Take a hike (with Eli)!

We recently decided to do some local exploring.....on foot. We set off from home nice and early and Eli was particularly keen to look for signs of koalas - not so much like this one on the right, but more like the claw marks on tree trunks like those on the left. And we saw lots of them as we plunged deeper into the forest near our house.

For any of you that know him well, you will know that Eli is quite the collector, so he was also very excited to find lots of different types of rocks on the trail - if only I had Christy's geological knowledge to answer his questions! Aside from identifying quartz and sandstone, there wasn't much information I could give him. I love how he asks questions and wants to know so much about the world. I'm less keen on his desire to bring big rocks back home with him, especially since I become the packhorse for these ventures...after some negotiation, I finally got him to agree that we could take some photos of the bigger rocks, but leave them behind...phew!

It was a lovely day in the forest, we saw lots of these yellow Pultanaea flowers and plenty of different types of Eucalypts too, like this scribbly gum.












Eli spotted some ants that looked like they were drinking the sap from a scribbly gum - here's a photo and a short video of them in action.

After lots of walking (I later calculated that we had walked about 5.6 km), we came home along the roadside and Eli discovered (by stepping on it) a snake that had been killed on the road. This was undoubtedly the highlight of his walk, as he kept on talking about how he'd found it and how that was the first snake that he'd ever stepped on...and I kept telling him that I hope that is the only snake he ever steps on...






Not far from home (about 500 m away actually) Eli wanted to record a message, about the snake and about a rock he'd collected...enjoy!

He's a natural!

There's something fishy about Eli and it's honestly not all my doing. He just loves getting into our local creek to do a spot of fishing and he is always super excited whenever he catches something, whether it be a water boatman, a backswimmer, a waterstrider, a damselfly or dragonfly nymph, or even a caddis fly larvae. But what really excites him, more than all of the wonderful types of bugs he can capture, is when he is able to catch a fish in his net. 

Now it must be said that Eli's an experienced hand at catching the non-native guppies that reside in our creek, but on our most recent fishing trip he managed to catch a couple of bigger and much better specimens. First, he went deeper than ever before, so that he was chest deep in the water and away he went sweeping his net through the water near the overhanging fern tree...and lo and behold, he had netted a purple spotted gudgeon. He was over the moon (since we were getting sick of collecting guppies!) as he'd never caught a gudgeon before.

Not content with one gudgeon, he set back on the task of catching something else, something new...and that's when it happened. After a seemingly innocuous sweep of his net, he proudly proclaimed that he thought that he'd caught an eel! I didn't scoff at the suggestion (there are eels in our creek), but I was a bit suspicious, but then there it was swimming around in our bucket. Sure, it was tiny, but there's no mistaking it. Eli was super excited and wanted to keep the eel in one of our aquaria, but I didn't think that plan would gel so well with our gudgeon breeding program (see earlier post) so I convinced him that we shouldn't keep it. The deal was brokered that we would add his newly collected gudgeon to our ever-growing population and Eli named him 'Crazy'. It took a few days, but Crazy has now really gotten comfortable in the tank and is even starting to get brighter colours courtesy of the clear water and good food. Now Eli is looking forward to Crazy breeding (we are pretty sure she is a female) to continue the successes we've been having of late...I wonder where this is going to end...

More and more and more gudgeons!

Yes, I know, another aquatic tale in this blog post...but it turns out that we're very good at making excellent breeding conditions for our purple spotted gudgeons! As you may recall, we caught a few of these fish in our local creek last year and they've been quite happy in our tank since then.



So happy, in fact, that Eli and I woke one morning to find the side of the tank covered in tiny gudgeon eggs and being guarded diligently but one of the males in the tank. I'd never reared fish successfully before and with Eli's urging, we decided to keep a close on these eggs and do all that we could to ensure that some of them made it through to adulthood. A bit of reading later we learnt that the male defends the eggs for between 3-9 days and gently fans them with his fins to make sure that they don't get covered with sediment. No risk of that happening in our tank, but the male kept up his parental duties, day and night.


A few days later we noticed that the eggs were looking even more fishy...with the eyes and shape of the young gudgeons becoming apparent. We decided then to remove all of the fish, Dad included, and our red-claw crayfish, into the other tank, which had only just been made available courtesy of the new turtle pond out in the backyard, to ensure that none of the small fish were going to be gobbled up when they hatched. And then, a couple of days after that, we started seeing the small gudgeons at the bottom of the tank (there is a tiny one, right in the middle of this figure), essentially learning to swim and fend for themselves. Since then we've added food and there are six baby purple spotted gudgeons swimming around in our tank and getting bigger as each day passes by.

After all of that excitement, it then came as a big surprise (but maybe it shouldn't have!) when we spotted a male guarding eggs again in the new fish tank...and we're now into our fourth round of breeding and we are fast running out of space and capacity to rear more gudgeons!

The turtle pond project.

