mary White writes: ‘increasingly recognised as regulators of biodiversity, as well as having beneficial side effects in stabilising soil.’

Ectomycorrhizas helps large trees get nitrogen through short lateral fungal roots, that rarely penetrate cell walls but form a dense net around the roots. A single fungi can 'infect' many trees and spread over many hectares

and autumn colours even here

And with all the rain, leeches. Bron flicked this one off her and it headed towards me at lightning speed.

Strangler fig on a paperbark

And after a year and three weeks, our first Kooka attack while we enjoyed breakfast on the balcony. The first attack from behind took us by surprise, the second was full frontal assault from a few feet away, audacious! He grabbed a slice of free-range bacon, but dropped it.

B in the garden

The Build

There’s an arrowhead in every piece of flint,

the knapper’s skill was to bring out the best.

Michelangelo believed that every stone

conceals a sculpture within it.

He learnt this from Bertoldo di Giovanni

and I heard by hearsay.

Peter is using his chainsaw, the whine we take

for granted, but it’s a harsh mechanical scream.

Nail guns fire into a house being built next door,

the digger is excavating a swimming pool.

What are we uncovering in each build?

Why Music?

We had a party here on Friday night and included some Karaoke (with limited participation, humans are embarrassed by singing). Steven Mithen argues that music is fundamental to the human condition and predates language. Like Rousseau, he believes the first language was "a kind of song". In The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body, He suggests, “They were ‘singing Neanderthals’ -- although their songs lacked any words -- and were also intensely emotional beings: happy Neanderthals, sad Neanderthals, angry Neanderthals, disgusted Neanderthals, envious Neanderthals, guilty Neanderthals, grief-stricken Neanderthals, and Neanderthals in love.” Music moves us I tap my feet, sway love to dance and my emotion react as well.

"Music engages huge swathes of the brain - it's not just lighting up a spot in the auditory cortex." Dr Aniruddh Patel from the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. Singing the words make it easier for stroke patients to communicate, and it seems singing 'rewires' damaged brain.

Robin Dunbar of Oxford University has researched the development of sociality in primates. Apes often seem to groom each other for far longer than needed to clean fur, social grooming strengthens social relations and shows commitment to the group. He thinks language evolved to fill the role of grooming as human tribes grew too large for everyone to be able to groom everyone else, and his latest idea is that the gap between social grooming and language was bridged by music, and singing.

Adventures in Music

How unadventurous most people are in how they listen to. Last night, feeling woozy (anti-biotics) and surrounded by frogs calling after the recent rains, I listened to Paul Dresher’s Other Fire, an hypnotic piece, but in an acute sense. The listening was pulled deeper and deeper into the textures from the bird song beginning. He travelled throughout South and Southeast Asia with a tape recorder recording urban and rural environments and performances ranging from concert halls to street musicians. In the mid 80s he processed the tapes the old fashioned way, using a harmoniser, delay lines, graphic equalizers, and the tape loop system.

To give this West Coast composer a context, Stereo review call him, “one of the best and most original of post-minimalist composers." He is probably best known for his commission from the Kronos Quartet, Casa Vecchia. Joshua Kosman (San Francisco Chronicle) says he has “an omnivorous sensibility that combines rock'n'roll, minimalism, Indian music and ambient sounds into a pungent and wonderfully elusive hybrid.”

Other Fire is on the CD Another Coast (New Works from the West)

Musical regrets:

That I never saw Jimi Hendrix play at the Pier Pavilion, Worthing on February 23^rd 1967 when I’d just turned 12, but I met people who did, and a friend met him at a party in Marrakesh a year or two later. I got there eight years later – and it was much too late.

That I never saw Led Zeppelin and that "Strawberry Fields" was released a as single and never made it onto Sgt Peppers where it belonged (though I can’t say the same for the more pop oriented ‘Penny Lane’).

Music has become a large topic in cognitive science – just why do humans invest so much energy and time in making / listening to music. Carl Zimmer discusses recent research in Discover Magazine, Dec 2010. But they cannot reach the experience of being moved by music.

