While not rare in the Ballarat district, it cannot be classed as common.

The photo was taken last month at Mullawallah Wetlands at Lucas, where a pair of these birds resided over summer. Perhaps they are still there.

Shrike tits are never easy to see, despite their striking colouration.

They spend most of their time in the tops of gum trees, where they feed on insects, spiders and similar creatures.

Sometimes, they are first discovered by the noise they make when pulling bark in their search for food.

While they can be found in rougher-barked eucalypts such as stringybarks and peppermints, they are more often seen in the whiter-branched trees, such as river red gums and manna gums.

Like many bushbirds, their numbers are declining, but they can still be found along the Yarrowee River above Brown Hill, and last year a pair bred in Woowookarung Regional Park at Canadian.

The bird in the photo is a female, with an olive throat. The male's throat is black. The bill is thick and powerful.

Many years ago, the bird was known as eastern shrike tit, then crested shrike tit, and now it is back to eastern shrike tit again, with two other forms - in western and northern Australia - now being regarded as species again, rather than subspecies. Their ranges do not meet.

Shrike tits are usually regarded as residents, spending the whole year in the same patch of forest.

At Mullawallah Wetlands, they have adopted a 40-year-old plantation of native trees.

Calm, sunny weather a week ago resulted in a few questions about numerous spider webs blowing across the district.

This is an annual May phenomenon, in which tiny young spiders disperse across the countryside on the very light breezes.

Baby spiders climb up higher than the ground, then - when conditions are just right - they produce surprising amounts of web that catch the wind and take them to who knows where.

This is the way they disperse from their hatching place, with many of them travelling vast distances on the wind.

This "ballooning" is undertaken by several different sorts of spiders - wolf spiders, crab spiders and probably others that live in open country.

The amount of web produced by such a tiny - almost invisible - spider is amazing.

Some crab spiders are known to produce many strands of silk three metres or more long before they take off. We often see the webs, but we rarely see the spiders.

What are these? They were found while I was digging in the garden.

M.T., Daylesford.

These are snail eggs. They are often laid on the surface of the soil where there is a layer of mulch to cover them, but sometimes the eggs are buried below the surface and then covered.

They are more lemon-shaped than spherical, and are normally in batches of 30 to 100 or more.

They can be clear or white, and are slightly soft and slightly sticky.

Clusters of spherical eggs in a garden are unlikely to be snail eggs - they may be earthworm eggs, especially if they are a yellow colour.

Snail eggs hatch into tiny soft-shelled snails after two weeks in warmer weather, or longer in cooler conditions.

They mature when they are one or two years old and can produce several clutches of eggs per year.