Tag Archives: birds

Bird prints and other new merchandise available

25 Monday May 2020

Posted by in art & craft

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We are pleased to announce that a new range of works inspired by Yarnauwi are now available from our Etsy shop.

Joel’s new lino print, “Common Birds of the Fleurieu Peninsula”, celebrates the diversity and beauty of species regularly seen around the Fleurieu and South Australia. Each bird is hand-carved and hand-printed. The 24 birds depicted are the Black-shouldered Kite, Stubble Quail, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, Australasian Pipit, Wedge-tailed Eagle, Nankeen Kestrel, Welcome Swallow, Little Raven, White-fronted Chat, Magpie-lark, Masked Lapwing, White-faced Heron, White-winged Triller, Australian Magpie, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Australian Wood Duck, Grey Teal, Common Bronzewing, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Little Corella, Crimson Rosella, Pacific Black Duck, Galah, and Red-rumped Parrot.

Sophie’s new embroidery work “Welcome Swallow family” captures the joy and vibrancy of the swallow family which has taken up residence in the open bay of the Yarnauwi shed. They arrived in late winter, raised babies in mud nests, then took their babies for test flights around the shed before they fledged and left over the hotter months. By Autumn they were all back and even more full of joie de vivre. This work is hand embroidered on cotton fabric and includes a wooden hoop frame.

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Sophie’s other “Galah” embroidery celebrates the Eulophus roseicapillus which is such a fun and ever-present bird in Australian country areas. The flocks that visit Yarnauwi love to wander around our weediest paddock eating thistle seeds. Their vivid pinks and silver greys really lift the landscape at dry and dusty times of year. This piece is hand embroidered on cotton fabric and comes with a bamboo frame ready to hang.

Finally, Joel has made a range of new leather adventure pouches, for adults and children alike! There are three different designs all made from our Damara sheepskins, which were raised, grazed and tanned on the Fleurieu, and completed with recycled leather trim and buckles. They are ready to attach to a belt and are the perfect size for children to pack pocket knives, binoculars, notebook and pencil, a small drink bottle, snack, or whatever else they might need for explorations in the wild!

We had a lot of fun making these products. For more information, pricing, or purchasing, please visit https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/YarnauwiFarm

Making a floating habitat island

12 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by in ecology, propagation, regeneration, waterways

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The planted habitat island, ready to launch

Regular readers and supporters of our farm will be familiar with the challenges we’ve faced trying to re-establish native vegetation in the face of large populations of rampaging herbivores. Inspired by an idea from @nature_at_work_ (check them out on Instagram) and folks around the world working to increase urban and rural habitat, we thought we’d construct a floating habitat island.

Once installed in the dam, we hoped the island would function as a seed bank for aquatic plants, a fox-proof roost for waterbirds, and offer filtration through the plant roots as well as aquatic shelter and habitat.

During the summer, our friend Shani, assisted by a team of kids, got to work assembling a frame from some leftover PVC stormwater pipe to act as the float, with a length of shade cloth salvaged from our gully junk to act as a base onto which we could later plant local aquatic plants. The frame was tied to a rock anchor and then launched with great ceremony.

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The official launch of the habitat island (and anchor)

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Installation requires a great deal of precision and technical know-how.

In the following months, the island became popular with waterbirds of all types, with ducks often spotted perched on the floating edge, grebes diving underneath and the enclosed centre of the island becoming coated with feathers and bird manure. Continue reading →

Yarnauwi Annual Report 2016

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in ecology, planning, regeneration

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In birthday cards I often wish the recipient a coming year of “the right kind of challenge”, optimistically suggesting it will herald positive growth and empowerment through problem-solving and negotiation. This year, I got a taste of my own medicine, with a winter of biblical proportions just the beginning of the challenges.

November marks four years since we began the Yarnauwi project. Four years of attempting to regenerate the property to our optimistic standards on the weekends, of packing and unpacking the car, of ferrying and entertaining one, then two, small children, of revegetating, managing erosion, managing pasture, managing water, managing livestock, managing weeds and managing the legacy of past land managers. These are all admirable, ambitious intentions, and what we’ve achieved has only been possible through the support and enthusiasm of our community of neighbours, friends and family. Continue reading →

Now launched: Etsy shop

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in art & craft, history

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We are pleased to announce the launch of our Etsy shop! Here we will be selling Joel’s limited edition lino prints of Fleurieu landscapes, and Sophie’s one-off embroidery designs, as well as future art and craft concepts. Hope you can stop by, and of course feel free to give us any feedback!

