Autumn comes to the wine country

Wine Country Autumn

Gold lies strewn to the horizon and beyond

As if some careless godling

Turned out the divine pockets and

Let the doubloons tumble where they may.

Fields of gold burn, lustrous in the westering sun

As evening settles ― but not for long.

In just a week or three, the next rapacious wind

Will gambol among these vines and loot the hoard

Till bare wood alone remains,

Enduring winter’s ire with never a hint

Of the transient splendour that was

These fields of gold.

Jen Downes 

 

Catching some Zees on the Goolwa Barrage

Australian Fur Seals routinely bask in the sun on the Goolwa Barrages. In season, the Great Cormorants come in to the rookery there, and every kind of Grebe can be seen fishing in the quiet lee-side of the barrage. Several kinds of Terns, Sandpipers, Dotterels, Spoonbills, and the Pacific Gulls frequent these waters, on the skirts of Coorong National Park, along with Pelicans, Swans, and the shorebirds. 

Wishing for waterfalls to be running as summer ends...

Ingalalla Falls

 

Hindmarsh Falls

Morialta Falls

Morialta, Ingalalla, Hindmarsh ... they're all dry and dusty at the end of summer. The season has officially outstayed its welcome, and as we begin to yearn for the coolness and rain of autumn and winter, here's a little "sympathetic magic" ... waterfalls, because I'm wishing for rain as Australia simmers and burns through the Long Dry. All these images were, of course, captured in either autumn or winter.

Some of the flittiest of the flitty critters

 

Eastern Spinebill at Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens

Grey Fantail at Perry Bend

Sparrow at Sellicks Beach

Black-fronted Dotterel at Laratinga

Rainbow Bee-eater at Langhorne

Nap time!