Musk Ducks - or were they Loch Ness Monsters?

Today I went to the Boxvale Track, near Welby (just south from Mittagong). I went looking for Orchids, as I know there are some spring-flowering Greenhoods there, but I thought I might find some others at this time of year. You never know till you look.

As it turned out I found few Orchids (none in flower), but lots of birds. For me the least expected birds were Musk Ducks. For that I must thank a delightful encounter with a fellow birdwatcher, who told me about the Musk Ducks up on a reservoir (which I did not know existed, even thought it is barely 50 metres metres from the Boxvale Track, behind a rocky outcrop). So, tipped off to look for them I went there, and sure enough, a male Musk Duck was there, displaying aggressively.

Male Muck Duck, beak held high in the air,
with the pouch under his beak clearly visible,
is doing his "splash display"

In typical Musk Duck fashion, this bird was making loud splashing noises (with its feet) and creating very obvious splashes of water, while circling out in the middle of the reservoir. (Musk Ducks are typically "deep water" ducks, as they dive for their food, not dabbling upside down, in shallow water, like many Ducks.)

A big double splash, and a very noisy one.

Anyway, after just a few minutes of this performance, the male had some success, for a female paddled very directly across the reservoir from the reed-bank on the far side of the reservoir.

Here she comes.
It looks as if she is pale grey coloured on the chest, but
it is a "bow wave" created by her swimming so fast.
She is in fact sitting very low in the water,
with head and back (only) out of the water. That is normal for Musk Ducks.

She then circled around the male several times, and then moved in close to him. She then seemed to disappear. The light was not very good, so it was hard for me to see exactly what was going on, but there was a lot of water disturbance, so I believe they mated.

I have seen Swans mating, and the process involved the female being virtually completely submerged. Muck Ducks swim very low in the water anyway, so it really was very hard to tell exactly what was going on.

Male visible, possibly mating with the female (not visible).
That is partly based upon the amount of water disturbance.
There is a lot of paddling going on out there!

But shortly after the "disturbance of the water", the female reappeared, and swam off by herself (to the right). The male is bending his head (and beak pouch) down (to the right), but his rear end is sitting very high in the water (unusually), and his stiff tail seems to be held past the upright. It seems that it is being fanned up over his back, in a rapid movement. At this stage, the male was making his extraordinarily penetrating shrill whistle call, interspersed by deep clunking noises.

If you did not know that you were looking at Musk Ducks, you could be forgiven for thinking you had seen a very small, Southern Highlands version of the Loch Ness Monster.

The Nature of the Woody Pear

The Woody Pear is a weird plant.

It is a member of the Proteaceae family of plants - along with the better known Waratahs, Banksias, Hakeas and Grevilleas.

But it has a very different "fruit" from those plants.

Both the common and scientific names refer to its distinctive pear-shaped fruits (see left). Its specific name is Xylomelum pyriforme. The scientific name breaks down to woody fruit - with a pear shape.

But unlike a pear, they are attached at the "fat" end.

The "fruit", although pear shaped (but upside down) is a hard woody capsule.

That capsule opens along one side, to release two winged seeds. In that regard it shows its relationship to the Hakea family.

However, its fruit are much larger than those of the Hakeas.

The leaves of Woody Pears (as juvenile plants - ONLY ) are sharply toothed along their margins.

As a small plant on the forest floor, they could easily be mistaken for a juvenile Waratah, or else a member of the Lomatia genus (both of which groups are related plants, and which grow in the same areas as these plants are found).

As the plants mature, their leaves change quite dramatically.

When the plant is mature, its young leaves (new season's growth) are noticeably pinkish. However, these pinkish leaves develop a green pigment, as they mature.

They change into this bright olive-green colour. Both these stages of leaves (the pink and the green stages) on the mature plant have lance-shaped leaves, with smooth edges. The botanists refer to them as having "entire" margins.

The pictures are useful to show both leaf shapes.