We also still have a few sheepskins for sale, these are not on our Etsy shop, but can be found on our blog site under the top tab ‘Sheepskins for sale’. We hope to have more for sale later in the year.

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“Black-fronted dotterel”: embroidery for sale

The Black-fronted dotterel is one of our favourite Fleurieu birds. It’s commonly seen on the edges of dams, mudflats, freshwater swamps, and lakes, a tiny bird that runs so fast on twinkly little legs. We love watching them run around our dam, foraging in the mud. The piece is stitched freehand using some new techniques.

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“Good Intent”: new embroidery for sale

This work depicts the ship Good Intent, a wooden ketch that plied the Fleurieu coast during the 1850s, passing the iconic Norfolk Island pines of Lady Bay. At one point during the glory days of South Australia’s ‘Mosquito Fleet’, the Good Intent sank at the Second Valley jetty while loading wheat, but was able to be raised. Lady Bay, between Normanville and Second Valley, is a spectacular piece of Fleurieu coastline featuring these trees that were planted in coastal areas all around Australia for the tall, straight timber they provided for masts.

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In other news, an early break in the summer season has greened up our pasture nicely and our flock are happy and content (we’ve never seen green grass here in February!)

New linocut print: Fear the deer!

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in art & craft, diy, ecology, regeneration, trees

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“Fear the deer, rue the roo, but keep on planting!”, linocut inspired by efforts to revegetate the southwestern Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia, by Joel Catchlove

After months of chipping away at this latest linocut in spare moments sprinkled throughout family life, I’m pleased to announce it finished! “Fear the deer, etc.” was begun earlier this year in the lead-up to the 2015 tree planting season and depicts the view looking west from Yarnauwi, with a selection of local birds eagerly awaiting the maturation of our and our neighbours’ revegetation efforts! In the meantime, they perch in the antlers of a red deer skull, one of the many voracious herbivores in the neighbourhood that present challenges for raising seedlings.

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The carved block, ready for inking

The birds shown are, on the left, a tawny frogmouth, a family of which we’ve spotted 500 or so metres from our back boundary, but our property still lacks the habitat to tempt them closer, a black-faced cuckoo-shrike (aka. shufflewing, due to its habit of shuffling its wings upon landing), common in nearby woodland but still only a passing visitor to Yarnauwi, and the Australasian Pipit, an enthusiastic resident of the farm.

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Ready for inking.

Special thanks to Jess S, patron of the arts, for donating part of her stash of lino for the creation of this particular piece! Thanks again to our community of friends and neighbours who continue to contribute to the broader effort of restoring habitat on our property and beyond!

How many swallows make a summer?

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in ecology, waterways

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welcomeswallowFlocks of Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena) have been hunting on our farm for months now, spiralling around us as we work, then resting as a group along the fences. They are amazingly acrobatic hunters, plucking insect prey from the air in circles and dives. Apparently, swallows need to eat their own body weight every day to maintain their health. While they weigh only 10 grams, this can mean they can eat up to 400 times a day (approximately every two minutes) to ensure their sprightliness.

Young welcome swallows huddle together at Seal Bay, Kangaroo Island (October 2014).

Young welcome swallows huddle together at Seal Bay, Kangaroo Island (October 2014).

Over the last month or so, we’ve spotted swallows hunting over the dam on a couple of occasions. They circle, dive and appear to be plucking prey from just below the surface of the water. If they are hunting sub-surface prey, according to birder Jennifer Spry, this is a largely undocumented phenomenon. These photos are a little too indistinct to say for sure, but interesting nonetheless! Continue reading →

Birds of the Block embroidery project

05 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in art & craft, diy, ecology, regeneration

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White-faced Heron, May 2014

White-faced Heron, May 2014

A tradition has officially started now that I’ve done it twice. Each year, in honour of Joel’s birth, I shall embroider a different bird species found on our property to add to a home wall gallery. Joel asked what the criteria is for birds to be selected: they have to be interesting, native, and not commonly found in the city (even though they can be common on the Fleurieu). I can’t bring myself to embroider pigeons or magpies, though we have plenty of both. The idea is that I shall never run out of birds to embroider, as more and more birds will flock to our property as it becomes ever more diverse and abundant! The key bird species we are hoping to attract at the moment are yellow-tailed black cockatoos (which currently fly straight over and go and eat pine nuts in the pine trees in the Second Valley beach carpark) and the little finches we see hanging out in the Wirrina reveg area just across our back fence line. So stay tuned for next year’s installation!

Stubble Quail, May 2013

Stubble Quail, May 2013