Southern Stone Curlew at Narooma (6 April 2006)

This is an odd posting, as the photo is not new. Rather it is because I have just found and transferred to to my external hard drive, some photos taken two years go, at Narooma. I have not ever "processed" these photos before, so now that I have transferred them, I could do that today.

My brother has a house at Dalmeny, near Narooma, and I was delayed in having chemotherapy treatment, and was told to "go on a holiday" (I was definitely not in the mood for a holiday, I can tell you). Anyway, Brendan and Betty put their coast house at my disposal, for which I was grateful.

Brendan also told me that there was a Bush Stone Curlew (Burhinus grallarius) which had made its home behind the Health Centre at Narooma. This was an unusual record, as the bird is regarded as threatened in NSW, especially on the far south coast.This is one block from the lake shore, and just a row of shops from the highway. But it seems quiet enough for this bird. But with lots of cats and dogs in this typical coastal township, I marvel that it survived there at all.

As is typical of this species, it is very "aware" of danger, and adopts a "freeze" posture, to try and make itself invisible. Its camouflage is close to perfect. At this point, I was about 50 metres away from the bird.In this next image, I have "adjusted" the dark settings, to make the bird more easily seen by our eyes. You will see that the bird has very large eyes, which are checking me out very closely indeed.
In this last frame, the bird has decided that I was taking far too much interest in it, and it was "off and away".I have not been back to Narooma in the last two years, and so I do not know if that bird is still alive and well. I do hope so, but I somehow doubt it.

Soft-bodied Creatures

This is something of a follow-up to a posting "Red" by Junior Lepid over at "Lepidoptera Diary"

Soft-bodied creatures, with an excess of legs have been puzzling me for some time. I do not even know how to begin to classify this tiny creature. The term "insects" does not fit, for a mere 6 legs would appear to be boring, to these little guys. On my counting, this creature has 10 pairs of legs, plus two large "palps" (or similar feeding devices) on its front end. This is the best I can do with this image, before pixellation causes distortion. (Click to enlarge to maximum size.) The little creature was quite active, as you can see from how it changed angles, over a few seconds.

I went to the Australian Faunal Directory, and looked for creatures with 20 legs, but was no closer to an answer after hours of scouring through Webpages. Part of my problem is I do not know if this creature is a "larval stage" of something else which might be more familiar if I saw it in its adult stage. I am thinking here of how Ladybird (beetles) look nothing like their larval stages, or indeed caterpillars and moths.

Here is the creature in situ, on the bark of a "Scribbly Gum", to give a sense of scale, to any Aussie Nature lovers. It is about real size on my screen, when not 'blown up" to higher resolution.

I added the title "Larva" for want of any better name.

I am not even sure if this creature meets the definition of an "arthropod" for it ought have a "hard exoskeleton (doubtful), a body divided into segments (yes) and jointed legs (doubtful - certainly flexible, but "jointed" - not sure.)"

Now that I have been linking up with other Nature Bloggers in Australia, I am hoping for some words of wisdom from more experienced naturalists or even some taxonomists. Perhaps Christopher Taylor might be able to help, or Mosura, who seems to know his way around a microscope, or Junior Lepid, or any of my other new-found friends and colleagues. I would be happy to get to within a "Class" or "Order" - but this Berkeley University website on the Tree of Life tells me that even in that aspiration I am trying to apply out-of-date science.

Help!

Anticipation - yet again

I wrote last year of "The Nature of Anticipation".Well, it is that time again, folks. My Peonies are budding. This always produces as much excitement, and anticipation as, for example, planning to go on a holiday does (or thinking about s_xual encounters). The anticipation is nearly as good as the real thing (sometimes better).
I refer you to last year's discussion (above) which was vaguely philosphical, and partly gynacological (while stopping short of obscenity). (Peony "Noses"? - I don't think so.) It produced some interesting exchanges of opinion, anyway.

