March 31 Happy Easter (Day 186)
Easter Sunday! We were invited to Connie & Brendan’s for morning tea with hot-cross buns!
Yummy toasted hot-cross bun slices with homemade rhubarb-apple jam, 50 year aged honey, and homemade quince jam!
The rest of the morning was spent cleaning the motorhome and preparing the vegetable lasagna I made with the help of Connie’s pan, utensils and oven! We had time for wildlife observation too!
We’ve been watching, and hearing the squawking of, this trio of native hens in the yard since we got here. They hardly stay put long enough to take a picture tho! They are Tasmanian Native-hen, flightless and found only on Tasmania. Connie then pointed out a little fella in the front yard, snuffling along the fence line.
It took a few minutes to get a picture of his head and nose because it was usually stuck in the ground!
The Short-beaked Echidna, or spiny ant-eater, is a monotreme, like a platypus, in that it lays an egg in an abdominal pouch that hatches in only 10 days, and the jellybean sized young stays in the pouch for three months lapping up a milk-like substance from specialized pores. The young is eventually weaned at about 12 months old. The strong snout is used to push into the soil or rotten stumps so the sticky tongue can slurp up termites and ants. It has large strong front claws to dig and backward facing claws on the back feet to aid in burrowing during hot, dry times. I thought this guy was burrowing his nose into the dirt to avoid confrontation with me trying to get a picture, but he was searching for ants!
We finished up the day with a great meal and more stories and an early bedtime!