Cuckoo-shrikes

Posted on May 8, 2013 by malcolm
grey bird with black face

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike in poinciana tree

Cuckoo-shrikes are medium-sized grey birds which feed on “insects and small soft fruit such as native figs,” to quote Slaters’ invaluable Field Guide to Australian Birds yet again.  There are four Australian species and all are found in the Townsville region although only one, the Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, Coracina novaehollandiae, is a common visitor to my garden.

The one above was moving around in our poplar gum and poinciana a few days ago and I have photographed others in the last few years:

grey bird grooming

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike grooming in our paperbark tree

grey bird in poplar gum

Immature Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, distinguishable by smaller area of black on head, in poplar gum

The White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike, Coracina papuensis, is similar to the immature Black-faced, but it is paler overall and the black on its face is only between beak and eye. The one below is the only one I have photographed in my garden although it is probably not the only one I have seen, since they are similar enough that I wouldn’t necessarily notice the difference.

grey bird on branch

White-bellied cuckoo-shrike in poinciana tree.

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Red-tailed Black Cockatoos

Posted on May 6, 2013 by malcolm

The highlight of Thursday’s stop-over was actually nothing to do with insects but was discovering a pair of Red-tailed Black Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus banksii, aka C. magnificus) feeding on the fruit of a Sea Almond tree (Terminalia catappa) in the park. The male, distinguished by bright red patches under the tail and pure black feathers around the head, immediately flew up to a nearby power-line but his mate, hungrier or braver, stayed in the tree and from only a couple of metres away I watched her pick a green fruit and munch through the whole thing.

black bird on powerline

Male Red-tailed Black Cockatoo

close-up of bird head with fruit

Female Red-tailed Black Cockatoo with sea almond

black bird in tree

Finishing off the fruit

There’s another photo of a female here, just to prove females do have crests.

There are six species of large black cockatoos in Australia, according to Slater’s Guide, but this is the only one found in North Queensland except for the Palm Cockatoo which is restricted to northern Cape York and, as this photo on Birdway shows, is distinctive enough not to be mistaken for our local species.

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Abundant invertebrates

Posted on May 4, 2013 by malcolm
black butterfly attacking a black and white one on a pink-flowering creeper

A Common Crow, Euploea core, attacking a Marsh Tiger, Danaus affinis, feeding on Maiden’s Blush creeper

A week ago I mentioned my surprise and disappointment at how few bugs I found in a Hobart garden in the week after Easter. One of the expert Tasmanian bug-hunters I mentioned in that post was amused by my reaction:

I had a good laugh at your disappointment … Unfortunately you did come down at the beginning of the ‘slow’ period (especially bad April to August). We do have winter insects but for the most part it’s more a specialist pursuit of the very small critters :-)

In retrospect, I think there were two reasons that the low numbers surprised me. One is that my memories of childhood in South Gippsland (the nearest thing to a Tasmanian climate I have experienced) have probably been skewed by the fact we didn’t spend much time outdoors in winter, as well as blurred by the decades in between. The other is that I hadn’t really thought about the difference between Tasmania’s seasonal variation and Townsville’s. We have comparatively little variation in day length or temperatures and our far greater variation in rainfall seems not to matter quite so much. (N.B. the temperature scales on these two charts are the same but the rainfall scales are not.)

Hobart monthly temp and rainfall Townsville monthly temp and rainfall chart

A stop on the way home from Reef HQ Aquarium on Thursday drove home the difference quite emphatically, although quite by accident. I pulled up beside a mangrove creek which runs through a narrow strip of parkland between South Townsville and Hermit Park (something I have done several times before – see this post and links from it) and in the space of half an hour or so I was able to photograph, not just observe, more species of butterflies and more species of true bugs (Hemiptera) and more species of spiders than I had seen in my entire week in that South Hobart garden. I also saw, but didn’t photograph, another species of butterfly, some small grass moths, two species of native bee and various flies.

The links on this list mostly lead you to older photos, here on Green Path or on my Flickr photostream, but a couple taken on the day deserve more attention. One, showing the kind of behaviour that makes the observer rethink butterflies’ sweetness-and-light reputation, is featured at the top of this page.

orange-black bugs on twig

Assassin bug nymphs

Assassin bugs (Reduviidae) are common enough but this was the first time I had seen new hatchlings (here is a bigger one in the same parkland). They were dispersing down the mangrove twig away from the cluster of eggs they had just emerged from.