I have been listening to my mate’s new CD ‘Plenty’ from the Okapi Guitar band and it’s overflowing with music. They say: "A new studio album of West African grooves (afrobeat, highlife), twisted mambos, and ngoni dub. Grooving and shimmering guitar riffs and polyrhythmic percussion, flavoured with pedal steel, strumstick and trumpet." But I also heard a strong jazz element I’d not heard before, the brass worked well and some great songs, highly recommended.

Poly Styrene - RIP

She sang with X-Ray Spex, her signature songs were Identity and Oh Bondage Up Yours!

Thrash me crash me

Beat me till I fall

I wanna be a victim

For you all

Oh bondage up yours

“She was a breath of fresh air, totally uncontrived and abandoned in her vocal delivery. She won't ever be forgotten by those of us who were lucky enough to be young in 1977. RIP Poly.” Mike in an online comment. I was lucky to be young then and experience the sheer energy music throws at you, as in my first punk concert.

Rock Against Racism was formed after Eric Clapton suggested that Enoch Powell was right, Britain was ‘overcrowded’. I agree - it’s overcrowded (see below), but it’s not a matter of colour. In 78 Rock Against Racism organised "Carnival against the Nazis". I was one of 100,000 people marching from Trafalgar Square through London's East End (via a pint at a pub with strippers) to Victoria Park, Hackney. X-Ray Spex, The Clash and others put on a massive energised concert.

She had so much feisty energy but struggled with bipolar disorder and quietened down, moving into a Krishna temple with her daughter.

Hare Krishnas worship the Hindu god Krishna as the one Supreme God, their central practice is chanting the Hare Krishna mantra for which they are named. It was established in the US in 1965, but its antecedents go back 500 years with an ascetic ‘Sri Krishna Caitanya’ known for his ecstatic devotion, expressed in dance and song. Their ‘Bible’ is the Bhagavad Gita, (Song of the Lord, c250 BC) and is regarded as the literal truth. They seek a simpler, more natural way of life and have an ascetic lifestyle of vegetarianism, no drugs, alcohol or gambling and no sex outside of procreation within marriage (though Krishna had over 16,000 wives).

Sathya Sai Baba - RIP

His mother Eswaramma claimed his was a virgin birth accompanied by miracles and as a child he materialised food and sweets out of thin air. Miracles reported by devotees include: levitation, physical disappearance, changing granite into sweets, making different fruits appear on any tree, changing water into petrol, controlling the weather, physically transforming into various deities and of course, healing the sick. He refused to have these investigated under experimental conditions.

Do we really need to believe in miracles? There is only one miracle – life, and death just goes to prove it. “It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.” Epicurus

Sai Baba claimed to be the reincarnation (one of the weirdest of all commonly accepted ontological beliefs, if one thinks about the nature of personal identity and personhood) of the guru, Sai Baba of Shirdi who mixed Hindu and Islamic teachings. Sai Baba made religion easy - feel good about yourself, you are divine . . .: "My objective is the establishment of sanatana dharma, which believes in one God as propitiated by the founders of all religions. So none has to give up his religion or deity.” He has funded many charitable projects and helped many people I am sure, but apart from strong, but unproved sexual allegations, how can anyone take seriously a conjurer of watches and precious jewels as a sign of divine power . . . ?

I know a ex-devotee (one of an estimated 6-8 million) who gave away her worldly goods to him and lived an ecstatic life at Poona, but after two years returned to Australia depressed and destitute.

God – RIP

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? . . . Then why call him God?” Epicurus.

The politically liberational young Hegelians took the social construction of language as a key critique of religion begun in the Enlightenment culminating in Nietzsche (or Richard Dawkins). Hegel and Bruno Bauer had already declared "God is Dead"; Karl Marx had claimed that religion is "the opium of the people"; and Ludwig Feuerbach interpreted religion as the projection of human qualities so that divine love is to affirm love is divine, but worried that such projection strips the human of their qualities.

