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25.01.2022 Ridged periwinkles (Littoraria luteola) caught my attention at Jacobs Well last weekend, in part due to their inhabiting grey mangroves trunks at eye level. They are the most common of three similar periwinkles that live on South-east Queensland’s mangroves, with each of them being told apart by the spacing of their shell ridges.
23.01.2022 Lazing the day away in Moreton Bay
21.01.2022 Don't be fooled by the photos - I was not in some remote mountain rainforest this morning, but Bennett's Bushland Park at Morningside. A tiny green oasis in suburbia, well loved by a dedicated bushcare group, a good selection of birds and myself The insects are green jewel bugs (Lampromicra senator), huddled together for warmth in a vine near their food plant. Aren't they lovely?
21.01.2022 Brushtail possum, Karawatha Forest Reserve.
20.01.2022 I had a beautiful encounter with a small green-banded blue (Psychonotis caelius) at Mount Coot-tha yesterday. It was resting on the leaf litter next to East Ithaca Creek, and it let me get right up close to it with my macro lens! These butterflies begin their lives as caterpillars that feed on a lovely small tree called the red ash (Alphitonia excelsa), so if you want to see them in your garden, now you know what to plant
20.01.2022 The feathered antennae on this lichen moth (Asura lydia) show that it is a male.
20.01.2022 I'm going to finish my 2020 posts with this cutie, a graceful tree frog, seen the other night near Bulimba Creek What a wild ride this year has been! Here's wishing you all a happy end to it, and a great start to 2021.
20.01.2022 If you’ve ever seen a crow up close, you’ll know that it is a large bird. So keep that in mind while looking at this white-bellied sea-eagle, which dwarfs the crow (and magpie) in pursuit of it! With the spring breeding season kicking off, neither the crow nor the magpie would have appreciated such a large predator passing through their territory. Gripped in the eagle’s talons is a fish that it had just retrieved from a Raby Bay canal.
19.01.2022 With it being so dry still, I thought that if I wanted to go birdwatching this week, I had better go look near some water. My hunch paid off, and I found a spot along Bundamba Creek that was just teeming with birds, including this olive-backed oriole. Here's hoping we get some decent rain soon!
19.01.2022 It never fails to amaze me that despite the tour buses and crowds of people that visit Lamington National Park everyday, it is still remarkably easy to find yourself alone in a remote wilderness. On Friday I achieved that much desired state of being at Tullawallal, a rocky summit inside the Binna Burra section that is home to one of my favourite trees, the Antarctic beech.
18.01.2022 I've seen squirrel gliders before but on Saturday night in Karawatha Forest, I had my best encounter yet with one. It was in a flowering coastal banksia, and I'm fairly certain it was there for a nectary treat. It goes to show how important this tree's profuse flower spikes are at a time of year when there's not much else on offer to nectar-feeding animals and birds. Finding squirrel gliders in moist coastal forests is a phenomenon unique to South-east Queensland and Northern New South Wales as far as I can tell from my reading. Elsewhere, they live in the dry open woodlands that so often get cleared for farming and industry. Consequently, they are on Threatened Species lists in the states to our south, and if our appetite for clearing here in SEQ doesn't slow down, I'm afraid a similar fate awaits our population.
18.01.2022 I was fortunate enough to accompany a lovely group of people on the weekend who went exploring privately-owned land out in Undullah. We spent most of our time looking at beautiful plants and vines, but on the peaks of Mount Elliot, we also observed many insects. King of them all (and of the whole mountain in my opinion) was this four-barred swordtail. His territory encompasses a sheltered, wildflower-laden nook of the mountaintop, where the females who live in the dry vine forest below can easily find him. A big thank you to Greg for organising the day, and also to the property owners for allowing access.
18.01.2022 Did you know that Moreton Bay is home to sixty-four different species of coral? They may be closer than you think! This stony Dipsastraea species (formerly Favia) lives under the boardwalk near the Redlands Visitor Centre and Hog's Breath Cafe in Cleveland.... The black feathery arms next to it are the feeding tentacles of sea cucumbers that are buried in the sediment. Moreton Bay is a beautiful place that is teeming with life, and must be protected from inappropriate development.
