Fuligo septica

I found this is the back yard early in the morning  after rain the previous day. I guessed it was some type of fungus, turns out to be a species of plasmoidal slime mold called Fuligo septica, commonly known as scrambled egg slime or dogs vomit slime mold!

Dogs vomit slime mould. Slime molds are just a collection of amoeba yet they can move and coperate as if they are a single organism with awareness and intent.

The sea level, rainfall and temperature climate pages have been updated with the latest data from the BOM. As per usual temperature and rainfall are almost up to date but sea level is more than a year behind with the latest reading from December 2013. Why is this? Always interesting to see how the most recent weather extremes stack up against the last century or so of readings. This most recent summer that felt so hot was nothing special if you look back only 15 years or so, but the longer term trend is clear for sea level and temperature. But not rainfall.

ABC radio has some really good shows, including a whole bunch of science shows. They offer an awesome podcast feed that combines all their science programs plus any scientific segments from other shows into one. ABC hides this feed really well, whenever I have to reload my podcasting app (with my luck with phones, way to often!) it takes ages to locate the feed again. Well I finally found it, so here it is for the next time I need it, and for anyone else that may enjoy this gem that the ABC hides so well. Now see this picture from NASA

Ku-Ring-Gai library has been posting old photos from the area ( including some from Garigal ) to it’s Flickr account . What a great way to make access to it’s archives more convenient. I didn’t even know the library had the photos until I came across one of their online postings by fluke when searching for pictures of Bungaroo.

William Henry, the first settler in the Lane Cove Valley. circa 1860.

There are well over 1000 photos in their stream, and they seem to post a new batch every few weeks. Having lived in the area for a while I’ve found it addictive to browse through them and recognize familiar locations back when they were a rugged frontier.

Mat and I left home at 4am to meet Dick and his team while they were coming through on the Oxfam trailwalker 100k walk. The walk down in dark was fun, It was a foggy but remarkably warm winter morning, we heard bounding and crashing in the bush that must have been wallabies, also saw a possum or two and heard the soft beating of large wings in the trees above us that I reckon must have been owls.