The poet Heine was one of the first to use the phrase in, On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (1834-5): “Our breast is full of a dreadful pity—old Jehovah himself is preparing for death. We have known him so well, from his cradle onwards, back in Egypt where he was brought up amongst divine calves, crocodiles, sacred onions, ibises, and cats. . . . became a little god-king in Palestine, with a poor nation of shepherds . . . We saw him later on, when he came into contact with Assyrian-Babylonian civilization, and laid aside his all-too-human passions, no longer just spewing out rage and revenge . . We saw him emigrate to Rome, the imperial city, where he renounced all national prejudices and proclaimed the heavenly equality of all peoples . . . We saw how he became more spiritualised, how softly and blissfully he whimpered, how he became an friendly Father, a generic Friend to Man, a contributor to World Happiness, a philanthropist, but none of this could save him. Can’t you hear those little bells tinkling? Down on your knees. They are bringing the sacraments to a dying God.”

Heine was probably claiming the death of one image of God and hoping that pantheism would replace deism.

Dostoyevsky via Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov never said, ‘If God is dead, everything is permitted.’ Possibly it is Sartre misquoting him; Ivan did say "If there is no immortality, there is no virtue."

"The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Nietzche, The Gay Science.

Hegel had also spoken of the death of God and when Nietzche announced the death of God in Gay Science (1881), he had been reading Emerson who wrote in his journal in July 1835 (published much later) of the Death of God. Nietzche thought science and faith and belief in technology has replaced god, but we have to create our morality, our norms, our values. This is where he came unstuck as inherently anti-democratic, but he hated nationalism (his racist sister gave the dead madman up to the Nazis on a platter).

He thought fear and weakness created the need for God. His alter ego, the prophet Zarathustra, proclaimed ‘the death of God’ as a way of talking of a fundamental shift in ontology of coming to understand who we are, God as an explanation for everything, existence, morality, power - not just about organised religion (though elsewhere he also talked of God finding himself locked out of the church, temple, shrine, mosque).

Isidore Isou, a young Romanian poet and anarchist came to Paris after the war to make poetry without the letters. The Lettriste Movement was thus born with stunts like interrupting a reading by Dadaist Tristan Tzara and then on Easter Sunday, 9 April 1950, at Notre-Dame, live on national TV, Michel Mourre, an ex Dominican monk, backed by friends, chose a quiet moment in High Mass to climb to the pulpit and preach in his monk’s habit to the whole congregation and TV audience a blasphemous sermon on the death of God, written by Serge Berna,

Today, Easter day of the Holy Year,

Here, under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris,

I accuse the universal Catholic Church of the lethal diversion of our living strength toward an empty heaven . . .

I accuse the Catholic Church of infecting the world with its funereal morality,

Of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West.

Verily I say unto you: God is dead . . .

They were arrested by the police, who saved them from a furious crowd of worshipers. Psychiatrists examined Mourre: “Pride, desire to show off his personality and to represent himself entirely in his actions . . . Auto-didactism. . . . Highly assured personal modern outlook. Indignant irritation at the suggestion that Being may have preceded existence . . . Vaingloriously established in existentialism. . . Trembling in tongue and fingers. Hyper-emotivity. Intelligent. Able to go straight to the core of a doctrine. A didactic tone hostile to originality. Temperament of a professor. Artistic but republican mind. Possibility of a cure following a fit of modesty. His condition requires that ... he be confined in a lunatic asylum, where he can receive the treatment of which he is in need."

Learning another language

I studied Greek, Latin and French at school (the latter two for 7 years!) and I have forgotten nearly all of it, that’s the problem of being a lazy Engaus-lishtralian and the fact that up to a billion people now speak English as a first or second language (David Graddo, report for the British Council). I fear cultural homogenisation and would like to speak other languages and read in other languages. I may have found the answer, though only slightly easier than travelling back in time to being a three year old again.