The other anticipatory sensation of this season is seeing and smelling, the Wattle as it comes into flower. We Aussies always delude ourselves that Wattle flowers mean Spring. Of course, they mean no such thing, for this one is flowering in the middle of the coldest week in winter. But when the wind drops for a while, and the sun shines, and the air warms up just a little, the scent of this wattle drifts across the bush was the case out on the Boxvale Track last week, one cannot but help feel that Spring is coming. I for one, am very susceptible to floral odours, and the heady scent of wattle blossom on the breeze can transport me into delights of fantasy.If only I could attach a "scent file" to this blog posting (as I can attach an image). In years to come, no doubt this will be possible. But for Aussies, I do not need to, I am sure they all can re-create their own scent-memory for themselves.

I know that I, for one, carry in my heart (or memory) a special package of wattle blossom perfume, which I can release just by looking at this image, and remembering the scent of Wattle blossom filling the air around me, walking through the Boxvale Track in late winter.

REPS regeneration of Caalang Creek bears results

Members of REPS have spent several years planting Lomandras along Caalang Creek, near the bridge on Caalong Street, on the edge of Hampden Park. These are the rush-like plants which have grown well to produce dense groundcover beside the creek, adjacent to the Robertson Community Centre.

Yesterday, when attending the Robertson Garden Club meeting, I noticed as I walked from my car to the centre, that there was a Lewin's Rail (Lewinia pectoralis) browsing around the edge of these Lomandra plants. I have not previously seen these birds in Robertson, but it is not exactly surprising. They are a secretive wading bird - they love to hunt for insects in and around reeds and rushes, near wetlands. As I was going to the Garden Club meeting, I did not have my camera with me, unfortunately.

Lewin's Rail
Photo courtesy of Melbourne Water website.

The point of this story is a bit like the American Baseball movie "Field of Dreams". I saw that movie, years ago, and the only line I remember is this: "If you build it, he will come". Well, REPS have built an environment, and now the Lewin's Rail has come to the middle of Robertson.

As I was saying before, I have not seen these birds here before, but I have previously seen a related bird, the Buff-banded Rail, out on McGuinness Drive, and I have recorded Snipe at several local swamps. Of course, the Wingecarribee Swamp is a mere 3 Kms away, downstream from the bridge over the Caalang Creek, and there is another swamp on Caalang Creek, higher up in the centre of the village, at the end of Main Street. There is an excellent wet swamp on private land on Tourist Road. So, it is not an unusual record, but it is worth noting.

More to the point, it will give heart to the REPS volunteers that the birds are taking notice of their creekside habitat regeneration work. Where previously there were weeds, Blackberries and some willows, now there is a creek bank with Lomandras and Tea-Tree Shrubs and now the Lewin's Rail.

Bits and Pieces

Kindly wish me happy 700th posting, please. Thanks for following along for the ride. If it were not for the feedback from the readers, this would not be worth doing.

Last week I took Lena for one of her occasional visits to Mr Darcy. In fact I was visiting my friends Lyndon and Maria, but don't tell Lena that.

The grass was almost unbelievably bright green in the morning light. But the colour is real. Lena loves a romp around on this field of neatly trimmed grass, and checking out the sniffs from the resident Goat, the local Wombats and Wallabies, and occasional Rabbits.
Mr Darcy is very ornamental, statuesque one could say. He is suitably handsome, as any Jane Austen fan would agree. Colin Firth fans - eat your hearts out!
The dogs, Lena and her friend Mr Darcy were not shy. They never are.

And from the sublime to the mundane, I noticed a small, dull, but beautifully shaped fungus growing from a dry piece of wood, at Lyndon and Maria's house. A perfect parasol shape.
Underneath this little brown parasol is a startlingly beautiful structure of widely spaced gills. These gills are interesting in that they alternate between complete gills (going from the stem to the cap), and short, incomplete gills. The gills are also relatively widely spaced, compared to the more familiar "field mushrooms" which many people consume regularly, purchased from Greengrocers (or supermarkets - if you have forgotten that "Greengrocers" still exist).

I have not been able to track down what this fungus is, but it bears some resemblances to this Mycena stipata (from an European website).

Any advice would be welcomed, folks.

