A birding weekend away.

The following birds are DEFINITELY not from Robertson.

A family of Emus being led away by Dad (right)

I went to West Wyalong with Mark Clayton and some other bird banders from Canberra. My association with Mark goes back further than most people have been alive, so I shall not bore readers with the details, save to say that Mark was a youngster (as was I) when he first teamed up with my father and myself and a bunch of other young enthusiasts, and started to learn about bird banding. Mark has had an entire career in CSIRO in the intervening years.

Mark invited me to join him at one of his favourite haunts at The Charcoal Tank Nature Reserve, near West Wyalong. Mark has banded there since about 1986, so he has established some very valuable bird life-history data over those years.

Mark preparing to band an adult male Common Bronzewing Pigeon.

Here he is taking the "head/bill" measurement.
And now the bird is about to be released.
You can see the large patch of cream feathers on the forehead.
That indicates it is an adult male.An Eastern Yellow Robin - prior to release.

The weather at West Wyalong was very hot.

Sunrise at 6:00am.
The temp was already 21.6 degrees Celsius.

It reached 38 degrees Celsius at 3:00pm, on Saturday,
with just 9% humidity.

The temperature meant we had to be very vigilant with the birds in the nets, particularly the small birds, which are potentially subject to heat stress.

Here is a Peaceful Dove -
a close-up view of the colouring of the soft tissue
above the beak and the around the eye.
The same bird, with the wing held out
to show the lovely chestnut colour on the under-wing coverts.This bird is one of Mark's favourite species.
The White-plumed Honeyeater.
He has established good life-history data of this species
through re-trapping many banded birds at Charcoal Tank.
This next image is a portrait of the Yellow Thornbill.
This specimen lacks the typical colouration.
The fine marks behind the eye are about the only distinguishing features.

This image of the bird in the hand shows the size from which it was previously known by the name of the "Little Thornbill".

I have a number of other photos which I shall publish over the next few days.

More rare plants from Mt Rae forest

Readers will recall that I have a friend, Mark Selmes, who is campaigning to protect the forests of Mt Rae, near Taralga (north-east of Goulburn).
Mark had been promising me to let me know as soon as the rare Diuris aequalis (the Buttercup Doubletail Orchid) started to flower.

These plants are a lovely colour of clear golden yellow.
By contrast with Diuris sulphurea
which was also in flower on the same day,
these flowers were distinctly golden, not lemon yellow.
Even the lovely yellow D. chryseopsis had a different colour,
and grows out in the open grasslands
and has very different shaped "ears".

This plant is listed on the NSW Threatened Species list.
It is endangered because of the threat from clearing of the Wet sclerophyll forests (grassy sub-formation).
Anyway, Mark was as good as his word. I went there on Monday and we saw only 5 of these plants, but that's just the start of the season. Hopefully many more of these plants will be seen and their locations recorded before the season ends for them.

You can clearly see the labellum of the flower,
the beautifully rounded dorsal sepal (above the column).
You can clearly see the two callus ridges
divergent, at the top of the labellum.
The labellum itself has a prominent ridge towards the lower edge.

But it is less pronounced than some other species of Diuris.

It is worth remembering that these plants grow only amongst grasses and bracken ferns on the floor of the forest. But the forest needs to be there, for the plants to survive. These plants are not found in open cleared areas close by. They grow only under the canopy of the forest.

That is why Mark Selmes's campaigning to protect the Mt Rae forests is important - for these rare, threatened plants to survive.

Note how tightly the lateral sepals
(the so-called "double-tails")

are tightly held under the flower.

Mark Selmes will be the guest speaker at the forthcoming meeting of the National Parks Association, (Southern Highlands Branch) on Wednesday, 18 November, at the Moss Vale CWA Hall (adjacent to the Wingecarribee Shire Council chambers) at 7:30 PM.

Kangaloon Sun Orchid - an endemic rare plant

This is the famous Kangaloon Sun Orchid, Thelymitra kangaloonica.
Haven't heard of it? Shame on you, dear reader. It has been written up here, before.

It is one of those "Threatened Species" things which we managed to use to convince Malcolm Turnbull to declare the SCA's Upper Nepean (Kangaloon) Groundwater project to be a "Controlled Action" under the EPBC Act.