Armin Meiwes advertised online for someone willing to be killed and eaten, 200 people replied and Meiwes chose Bernd Brandes (they both worked in computers) who was still awake when Meiwes cut off his penis, fried it in olive oil and offered him some to eat. Meiwes waited for his victim to pass out in the bath by reading aloud a Star Trek novel then stabbed him to death and ate him over the following weeks, sautéed in olive oil, garlic, pepper and nutmeg accompanied by sprouts, potatoes and red wine. Meiwes was found not guilty of murder and sentenced for manslaughter. The point is that he told police that Brandes had been fluent in English, and that since eating him, his own English had much improved. It is a version of cellular memory, the idea that our cells contain information about our personality, interests, skills even memory, most often discussed in case histories of heart transplant recipients.

"I hope you are serious because I really want it. My nipples look forward to

your stomach ..." B.B.

‘What I hate about writing is the paperwork.’

&

'Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.' Peter De Vries

Watching Canned Heat (c/o Jon Spencer guest Rage presenter) this morning, I thought of a schoolfriend who adored the band and was a talented musician, but would never have seen this clip. Andrew died aged 18 or so of bone cancer - I didn't find out till later - and what have I done with my extra 37 years? Left my country, seen the world, written some poems and enjoyed life, simple really.

Brighton - Easter weekend (Gareth Fuller P/A). The site of my first ever

date, once home to my football team ['Seagulls!'], but I feel fortunate to be

living elsewhere.

Valla - Easter weekend. A tall ship on the horizon, our beach so empty we

were skinny dipping.

World Population Growth is a problem

because we consume far too much. Worldwatch Institute's 2010 annual report notes that the average American consumes more than his or her weight every day. Its president, Christopher Flavin opinioned: "As the world struggles to recover from the most serious global economic crisis since the Great Depression, we have an unprecedented opportunity to turn away from consumerism. In the end, the human instinct for survival must triumph over the urge to consume at any cost." Ha!

Year Population

1000 275 million

1500 450 million

1650 500 million

1750 700 million

1804 1 billion

1900 1.6 billion

1950 2.55 billion

1960 3 billion

1970 3.7 billion

1980 4.5 billion

1990 5.3 billion

1995 5.7 billion

2006 6.5 billion

2012 7 billion

2027 8 billion

2044 9 billion (http://geography.about.com)

If productive land is divided equally among the human population, there's about 1.45 hectares of productive land and 0.55 hectares of fresh water available to each - called the ‘Fair Earth Share’. Of course, the world is unfair and with biodiversity declining and environmental processes under such stress, these figures are declining.

"When Thomas Malthus first warned that population growth would inevitably lead to starvation, this was some 200 years ago, the average Englishman was 5 foot 6 and averaged about 135 pounds. And these Englishmen were among the largest and best fed people in Europe. People today on the other hand, have an average body mass fully a third larger than when Malthus was writing." (Matthew Connelly, Background Briefing, ABC Radio, 21.9.08)

We consume much more of everything, there are too many people with enormous appetites. An average Australian will eat 15 pigs, 17 cows 92 sheep and over a thousand chickens over one lifetime. With deficits in food, oil, water, and imagination, it's likely there will be plenty of war.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers 2011 report 'Population One Planet' suggests drastic changes are needed to provide humans with water, food, energy and shelter, but that these issues can be solved with existing technology. That is the engineering solution, the 'Technological Fix'.

"With reasonable restraints on consumption, we could have experienced a hugely bigger population rise without greater stress." (Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Times, Aug, 2009) A highly optimistic view, but why do we want more people in the first place?

What about the quality of life?

What of the environmental crises we are giving future generations?

Good Friday

Great birding, families of honeyeaters, variegated wrens, whistlers and thrushes enjoying a beaut day in Jagun; a Black kite flew over, sunset with a beer in the garden and a pair of Glossy Black Cockatoos in the trees above.

No sign of a cross.