And, as with everything I like to do in this Blog, there is a tiny surprise waiting for you. Yes a minute insect (or an "arthropod" if you prefer). I have no idea what class, or order of creature this tiny creature is. I wondered if it might be a "proturan". I do not know. I certainly would welcome any advice from fellow bloggers. If you scroll back up to the image two above, you may now notice this creature, wandering around inside the gills of the fungus, on the top left side.
All I can make out for sure is that it has several dark grey protrusions which I assume are antennae, (on the far right hand side) and what appears to be two pairs of legs towards the front of the body, and other tiny feet, or other structures, but I cannot count how many pairs of legs this little creature has. As often happens, I was not even aware that this creature was present, until I developed the photograph. I might have checked its fine details with a 10x magnifying glass, otherwise.

Distressingly, an extended search of the Internet tonight brought little joy in trying to work out what "insects" (for want of a better word) live within fungi. I have seen these creatures before (several times), but I cannot not track down what they are. The fungi people concentrate on the types of fungi, but it seems that they seldom stray into discussing whatever creatures live on and within fungi. Apart from "Springtails", (Collembola), I have found little mention of creatures which feed on fungi. But they appear not to have a larval stage, and adults have a different body shape to this, with 6 body segments. This creature seems to have more segments than that.

As I have indicated, any help would be welcomed in identifying (above), and also the type of fungus the tiny little creature for which this little fungus is its entire "world".

Pterostylis hildae starting to flower

Pterostylis hildae (Rainforest Greenhood) is just starting to flower at Macquarie Pass. Colin will be pleased - he has asked me to keep a look out for them (which he knows I would have been doing anyway).

Here are two shots of the side of the flower. It is a small Greenhood, growing to less than 6 inches (most were smaller than that).Mature flowers have a brownish tinge on the "nose" of the hood.The labellum has an interesting shape, resembling a mini surfboard, complete with a nice brown stripe down the middle. Very cute detailing.I also saw the first of the winter/spring flowering "Ant Orchids" - which these days are classed as members of the genus Myrmechila. The more common "Ant Orchids" or "Wasp Orchids" in this district are the autumn flowered species, which are classed as Chiloglottis. All of these related plants are still classed as members of the genus Chiloglottis in the minds of the people who run the PlantNET website at the RBG Sydney - even though there are very good reasons to class these plants as separate genera, especially the much larger-flowered Bird Orchids (now called Simpliglottis). Related plants, yes. Same genus - I don't think so. I go with Jones and Clements.

This plant is Myrmechila (Chiloglottis) formicifera (the "Ant Orchid" - in English and Latin names).

From the front, the column is a clean green/yellow colour, whereas the basically similar Chiloglottis seminuda (an autumn flowerer) has strong lines of red across the flat front edge of the green "column". The "pseudo-insect" has a double-headed shape, by which I mean it is like a bug-eyed insect. You can make out clearly the protrusion at the far end of the "pseudo-insect's head". In fact it protrudes to the left and the right. Some of the autumn-flowered species have heart-shaped "glands". This one clearly is not like that.

The secondary set of glands, smaller little bobbles of "jelly" go right to the bottom of the labellum (that is the diamond-shaped blade which is protruding at the front of the flower). Also, the lateral sepals are held shallowly, and are widely divergent (like two narrow blades, on the left and right). They are reflecting the light from the flash, and so they stand out, in this image. That is a considerable difference from the autumn-flowered Chiloglottis species which I have photographed, where the lateral sepals are held very low under the labellum, either reflexed or bent forward under the labellum, but not spread wide, like in this flower.
Here you may observe the gap between the major gland (the "pseudo-insect") and the smaller glands which extend all the way down to the tip of the diamond-shaped labellum. The "pseudo-insect" not only resembles an Ant (in our eyes), but apparently it emits scents which mimic the scents of female wasps, and so, it attracts male wasps which attempt to copulate with the flower. Thus does the flower achieve its pollination. This is called "pseudo-copulation". All of this is now well documented, and it is not my imagination running away with me.I would have to say that I went looking in a place where I had previously been shown leaves of these Orchids, and found some leaves straight away. I stared and stared and it was only when I knelt down to get a really close look that I found the first flower. It was about 3 inches from my hand. What I am trying to say is these tiny, dark flowers are really hard to see, even when you know they are there - right in front of you.