And last year, Peter Garrett deemed this plant to be "critically endangered" and put it on the Threatened Species lists of the EPBC Act.

The problem for this plant is that it lives only at 3 known locations in the Southern Highlands - all of which are under the control of the SCA.

1. Wildes Meadow Swamp was flooded by the SCA to build the Fitzroy Falls Reservoir - so that registered swamp habitat (for this plant) is now permanently under water.
   
2. Stockyard Swamp is off limits to everybody except Coal Miners, Power Company workers, Drilling Rigs and all those other sensitive souls who work for the SCA. That is right in their best source of water for the SCA in trying to develop the Kangaloon Borefield - well, so they believe anyway. Orchid enthusiasts, even authentic researchers are denied access. It was where this species was first found, and "voucher specimens" collected. It was identified at that stage as belonging to a different species (Thelymitra grandiflora). Those herbarium specimens have since been re-examined and found to belong to this species.
   
3. That leaves Butlers Swamp. Fortunately, the SCA has continued to recognise as legitimate the interests of the Australasian Native Orchid Society, Illawarra Branch, which has conducted surveys of Butlers Swamp for some 30 years. Butler's Swamp is the "type locality" for this plant. In other words, the specimen from which this plant was formally described and named came from Butler's Swamp.
   

So there they were, flowering happily last weekend.

(Click to enlarge image)

Here are two flowers on a multi-flowered stem.
You can see the rich blue colouring (with a hint of purple)
and the strong veining.

And here is the distinctive column and "post-anther lobe"
(the hooded bit over the column)
The "column arms" are held relatively flat in this species
(they do not bend or curl upwards as some others do)
and are well separated from the yellow section of the "hood".
The lobe is "notched" and "toothed.
These are diagnostic features of this species.It was gratifying to see that these plants are doing quite well this year.

Lets hope that the SCA does not resume pumping from the Kangaloon Aquifer, for when they did their trial pumping, they dried the swamp out terribly, despite their denials to the contrary. We have photographic evidence of that.

Another Sun Orchid variant

Clearly this is a form of Thelymitra ixioides - the "Spotted Sun Orchid", or a hybrid derived therefrom.
Here is a close-up of the column of this (or a similar) flower.
To refresh your memory, this is the standard form of Thel. ixioides as found in the NSW Southern Highlands.
The "column arms" are right, but there is a difference (in the previous flower) in the "post anther lobe" the ring of tissue at the top of the column. This one is tipped yellow. The other is brownish-red and much more warty ("pappilose").
My Victorian colleagues publish images of Thel. ixioides with dark rims to the "post anther lobe". Here is a link to JL's images from Great Western (in the Grampians). Her photos match Colin Rowan's (taken at Anglesea).

In the same area, at Penrose, there were many of these lovely unspotted forms of the same plant.

I say that with some confidence, as this species is renowned for its variant forms, including an unspotted form of the "Spotted Sun Orchid". Confused? Don't worry - so am I.

Here is a closer image of one of the flowers.
It was a lovely blue specimen (without spots).
And here is probably my best image of the column
and the column arms.
So, what have I got here?
It might be the hybrid form of Thel. ixioides,
which is known as "Thel. x truncata".
That hybrid form has been named,
but the photos of that hybrid which I can find
do not seem to me to be truly diagnostic of the hybrid form.

Or, should I say, if their photos (from NSW and Victoria)
are true hybrid forms of "Thel. x truncata",
then these plants (in my photos from Penrose)
are of something else entirely.

Fine.
But what?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Stegostyla testacea (a "Caladenia"}

Stegostyla testacea was formerly classed as a Caladenia testacea.
It carries the name "Honey Caladenia", but my nose is not sensitive enough to detect that, but it is said to be most noticeable on warm days (and I don't get a lot of those!). There are a number of similar species of Stegostyla (Caladenia), including Steg. hildae and Steg. transitoria (this last one reported by my colleague Gouldiae - from the Latrobe Valley in Victoria).

This shows the tendency of this species to carry several flowers on the one stem - unlike the early flowered Stegostyla species I showed before.

This image is not good, but I was trying to look inside the flower, to detect any marks on the column, which are just visible.These plants were located in Kangaloon, just on the side of Kirlkland Road, where the Illawarra Branch of ANOS had permission to enter, from the SCA. Many thanks to them for that.