All winter Eli and I had been working on a pond project, with a view to getting the turtles out of the aquarium and into the backyard. Unfortunately it took a lot of waiting for critical parts of the set up - things like the liner, the pump, the filter... - and we sadly lost Zoomy during that time. However, we persisted with the pond project and we eventually, after about 4 months of waiting, had all of the necessary elements to create and fill the pond for Swifty. Here are some photos of the final phases, long after I dug the hole and had the corrugated iron walls and front gate installed. 



Eli was a great little helper too, including selecting the log and rocks that we need to provide some habitat for Swifty and he absolutely wanted to be there as we filled the pond from our raintank for the very first time.



Finally, it was time to release Swifty into his new home. We were all very excited - not only does the pond give him more space for swimming, but there are heaps of opportunities for basking too...


Eli did the honours, placing Swifty down on a rock at the side of the pond, so he could have a look around and become familiar with his new surroundings...

It took him (Swifty) a long time to get comfortable - I actually think that he was just enjoying sitting on the hot rock - but with the crowd watching - including three of Eli's grandparents! - he eventually plunged into the water and began swimming around his new home.

 

Later that afternoon Swifty was out of the pond, exploring the land and sharing his new home with a cute little water dragon (who has also laid claim to this new territory).

It's been great since Swifty moved out - we now have more room for fish in our aquaria - but more importantly Swifty is much happier and healthier as he gets to bask, swim, walk and enjoy his new surroundings. Aside from our plan to get a few aquatic plants for Swifty to hide behind/eat, the turtle pond project has finally been accomplished!

First tooth out!!!

A few weeks back I spotted a new tooth in Eli's mouth! Yes, there it was, a big adult tooth coming up through the gum behind his baby teeth at the bottom front. I was a bit taken aback initially, but after asking a few Mum's I discovered that this was a reasonably common phenomenon. In fact I learnt that this is sometimes referred to as a shark tooth, since shark's have rows of teeth. Eli quite liked the sound of that, but he was more excited at the prospect of losing his first baby tooth, especially since many of his friends at school have lost 6 or 7 of them already. I have tried to convince Eli that not having lost his yet was a good thing, but now that the shark tooth had appeared I guess it was time. Not that the baby teeth at the front were budging much at first - they were quite happy staying put. But fast forward about 10 days and there was movement aplenty. One of Eli's baby teeth was on the way out and it was finally being pushed from below as you can see from this photo on the right.

And that was the beginning of the end for this tooth, as Eli took to the task of encouraging it out by wiggling it at every opportunity. It eventually relented and came out and as you can see from this slightly less toothy grin of Eli's, he was pretty happy with himself.



It was quite a long tooth - I had kind of forgotten that they are connected to our jaws (in my defence it has been a while since I've lost one). We celebrated, as always, with a range of different photographs...









Eli was also duly rewarded for his efforts, with the tooth fairy paying him a visit that night (and leaving, to ensure no domestic disputes elsewhere, an undisclosed amount of money). As you can imagine (and see in this last photo), this large adult tooth still needs more room, so there will no doubt be more toothy wiggles coming our way soon...

An all round good sport

Eli loves his sport (well, not as much as Minecraft, but that's another story and one that I no doubt share with lots of parents of boys aged between 6-12)..but I digress...over the past month or so Eli has been busy with lots of sporting activities - he's been doing swim classes on Mondays, soccer on Tuesdays and Fridays, tennis on Fridays at school and Auskick (Australian Rules Football) after school on Thursdays...in addition, he's been training (at school) for a couple of running races, a sprint of 70 metres and a cross country race of 300 metres. Needless to say, he's both fit and, at the end of each week, somewhat exhausted (as am I).

This blog post is a chronicle of his recent successes in sport, starting with his 70 m sprint at school. Last year he won his race and this year his chances were probably improved a little given that he was racing against kids born in 2007 and not some from his grade that were born in 2006 (I won't bore you with the details of the annoying system which divides year groups!). Of course, now that he's in Grade 1 he has more competition - many of the kids last year were not really racing, as evidenced by the fact that they were unable to stay in their lanes and were just having a bit of a laugh. Nevertheless, Eli was primed for his race and for the challenge of winning (not that winning is everything of course). I wasn't there to see his race, but apparently he burst out in front from the start and maintained his lead all the way, winning by about a foot or so. He was very happy, as you can see from this photo of him with his first placed ribbon.

Eli has also really been enjoying his soccer this year - he's in a team with a few of his classmates from school which is great - and he's also been in pretty hot form. The key for him is his drive - he wants to win the ball - and his fitness - he runs, and runs, and runs. Lots of his team mates don't - they watch and watch and watch, which infuriates Eli (and me), but also drives him to run even more. By the end of the game on each Friday night Eli has typically saved a few goals, scored a few goals and used up the last of his energy for the week. Here are some photos of him in his Tarragindi Tigers gear, prior to the team photo being taken.