18.01.2022 One of my favourite ecosystems in South-east Queensland are the flat, sandy swamps and woodlands behind the sand dunes near the beach. The name for these places is ‘wallum heath’ and they are an environment which is unique to South-east Queensland and Northern New South Wales. ‘Wallum heath’ is a name that might be unfamiliar to some (or dare I say most?) people. ‘Wallum’ is the indigenous name for a species of banksia that grows in this habitat only. A ‘heath’ is an English term for an area dominated by small shrubs, many of which belong to the Ericaceae family, also known as heathers. Places where you can appreciate wallum heath include the Moreton Bay sand islands (including Bribie), Currimundi Lake Conservation Park on the Sunshine Coast, and Pine Ridge Conservation Park on the Gold Coast.
18.01.2022 When observing this moulting cockroach, I thought that the dark part was the animal and the white part was the cast off skin. But after reading my field guide (Rentz 2014), I see it is actually the other way around! Once free of its old skin, the cockroach will usually eat it to recycle nutrients and inflate its stomach. It regains normal colouring after a few hours.
17.01.2022 For anyone who wants to learn more about our local birdwing butterfly, there is a live info session about it this Saturday
17.01.2022 I enjoyed meeting up with the SEQ Spiders group at Mount Mee on Saturday! Unfortunately, I was easily distracted by non-spider rainforest inhabitants, such as these pretty flowering shrubs. Both photos show the same species - the scentless rosewood (Synoum glandulosum) - which can have either four or five-petalled flowers. Took me about an hour of study to figure out that tidbit of information!
17.01.2022 Sunshine coast flowers, clockwise from top: native St John’s wort (Hypericum gramineum), twining glycine (Glycine clandestina) and Queensland wax flower (Philotheca queenslandica).
15.01.2022 With the state election bearing down upon us, I thought I would talk some politics for a moment. Moreton Bay Marine Park is under threat. Both the current Labor government and the LNP opposition want to destroy a part of it, giving an area out near Cleveland to a developer who donates to both parties. If you live in Cleveland, there is an independent candidate running for your state seat (Oodgeroo) named Claire Richardson. She is a local, successful businesswoman with an engi...neering background who is all for upgrading the ferry terminal, but against cramming 3,600 units onto where dugongs, sea turtles and endangered birds currently live. For me personally, I find the current Labor government’s environmental record to be hit and miss. Their land-clearing reforms were an admirable attempt to ease the destruction caused by the Liberal National Party’s policies, but their plans for the Redlandswhich also include new housing estates on North Stradbroke Island and placing a huge building on the cliffs at Point Lookoutare frankly bizarre. Because I don’t want parts of Moreton Bay to be destroyed, because I don’t want North Stradbroke Island to become a suburban hell, because I don’t want to kiss the last of our koalas goodbye, I will be preferencing The Greens ahead of Labor, and taking a closer look at my local independent candidates also.
15.01.2022 Hello! I am back and kicking off another year of nature sightings with this beauty a male Australian king-parrot. He is quite a young one judging from the extent of green still present around his head and nape. I saw him in a patch of forest at Capalaba, enjoying the early morning sun from his perch in a dead tree.
15.01.2022 A Gold Coast property tycoon showing off some hot real estate One room, but with ocean views. Yours for just two million.
15.01.2022 I took some photos of a bark-hugging St Andrew's Cross spider (Argiope ocyaloides) today, and it wasn't until I looked at them on my computer screen at home that I realised the spider had a parasite. If you look closely, you should be able to see a whitish grub eating the poor spider alive from its side. I think the larva will turn into a wasp (though from a different family to the spider wasps I showed you recently), but there's also a chance it will become some other type of insect, such as a fly. It's a tough old world out there!
14.01.2022 Grey goshawk, a beautiful silent ghost in the forest at Dawn Road Reserve, Albany Creek.
12.01.2022 How cool is this? I've also seen these fish on tidal flats out near Cleveland, in part of the Marine Park that both QLD Labor and the LNP want to destroy.
10.01.2022 I made a very brief trip to Canberra on the weekend to attend the wonderful wedding of a dear friend. Having never been to The Bush Capital before, I also wanted to squeeze in some sightseeing, which for me, means getting to know the local wildlife. These photos were taken at Jerrabomberra Wetlands, a delightful reserve in the south-east corner of the city. I Canberra!
