Month: October 2017

Ringlets on grassy hillsides

Brown Ringlet
Brown Ringlet at Paluma Dam

Ringlets (Hypocysta spp.) are smallish, brownish butterflies showing attractive flashes of orange in flight but camouflaged at rest unless they spread their wings to bask. Their wingspan is about 30mm, very much the same size as the common Grass-yellows (Eurema spp.) but noticeably smaller than Migrants, Crows and Tigers and larger than the Blues.

All six Australian species are found on the East coast and we have three of them in the Townsville region, the Orange, Northern and Brown Ringlets (H. adiante, H. irius and H. metirius) although the last of these is not common close to Townsville. In fact, we rarely see any of them except on the rocky grassy slopes of Castle Hill, Mt Stuart and the Many Peaks Range. Why not? Continue reading “Ringlets on grassy hillsides”

Birds beside Rollingstone Creek

These bird photos were taken on a visit to Rollingstone Creek with Wildlife Queensland a month ago. That visit, like their other monthly expeditions, would normally be reported on the WQ branch blog but hasn’t appeared yet so I will give a little more detail than I usually do.

The location was Rollingstone Creek Bushy Park (Google Maps) and the broad, densely vegetated creek bed beside it. Access to the park (part of which is a very quiet, pleasant camping ground) is from Balgal Beach Rd and the old low-level highway bridge, or from the Servo turn-off, north of the creek.

We walked along the creek – very slowly, because there was so much to see – Continue reading “Birds beside Rollingstone Creek”

Channel-billed Cuckoo in town

There was an extraordinary whooping commotion in our poplar gum just on dusk yesterday. It sounded like Friarbirds on steroids or half a dozen Blue-winged Kookaburras on helium – a huge sound!

I ducked outside straight away to see what on earth was going on and spotted two big grey-brown birds high in the tree (and there may have been more hidden amongst the leaves). They were Channel-billed Cuckoos, Scythrops novaehollandiae.  Continue reading “Channel-billed Cuckoo in town”

Spice finches in Bali

One of my readers used the workaround ‘comment’ routine recently to ask me about some birds she sees on her side of Ross River:

I live on the river in Annandale and since moving here 18 months ago have developed a great love of birds – they are in my garden and on the river.  I manage to identify most of them but there is one little fellow I just can’t – I have googled, looked in the books and sites.
It is not a very pretty little bloke but I love them. They are, I would imagine, a finch, [with] the round little fat body, always in a flock of around 10 -15, fly very fast, love the seed in my lawn, love my bird bath as it’s very protected. He is a medium flat brown with a black mask across his eyes, has a short tail, easily frightened.
This little bird is too small for me to get a photo with my camera. Malcolm do you have any idea what it is, I would be grateful for your comments.

I was happy to help, especially as Lynne had provided such a good description that there was only one real candidate, the Spice Finches (Lonchura punctulata). As I told her, they are Asian birds, relatively recent arrivals in our region but now well established in our parklands, so older bird books might not describe them, or might not show them as living here.

I have already written about them here and, more recently, here but Lynne’s enquiry reminded me that I had intended to write about them again after my return from Bali in April (this link will lead you to earlier posts about the island). They are a native species there, so seeing them was no surprise. Seeing them feeding on a tidal rock platform, however, was quite unexpected.  Continue reading “Spice finches in Bali”

Bookshelf entomology 2

This is little more than a footnote to my January 2016 post about the insect life to be found in bookshelves in the tropics: I noticed a can of insect spray tucked discreetly in the corner of a bookshelf and moved it to reveal …

The nest-builder is one of our common mud-dauber wasps (potter wasps), probably a Sceliphron like this one.