Back on dry land again Eli recently raced in the cross country race at school. For this event they didn't split the year groups, so Eli was in with all of the Grade 1's (some of which are already seven years old). Eli was feeling pretty confident, despite the fact that he (and I) are more built for sprints than longer distance events. He'd been reporting on his progress in Physical Education classes at school, where he had been consistently been coming in the top three runners (but this is just within his class, not the whole grade). Fortunately I was on hand to see him line up...in this photo he's the smallest runner in yellow...


And they're off!

Eli made a nice quick start, you can see him in full stride making his way towards the front of the pack down the first straight...

And he was flying by the time he got closer to me and the first corner on the circuit...

The circuit took the kids around the oval and then up a quite steep hill before coming back onto the oval for the finish...here's Eli, crossing the line in fourth place! A great effort! I was very excited and proud of him!

They had the first six finishers line up in order, so that their names could be recorded and points could be awarded to their house teams - red for Holland, blue for Toohey and yellow for Gibson! As you can see from this photo, Eli was amongst the smallest of the winners, but he makes up for small legs with his incredible speed and drive.

I wasn't the only one that was proud - Eli was thrilled with his performance too.


Just a quick finishing note on Eli's swimming. It is fair to say that we've missed a few weeks through winter, for a variety of reasons, but he's been doing really well (aside from coughing a lot from the high chlorine levels in the indoor pool!) when we've turned up. In fact he's just gone up to the next level, which is great, because he does tend to get a bit bored when he's not challenged enough.

What a sports star!

The putt-putt prodigy.

Eli has wanted to play putt-putt for a very long time. I must confess that I had held him back because he hasn't always been great at regulating his power when it comes to ball sports, but as we wondered past our local driving range the other day, I thought "Why not?" As you might imagine, he was very excited (and a bit miffed that there was a putt-putt course so close to our house that he didn't know about!).

As for his playing, well he was more timid than I had expected he might be (no signs at all of wild swings and flying golf balls!) and not unsurprisingly, he was really good at it! It really only took him a couple of holes to get the hang of it and before long he was slotting some amazing shots, including an awesome hole-in-one that I miraculously managed to capture on video! I really like his facial expressions in this video - it goes from concentration, to shock, to elation.




All in all it was a great little outing. On the way home I made the mistake of telling Eli about the more complex course designs that I've seen - including water features and lots of tunnels and moving obstacles - so it should have come as no surprise to me when he woke up this morning demanding that we find a harder course to tackle! Thankfully I distracted him today, but I'm sure we'll be heading to the coast sometime soon to try out our luck on new courses...

The experiment.

"What happens when food is left on the ground?" That is the question that I posed to Eli when we were thinking of a Science Fair project for him. Being well trained, Eli confidently declared "The ants come out and clean it all up". This then prompted some follow up questions for us to ponder, like "do ants like everything equally?" and "are the same ants everywhere?". Since neither of us really new the answers to these questions, we set about designing an experiment to find out. The plan was to see who came to clean up when we left ham, a chocolate biscuit and some pear out for them. To see if the same ants did the same thing everywhere, we decided to run the experiment three times, once in our front yard, once at school and once in the forest behind our house.

We ran the experiment at home first - here are some photos of our set up - with roughly equivalent amounts of ham, biscuit and pear placed out on our front lawn. We stepped back to watch what would happen and then recorded what we found every 10 minutes for a bit of an hour. Eli and I both kept records - his were quite a bit more artistic and creative than mine were!











What we learnt from our front yard was that ants just love ham! We had the occasional visitor to the biscuit (a green ant) and pear (some flies and a spider!), but the ham was constantly attacked by some very hungry looking tufted tyrant ants!

Armed with our knowledge of what happened at home, we stayed behind after school one day to run the experiment in a very different environment. We expected to see lots of ants arriving and maybe to all three foods since the daily activities of kids are likely to make the school grounds a very rich hunting ground for scavengers. What we didn't expect, was for a very hungry skink to show up! As you can see in these photos and the video, this little guy stalked his prey (the flies), but was also happy making off with ham.

 Eli continued with his colourful recording of the results and he was even keen to present his findings in a video or two as well...

Overall, we had only one species of ant (coastal brown ant) visit at school, with at least a couple present at each of the three food types on most of our recording occasions. Once again the ham was the most popular food though, with in excess of 50 ants trying to drag it back to the nest by the end of the experiment. The other difference from the test at home was the large number of flies present (including house flies and vinegar flies) and these were very much to the liking of our friendly little skink.

The final test was deep in the bushland behind our house. Here we expected to find more diversity in the ants that showed up and once again we saw a different mix of species arrive to feast on our ham! These ants were by far the largest and the most colourful of any we had seen and even though they didn't come in large numbers, it was great to watch them. That being said, we did have some late arrivals in large numbers and there were quite a few flies around too - not the same ones as at school though.

Now all that remains is a bit of work for Eli and I to turn all of our data into a poster for the Science Fair. Fortunately we have quite a bit of time before that needs to happen, but stay tuned for a Science Fair post in a few months time.