10.01.2022 My love story with botany, as told by the books I’ve bought My first ever plant field guide was the Queensland Museum’s Wild Plants of Greater Brisbane. It has a lovelyif incompleteselection of plants from our region, with detailed entries on each. It taught me to look for opposite and alternate leaf arrangements, and opened my eyes to all the interesting eucalypts and common species we are surrounded by. Then I moved on to Mangroves to Mountains. It is a stunning book,... with a very comprehensive selection of species in every conceivable habitat! Plants are grouped into colour-coded sections, so if you are in a eucalypt forest and see a shrub with purple flowers, you turn to the purple pages of the eucalypt forest chapter. This book motivates me to occasionally devote a day out or two to search for plants, because of the amazing diversity and unique beauties it showcases. The last two books are part of a set, and they are a little more technical than the other books because they use a key system to arrive at an identification. It takes some getting used to, but these booksknown to botany enthusiasts as the ‘red’ (Rainforest Trees and Shrubs) and ‘green’ (Rainforest Climbing Plants) books because of their first edition cover coloursreally produce results! I used them last weekend to identify unfamiliar shrubs and vines at Mount Coot-tha and was amazed at the accuracy of the identification keys. Best of all, you don’t need flowers or fruit to solve mystery plants, just an awareness of leaf forms and structures. I bought all four of these books at the The Piccabeen Bookshop on Tamborine Mountain, which is run by and supports the wonderful Landcare group up there.
08.01.2022 Had a great morning on Wednesday wandering Samford Conservation Park, in search of wattles. The second photo is a close up of the mountain hickory wattle (Acacia penninervis), showing the glandular notch in the phyllode (wattle leaf) that identifies it.
08.01.2022 I never knew the palm lilies had such beautiful flowers This one is the red-fruited palm lily (Cordyline rubra), flowering up at Mount Nebo. Palm lilies have become very popular house and garden plants, but the species used are generally not our local ones, originating from either north Queensland or New Zealand.
07.01.2022 Two litres of water, a light snack, a coating of sunblock and nowhere else to be
07.01.2022 I found some great critters on Monday and thought I'd share my notes with you
06.01.2022 I searched Banks Street Reserve in Alderley this week, setting out to find some interesting fungi. Wood-digesting polypores were what I found for the most part. My favourite sightings were of the many spring polypores (Polyporus arcularius) that had arisen off various dead twigs and branches
06.01.2022 I thought that poking my camera in the face of this katydid (Caedicia sp.) nymph would see it quickly hop away, but instead, it approached my lens for a closer look
06.01.2022 Identifying the beautiful dragonfly I found earlier this week was super easy with this WONDERFUL book For all insect and nature fans in South-east Queensland, I'd highly recommend getting in touch with Narelle for a copy of this local guide! Amazing work Narelle Power and Damian White
05.01.2022 Did you know we have freshwater clams in Australia? This is one that I found at Somerset Dam last Sunday afternoon, known as a little basket clam (Corbicula sp.). I love the concentric ridges sculpting the shell
04.01.2022 Two channel-billed cuckoos flew over the walkway I was ambling along on Sunday, next to Kedron Brook. They alighted in a cadaghi tree, scattering all sorts of smaller birds into the air in alarm. When I walked over and looked up, I found them engaged in some kind of play or courtship behaviour, with one of the birds waving a piece of bark around in its bill, keeping it just out of reach from the other bird. Their engagement with each other allowed me to approach closer than I... usually can with this wary species, and I enjoyed the moment a lot. This interaction is similar to the courtship behaviour noted for the species, where the male offers the female an insect meal before copulation. It could also just be a moment of light-hearted play, which would be fitting for these clever birds. While crows are often considered to be the brainiacs of the bird world, channel-billed cuckoos routinely deceive crows when they sneak eggs into their nests, so what does that say about cuckoo intelligence?
04.01.2022 A flock of darling red-browed finches, lined up on a perch to watch me walk past
04.01.2022 I went spotlighting in some boggy areas near Bulimba Creek last night and found this real beauty of a dragonfly! It's a rarely observed species called the coastal evening darner (Telephlebia tryoni), and it is crepuscular, meaning that it is most active around dawn and dusk. Our wildlife is loving all this rain and our catchments are coming back to life
04.01.2022 Certainly puts the 'wild' in 'Wild Brisbane'!
01.01.2022 Eucalypts are Australian icons, but their name is all Greek to me. No, literally, it's Greek! It means "well-covered" and refers to the cap ('operculum') on the flower bud.... This swamp bloodwood in Victoria Point illustrates exactly what I am talking about!
01.01.2022 Another "non-spider" from Mount Mee last weekend - sorry Iskander! This tiny tortricid moth was found camouflaged against the trunk of a tree in subtropical rainforest. Even its eyes are part of the disappearing trick - they look like two specks of green moss!
