Dirty skies, hot day, and Flying Termites

Today was one of the most unpleasant days (climatically) I can recall in ages.
Sure there have been much worse days, but we in Robertson need a bit of acclimatisation to these hot north-westerlies. 
OK it was only 27.1 C (max), but the humidity is the clincher. Close to 100% at present.
I can't get a retrospective reading on that, from the Fire Brigade Weather Station, unfortunately. But it was "sticky as...." (as the young people say).

This is what the sky looked like at Albion Park Airport, at lunchtime.

Normally one can see the Illawarra Escarpment
really clearly from here.

This is the view from the top of the Macquarie Pass
Under the dirty cloud
(which is not pollution, by the way)
one can normally see Lake Illawarra
and the Port Kembla Blast Furnaces.
This is simply a result of nasty atmospheric conditions.

The immediate effect of the burst of hot weather was an enormous swarming of Termites.
All the way up Macquarie Pass (through the rainforest)
I was driving through clouds of flying Termites.
If you look at this image closely, you will see little creamy "dots"
They are the wings (the only things clearly visible on these insects)
of hordes of flying Termites.

Termites swarming in the hot air.
There are probably 80 or so in that one frame.
and that was literally a single "snapshot"
of one place, at one time.
The drive up the Pass is about 6 Km long.
How many Termites hatched today?

Late in the day, the sky turned a dirty yellow
with the sun just about to disappear.
This was at 7:02PM
Strange colours. Not a classic sunset at all.
Lets hope tomorrow is a better day.

In writing this, I am aware that there have been bushfires in the Central Coast area, and I am not trying to compare our conditions to theirs. But the "dirty sky" is not smoke haze from burn-offs, and certainly not smoke drifting down from those fires. It was just a very strange day.

Canyonleigh forests and gullies

Today, Roy Freere and I visited a private property in the mixed Eucalypt forests of Canyonleigh. We went in search of rare and unusual species of plants, birds and fungi. We had a nice time in the bush, with our hosts.

The sandstone plateau was covered in dense regrowth of Stringybark, Scribbly Gums and Grey Gums, for the property has been logged for firewood. As you can see from the attached photo, there were some very fine examples of termite mounds.

There was a very interesting gully, with a permanent stream, fed by springs coming out of rock ledges, about 20 metres below the top of the plateau. This gully had some caves with interesting eroded rock features.

The ledge below the cliff had exposed oil shale or perhaps very low grade coal, in shallow strata. There was a wet point, where rust-stained water oozed out from below a rock ledge. There were several Fungi growing in the red-brown mud there.

There were also several tiny, dark brown froglets there, little more than the size of a fingernail.

We had lunch at a point overlooking the Wingecarribee River (or a tributary). Although we were in sandstone country, the edges of this valley were steep, but not cliff-faced, unlike the more familiar escarpments of the local coastal escarpment, or the edges of the Kangaroo Valley.

My favourite observation was a tree dotted with white fluffy feathers, (see above, left) which indicated that a Wonga Pigeon had been killed by a large bird of prey, most likely a large Owl, possibly even a Powerful Owl.

We also found several specimens of the Ground Orchid known as Parson's Bands (Eriochilus cucullatus). It is a tiny pink-white Orchid, which flowers in late summer and autumn, and has a preference for sandstone-based soils apparently.

There were also many other interesting plants in the "myrtle" family, which formed a low mat of heath growth, which were notable for their lemon scent. These plants might have been the Micromyrtus ciliata, but, as they were not in flower, I cannot be sure.