Chalepteryx chalepteryx, white-stemmed acacia moth, rescued

from the bird netting

Just as I am uploading my bush tucker news, a Swamp Wallaby bounds out of the forest and sniffs a young Lilly Pilly on our boundary - beautiful red fur, pale muzzle, and the first wallaby seen here - very cautious, she sees me and bounds off. She didn't eat the Lilly Pilly, but they have a reputation for having a much wider palette than Eastern Greys, hence as garden destroyers.

I didn't see the joey until I looked at the photograph

Through 'Our Living Coast' (an alliance of local shires working with residents to create a more sustainable region) we visited Dennis Ryan and his wife Marilyn on his family’s former cattle farm, now a bush tucker farm and wetlands reserve called ‘Valley of the Mist’’ (3 ks from Macksville, off the road to the Pub with No Beer).

Sustainability - how better to achieve it than bush tucker?

Dennis with his plums, a specially chosen variety, winter fruiting avoiding

fly strike.

Davidson plums fall off the trunk and can lie on the ground for a week

before harvesting. Sour raw, but with a beautiful taste, they served us

pancakes with icecream and a plum topping.

Finger limes (seedless variety), 'bush caviar'

Macadamia nuts

Inkweed (an exotic weed) used by the Gumbaynggirr people for their skin,

and for arthritis, food for King Parrots. [A poisons centre states: All parts

of the plant are poisonous. Symptoms from ingestion may include headache, burning in the mouth, abdominal cramping, vomiting and diarrhea. The

acrid sap can cause skin irritation]. We remove ours.

Dennis with Corkwood (duboisia, left), known by his grandparents as

'Black man's opiate'. There are four species of duboisia, one was used

by Aboriginal Australians to make a stimulant 'pituri', due to the nicotine,

scopolamine and hyoscyamine in the leaves. He got pocket-money by

selling it to a Frenchman who exported it to France for use in eye

operations. He says, "The farm is wrapped around wetlands." Behind here

is the 'Hundred Acre Swamp' nominated for the Ramsar listing; I saw two

swans glide by.

Dennis rarely waters his trees, except perhaps in the early stages and

doesn't use any chemicals or fertilizer. He says treat water like gold, and

thinks all bore water should be metered

The dreaded myrtle rust that attacks the young leaves (see archive

Feb-March).

Sunday, early morning. Al was just leaving to head back to Sydney when three whistling kites appeared above us mixing it up, wheeling around ignoring three humans standing in the garden face up, two suddenly lock talons and spiral down a tight fast giddy breakneck dance plummeting towards the ground, breaking off at the last moment - apparently a manoeuvre used for rivals or potential partners, I couldn't tell which.

The rushing amorous contact high in space together,

The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,

four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

in tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling.

Walt Whitman, ‘The Dalliance of the Eagles’, Leaves of Grass

Bellingen Readers & Writers Festival - BRWF is over

Time to walk in Jagun

Time to swim in the sea again

A natural sand sculpture

and time to rescue insects from the bird netting

an Orange Migrant?

and a Libellulidae dragonfly.

BRWF - Friday in Dorrigo

Early morning "The slow art of bushwalking"

I took this photograph during 'The Slow Art of Bushwalking' with ranger Stephen Hull. I discussed where we were - the importance of Thoreau's lecture/ essay 'Walking' and contemporary approaches, while Stephen illuminated the park's natural and cultural history.

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.” Thoreau (Extract and poem here)

• We were in Gondwana Rainforest, a living link with evolution.

• Few places on earth remain so unchanged from their ancestral fossil record.

• Some of the oldest elements of the world's ferns and conifers are found here in a concentration of primitive plant families with direct links to the beginnings of flowering plants over 100 million years ago in Gumbaynggirr country.

• Rainforests cover only around 0.3 per cent of Australia, but contain about ½ of all Australian plant families and a third of Australia's mammal and bird species.

• Gondwana Rainforests very high conservation value and habitat for more than 200 rare or threatened plant and animal species.