The texture of the leaf is distinctive, though, once one looks closely at it (have a close look at the photo above). It is heavily veined, with a strong, dominant mid vein. There is a bold net-like veining which is quite obvious, especially when viewed through from below, in good light, as in the photo above.

These plants are far from obvious, growing amongst the heavily timbered Eucalypt forest, below Robertson, on the deeper soil areas, over the sandstone base. I would consider them to be "uncommon" in the Robertson and Kangaloon area. (They do not occur naturally on the red basalt soils of Robertson itself). Nor do they appear to favour the poorer, shallow, sandstone soils, for example along Tourist Road.

There are good stands of these plants which may be seen on Mt Gibbergunyah, and some on Mt Alexandra. Both those mountains are in the Mittagong/Welby area.

These plants grow as a mid-storey plant (a tall shrub). In this case these Woody Pears are growing in a group, below tall Eucalypts. But in their manner of growth they resemble sapling Eucalypts.

With their long, strap-like leaves, they are easily overlooked as if they were just young Gum Trees.

According to the reference books, these plants are a "protected species". No part of these plants may be picked. Unfortunately, I have seen the "Woody Pear" fruits on sale in florist shops, for use in floral art arrangements. That practice is apparently illegal. Let us just admire them, in the bush.

The Nature of Fairies

Fairy Toadstool - just emerged.

Robertson is home to some active Fairies - as evidenced by their little homes popping up everywhere, at present. I speak, of course of the famous, almost iconic, "Fairy Toadstools", also known boringly as the Fly Agaric, (Agaricus muscaria).

This Toadstool is the one so often drawn in kiddies stories of "Fairies in the Bottom of the Garden". Of course, I speak of English folk-lore, not the Australian Democrats (if they still exist).

Fairy Toadstool - fully "ripe".

I like to think of these toadstools as indicative of how deeply programmed our cultural associations are, for although these Toadstools are instantly "familiar" to us, they are an introduced Fungus, which lives in what could loosely be called a symbiotic relationship with introduced Pine Trees, and a few other non-native trees. So, it is almost exclusively a fungus found around old settled areas on Australia, along the east coast. (In Tasmania, apparently, it is making the jump to associate with the native Antarctic Beech trees in the native forests).

I remember first seeing these Toadstools growing in a neighbour's garden, in Canberra, about 15 years ago, and proudly showing them to Zoe. But already we both knew what they were (Fairy Toadstools). It is as if these old European myths are deeply programmed into our brains. Already, at first sight, they felt like long-lost friends. It is a weird sensation.

Fairy Toadstool - fully opened (concave cap)

I remember previously having a similar sensation on my first visit to England, and travelling out to the English countryside. Everything looked "right" - it was green, the trees were the "right shape". And I was an Australian, through and through. And yet, culturally, I felt programmed to appreciate William Blake's "green and pleasant land".

That familiar feeling of meeting an old friend is what I experience when I see these Fairy Toadstools.

The books say this Toadstool is poisonous. Other folk traditions talk of it having an hallucenogenic effect on Reindeer, in Northern European countries. Presumably other high-order mammals might experience similar sensations. Who really knows what a Reindeer feels, I ask you? Also there is a story that the "Whirling Dervishes" used this fungus in order to whip themselves into a frenzy before going off into their night-long dance trances (Wikipedia makes no mention of this rumour).

I shall settle for describing them as poisonous, and recommending that no part of them should be eaten.

I should clarify one term that I have used here - namely "Toadstool". I am indebted to my friend Roy Freere's talk yesterday to the Robertson Garden Club for explaining that the English tradition uses the word "Mushroom" for edible fungi, and "Toadstool" for poisonous fungi. The distinction is not only arbitrary, it is also dangerously inaccurate. There are closely related fungi, some of which are edible, and others of which are not only poisonous, but dangerously toxic. If you wish to eat "mushrooms", buy them from a shop. The correct term for all these organisms is "Fungi" .

I have used the term Toadstool for this particular fungus, because it is almost the archetypical Toadstool of literature. The specific name for this fungus is given in the first paragraph.