Because these small flowers are so well camouflaged, it is no surprise, therefore, that they are famous for their reliance upon scent glands in order to attract pollinators. In fact, it is an interesting area of science which brings together entomologists (who identify the insects), botanists and molecular biologists, who identify the chemicals which the plants use to attract the pollinating insects.

Boxvale Track - Greenhoods, and other highlights

Today I went back to the Boxvale Track, near Welby, to check on the progress of some Nodding Greenhoods which I had seen in flower in early spring, two years ago.

I was in luck, fortunately, as they were just starting to flower.

I recalled that this colony is very dense, even though in terms of this species it is not a large colony. In fact there are two colonies, on opposite sides of the track. They are growing in a dark and very protected section of the track where there once was a "tramway" installed to remove coal from a coal mine further out in the Nattai Gorge (in the 1880s). Like all such tramways (or miners' train tracks) they were laid out as straight and as flat as possible. Consequently, the Boxvale Tranway was laid through cuttings in shallow hills, and along built-up mounds of earth and rock, in sections where the ground fell away too steeply for the tramway. In several creek crossings, there were even wooden bridges installed, and traces of that construction are still evident. Anyway, from the point of view of these Greenhoods, there is now a nice, cool, dark cutting about 4 metres deep through a sandstone hillside. Perfect for the Nodding Greenhood (Pterostylis nutans).

Here are two nicely matched flowers, growing like "bookends".
Another specimen was growing nice and tall, very much like the one illustrated in the PlantNET page for the species.Here you can see how close these plants sometimes grow, forming a carpet with their leaves. But only when conditions really suit them.Another interesting plant was a very narrow leaved form of Persoonia.It is almost certainly a natural hybrid between Persoonia levis, (of which there are some specimens growing nearby) and Persoonia linearis, which is the most common Persoonia here. This plants leaves were about the same size and shape as the leaves of a Callistemon citrinus. But it was definitely a Persoonia. The image is not great, but you can make out the fruit, which is diagnostic of the genus. The colour of the leaves, and texture resembled the P. levis parent, but the shape was far narrower, not the broad oval leaves of that species. But it was not at all like the P. linearis species (which has very narrow flat leaves). The bark was thick and reddish coloured, and flaky. In that regard it has the properties of both parent plants. The botanical texts acknowledge that such natural hybrids are not uncommon.

It is a shame that Persoonias are difficult to propagate, as a plant with these characteristics would have garden potential, if only one could successfully strike cuttings. But all the experts say it is virtually impossible to get them to strike.

On the way back to the car, I found several nice specimens of some small Mallee Eucalypts. You can see the multiple stems of this plant, instead of a single trunk, as with most Eucalypts. I have taken a photo of flower buds, and I hope to be able to work out what species it might be, later on. Such plants are recorded from the tops of the Blue Mountains (of which this area is the southern-most extension). And I have also seen similar plants along very exposed edges of the Shoalhaven Valley and Kangaroo Valley. In those cases, they are restricted to growing right on exposed cliff edges. here is was in deep sand, surrounded by tall Scribbly Gums.

Talking of which, here is very fine old specimen of a Scribbly Gum tree.The Boxvale Track goes out about 4 km to a lookout over the Nattai River Gorge, and from there one can take a track down to the river valley. Parts of this track are quite steep, and so there is a nice amateurish cliff warning sign. The point is evident. I should not mock the signwriter's skills, as indeed the valleys of the Blue Mountains and Shoalhaven are known for people slipping or falling over cliffs.I should report that along the way I saw old (finished) flowers of Acianthus (Mosquito Orchids) and many leaves of Chiloglottis (Ant Orchids) and also a form of Speculantha (Tiny Greenhoods - in the "parviflora" group) - with flowers now finished. Also I saw a single specimen of the Tall Greenhood (Bunochilus longifolius) in bud.