Mary White discussed her amazing career at the Dorrigo Rainforest Centre - which was overbooked - and I (feeling ill - I look ill!) discussed how we have swiveled our gaze from:

1. the stars - Giordano Bruno: "And if God is infinite so are worlds, some similar to Earth and inhabited", he suggested (and it is now suggested it was this that triggered his burning at the stake not a Copernican notion). Just over 400 years later, in 2009, the American astronomer Dr Boss said, “A little over 20 years ago we knew of no other planetary system other than our own. We now know of well over 300. I suspect that virtually every star when you look up at the night sky has an Earth-like planet around it.” - to:

2. the planet - Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 was on its fourth orbit of the moon when Frank Borman decided to point its windows towards the horizon for a navigational fix and then: 'It was,' he recalled, 'the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any colour to it.” - to:

3. to the life inside our bodies. Mary White calls herself a ‘proudly bacterial Gaian', and then:

4. I read a poem about love and the process of a body's decomposition.

The sun shined on the festival

Helen Iggulden, Jack's widow, with the inaugural Jack Iggulden Award for Indigenous Writing, Gumbaynggirr Elder, Auntie Bea Ballangarry OAM.

I was very pleased to play a part in judging this award and said that the Birth of my Woman is “a wonderful collection of poems that deserves greater recognition.”

I can smell the earth when it is dry season

like I can when it is wet or a very wet season

and what about the wattle season the wildflower season

the clear season the waarmbu season . . . (‘I am here in a centre’)

Helen was telling me they had water rationing in Melbourne that drove Jack mad, so they packed up their things and drove north until they came to a place with plenty of water - and with 5? floods last year, they struck gold in Bellingen.

I had a I was lucky to entice Margie Cronin out of semi retirement in rural Queensland, get Michael Sharkey down from Armidale, and Brook Emery and Judy Beveridge up from Sydney.

Gregory Day singing his songs composed to Yeats' poems. He says he has enough for a second CD. The Yeats Society of Ireland hailed his first CD ‘The Black Tower: Songs from the Poetry of WB Yeats’ as the finest ever musical interpretation of Yeats.

Next week! Check out the program now. So many different events, from a Poetry Slam, George Negus, a literary lunch with Michael Robotham to bushwalking with me on Friday in the world heritage Gondawna rainforest of Dorrigo and later with Mary White! Here's a preview:

Abandoning walking changes the scale of the world, its time, distance and touch. The poet Gary Snyder was in the Australian outback in the back of a pickup with old Jimmy Tjungurrayi who gabbled stories: “I realised after about half an hour of this that these were tales meant to be told while walking, and that I was experiencing a speeded-up version of what might be leisurely told of several days of foot travel.” Bruce Chatwin tells a similar tale in Songlines.

Extract from 'Black Cockatoos', Royal National Park

Trees grow below the stone shoulder, tall banksias

and eucalypts crowd the track as it dips towards rich green folds

shaped by Crystal Pools and the Hacking River westward

where the lyrebirds nest in the cliffs, the far side.

This is the source of tumultuous calls from a wave of glyphs

heading this way; cuneiform shapes displacing sky,

boisterous noise unravelling from ribbons of flight, 80, 90,

well over a hundred black cockatoos in lazy procession,

almost stalling on elastic wings. . .

But here's a magpie, or two:

On the way in to Bello today two Wedgetail Eagles were soaring overhead, so high, wings angled (a wingspan of two and a half metres), masters of the thermals. Last night driving back in the storm (again) trying to avoid the squadrons of frogs and trucks on the Pacific Highway.

Beetles (Coleoptera) are the most successful animal groups, and most groups have been around from before the dinosaurs. They account for 25% of species on Earth, being extremely good at changing their life styles and feeding habits while adapting to new ecological environments. Professor Alfried Vogler with a team from the Natural History Museum and Imperial College examined why beetles are such successful survivors. He says, “Unlike the dinosaurs, which dwindled to extinction, beetles survived because of their ecological diversity and adaptability." (Science, 21,12, 07)