They were growing in dense closed Eucalypt forest on loose grey sandy soil, over sandstone. They were not growing in the open habitat along Tourist Road.

More Sun Orchids from Sunny Sunday

Here are some more of the wonderful Sun Orchids which I photographed when on tour with the Illawarra Branch of ANOS on Sunday.

One of the few Thelymitra carnea (Pink - or Tiny - Sun Orchid) plants we found in flower. Most had long since been pollinated and were standing proudly with swollen ovaries (not yet ripe seedpods, but heading that way). That species is a very early flowerer.

This one is very pale compared to others I showed two weeks ago.Here is a close-up of the column (seen from above/front)
You can see that this species lacks the "column arms"
which many species in this genus have.
The prominent structure in the middle of the
encircling yellow bit - the "post-anther lobe", is the Anther.Here is the "Spotted Sun Orchid", Thelymitra ixioides
This plant is very common in Kangaloon along Tourist Road.
It is a strong growing Sun Orchid and the buds have a distinctive mauve tinge on the reverse of the petals, with a pale creamy edge.
Even when the flowers are closed they look lovely.
Here is the column of Thel. ixioides.
When Thel. ixioides and Thel. carnea are cross-pollinated by the bees they sometimes produce a natural hybrid plant,
which is common enough to have been named:
Thelymitra x irregularis - the "Crested Sun Orchid"
From the Thel. carnea parent it takes the yellow colour
(on the column top) but it still lacks "column arms".
From the T. ixioides parent it has this "crest"
- the fringed top of the post anther lobe
instead of the fleshy structure of T. carnea.
The spots, of course come from T. ixioides.
From the side you can see the unusual column arrangement,
the "crest" which helps identify this plant.
Here is the close-up view of the column from that angle.
And from above/front view you can discern
the shape of the full post anther lobe.
And now to complete the set,
here is a pink version of Thel. ixioides.
This plant is a colour variant of the true species, not a hybrid.
The colour is more reminiscent of the mauve/pink colour
I mentioned before as being seen normally on the back of the flower.
This one does have fewer spots than normal,
but again, this species sometimes produces plain flowers.
In other words it is incredibly variable in form.
But the column details show this is a
true member of the T. ixioides group
complete with white column arms and brushes.
That Pink Hybrid form seen above had no such structure
(reflecting its T. carnea parentage)

As I mentioned, the sun was shining beautifully on Sunday, and so many Sun Orchids were flowering closely together, cross pollination is almost inevitable. So hybrids and odd colour variants are relatively common in such circumstances.

Sunny Sunday of Sun Orchids

On Sunday the Illawarra Branch of ANOS came for a tour of the highlights of the Southern Highlands. The weather was perfect for orchid hunting. Hot, and sunny, and a bit humid. The Sun Orchids were out in force.

Of course, the schedule is not accidental, for the ANOS people from the Illawarra know this area very well, and have collectively been visiting here for some 30 years, so they know when is a good time. But this year, the weather really Gods smiled on them. So did the Orchids.

I have no idea which type of Sun Orchid this plant might be.
The perianth segments (petals and sepals) were strongly reflexed back.
The column is pale blue at the base, dark purplish-blue at the top,
with a white section at the front, where they are normally yellow.

Here is a small image (only 400 pixels high)
showing the column details.
The little fluffy bits in the front are called "column arms".
Different species of Sun Orchids have
different arrangements of column arms
as well as variations in the lobes at the top of the column.

This is my next "puzzle".
There is no plant that I can see in David Jones's excellent book
which I can match with this flower.

The flower was a light powdery blue colour, with just a hint of mauve wash.
The flowers are lightly veined.
The column arms are very fine, and are slightly upcurved.
There are no other branches or structures on the column arms
apart from the fine fibrous brushes.

The column hood appears nearly black,
but on close examination it is a dark reddish-brown.
There is no sign of any yellow - which is normal on the front edge.

Here it is in close-up.
Not a hint of yellow to be seen.
Very odd.

I will publish more images over the next few days of different species of Thelymitra (Sun Orchids) which we saw.

Any advice on IDing these two plants would be gratefully received.