A couple of websites...

I've been using a couple of websites a lot lately and I thought they might be of interest to someone else.

1. RainfallReports.com is a website where you can enter your rainfall data online, or download the free software and do it offline (and later upload it if you like). I've been using paper records for years (a chart stuck to the fridge with a magnet), so this gives me a simple way to tally each years' rainfall data and compare it immediately on the one graph, which is cool (if you are a bit nerdy like me). If you upload your data online, you can share it with other's around the world, and look at other people's site records (not that there are many in Australia yet).




2. With all the birds we are getting in our backyard now, we have been using the Birds In Backyards website a lot to help with our identification. It an awesome site listing common Aussie birds. The coolest feature - which I've been using this week - is the Top 40 Bird Songs section. Many of the birds in our yard are a bit secretive and two bird songs in particular have been driving me nutty, because I always hear them at dawn or late at night when I'm in bed. Now after listening to the Top 40, I've confirmed that one is the Channel-billed Cuckoo, also known as a Storm Hawk, or Rain Bird.

The other - well, I'm still not convinced it isn't a peacock, of all things! Why - or how - the heck someone in suburbia would have a peacock, I've no idea, but I've also been on YouTube listening to them, and that's what they sound like! It's quite possible that the sound is carrying several kilometres at night and that someone on a farm across the nearby Hexham Swamp Wetlands has one? Weird. But cool.



Cheers,