January 2018 - Green Path

Dragonflies beside Rollingstone Creek

Three months ago I visited Rollingstone Creek with a Wildlife Queensland group, and I liked the place so much that I went back there a few days ago. The creek and its park weren’t much changed (Rollingstone, 50 km to our North, has had more rain than Townsville so it hasn’t continued to dry out as we have) but the star attractions this time were the insects, not the birds. Of the insects, one dragonfly was outstanding.

Rhyothemis resplendens — Jewel Flutterer

This gorgeously coloured dragonfly was new to me Continue reading “Dragonflies beside Rollingstone Creek”

Crows, Currawongs and Choughs

This post parallels my recent Extended Honeyeater family essay and is prompted by the same holiday experiences: visiting Canberra and Victoria before Christmas I saw birds which don’t live around Townsville and wanted to fit them in to my existing knowledge.

It turned out that the birds I was curious about are not all members of the same taxonomic family but all belong to three families within the superfamily Corvoidea, i.e.,

Corvidae: crows, ravens (and jays, which don’t occur in Australia)
Artamidae: woodswallows, butcherbirds, currawongs and Australian magpie
Corcoracidae: white-winged chough and apostlebird

Continue reading “Crows, Currawongs and Choughs”

Extreme upcycling

We all know about recycling, re-using stuff which might otherwise have been thrown away (and we all know that there is no “away”, don’t we?) and “upcycling” is the next refinement of the idea. Many of my favourite examples are in the arts and crafts area – Waste to Wonder‘s inner-tube jewellery, for instance – but the National Gallery of Victoria’s Triennial (Dec 2017 – April 2018) had some extreme examples.

upcycling - cabinet — Computer cases become drawers

Dutch design studio Formafantasma exhibited several pieces of furniture created primarily from tech waste, such as the computer-case drawers at left.
Their design and construction was superlative, and I enjoyed their quirky decorative use of small items of tech junk.

The designers’ notes on the project point out that “by 2080 most remaining metals will have been extracted from the ground” and that, therefore, “the era of above-ground mining is upon us.” Continue reading “Extreme upcycling”

White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike finds a meal

Cuckoo-shrikes, both White-bellied and Black-faced, are occasional visitors to our garden. This one is the former, Coracina papuensis.

Yes, it has a black face, but the real Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes, C. novaehollandiae, have more black on their face – compare them here. And no, it is neither a cuckoo (Cuculidae) nor a shrike (Laniidae) but is in another family, Campephagidae, with the Trillers; Wikipedia (previous link) speculates that the ‘cuckoo’ part of their common name may come from a superficial resemblance to some cuckoos.

Common names are unreliable guides to appearance, behaviour or family affiliations, particularly here in Australia where the first European settlers met hosts of strange birds and animals and applied the nearest old-world names to them.

Extended Honeyeater family

What do you think of when you think of an extended family? Cousin Julie, Uncle John, Nanna and the rest? Or a group of related birds or mammals which is broader than a species but narrow enough to be a natural grouping?

Christmas is fresh in my mind as I write, as it may be in yours, but here I’m concerned with the taxonomic extended family, not the rellies. In particular, I have been thinking about honeyeaters and their next-nearest kin, Continue reading “Extended Honeyeater family”