 

 

 

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The Tasman Peninsula

Posted on April 28, 2013 by malcolm
burnt trees with green fuzz of new foliage

Tall eucalypts beginning to recover from bushfire

Driving from Hobart towards the Tasman Peninsula these days provides sobering reminders of the bushfires which devastated the area around Dunalley in January. There are huge areas of burnt bushland but much of it is already coming back to life. I stopped beside the road on the Hobart side of Dunalley to look at the regrowth. The town itself looks far better than it does in these photos taken immediately after the event but there are still burnt-out buildings to be seen.

Dunalley sits just north of the narrow neck of land joining the Forestier Peninsula to the rest of Tasmania (see map). The next narrow isthmus, between the Forestier Peninsula and the double-lobed Tasman Peninsula, is Eaglehawk Neck. It became famous because it is where the 1830s colonial administration set up its final barrier between the Port Arthur convicts and the uncertain freedom of the mainland, a heavily patrolled dog line. Some of the convict-era buildings are preserved but the Neck is now a popular holiday destination because of its natural beauty. The Tessellated Pavement is a little to the north and the Blowhole, Devil’s Kitchen and Tasman’s Arch are a similar distance to the south, around the capes bracketing the Pirates Bay surf beach.

grey weatherboard buildings

Stables (in the distance) and other outbuildings of the guards quarters at Eaglehawk Neck

white sand beach

Pirates Bay beach, Eaglehawk Neck, looking south

rock shelf

From sea level is is clear that the Tessellated Pavement is a tidal rock shelf beneath sandstone cliffs

Tessellated Pavement showing structure

Part of the Tessellated Pavement from above

A sign near the Pavement explains its formation: silt became stone, then was split in three different directions by movement of underlying rocks; the mineralised cracks are eroded by wave action near the edge of the rock platform to leave “loaves”, but resist the effects of salt (which stays longer on the surface nearer the cliffs) better than the sandstone to form the edges of “pans”.

trees against the sky

A serendipitous shot of trees on top of the cliffs above the Pavement

sandstone cliff

Fossil Cliffs, near the Blowhole at the other end of Pirates Bay

Dunalley Bay

Dunalley Bay, very late in the afternoon, looking south. The rusty colour of the small trees at left is neither autumn foliage nor sunset’s golden glow but fire damage

Dunalley Bay sunset

Dunalley Bay, looking north-west from the same vantage point as before

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Tasman National Park

Posted on April 27, 2013 by malcolm

Tasmania has some spectacular scenery and plenty that is not so dramatic but is very beautiful. When I escaped from Hobart for a day just after Easter, I went down to the Tasman Peninsula for a bit of both. This gallery showcases photos I took at a gorgeous bay on the east coast of the peninsula and the next one will show contrasting locations between Dunalley and Eaglehawk Neck.

The beach backs onto a section of the Tasman National Park, so there is a small camping and picnic ground (and walking tracks for those with more time than I had), and there is nothing but State Forest behind the park boundary. The helicopter I saw may have had something to do with logging operations but it was the only jarring intrusion onto the natural landscape. And the weather was gorgeous – paddling-in-the-ocean weather even for a North Queenslander like myself!

stream running past rocks

A small stream runs into the bay midway along the beach

sand and calm sea

Fine white sand delicately decorated by the wavelets

rocky coast backed by forest

Looking from the beach towards the headland

scrub behind beach

Most of the beach was backed by impenetrable scrub like this, with tall eucalypt forest behind it

black-backed gull

Adult Pacific Gull, Larus pacificus, on a rocky reef

two gulls

The juvenile Pacific Gull at left is far larger than the adult Silver Gull, Larus novaehollandiae.

brown gull flying over beach

Juvenile Pacific Gull, Larus pacificus, in flight.

currawong

Grey Currawong, Strepera versicolor, drinking from a puddle beside the campground track

I didn’t have time for a real walk – not even a two hour walk, let alone the two or three day walks that people plan for weeks ahead – but I did try the beginning of one walking track and was rewarded by the sight of a couple of wallabies, one feeding beside the track and the other placidly grooming itself in a nest-like space in the scrub. They were still there when I came back, and posed for a couple more photos.

wallaby

Bennett’s Wallaby aka Red-necked Wallaby, Macropus rufogriseus, near the walking track

wallaby

Bennett’s Wallaby, Macropus rufogriseus, grooming itself in a retreat beside the walking track

wallaby

Bennett’s Wallaby aka Red-necked Wallaby, Macropus rufogriseus, on a walking track near the campground

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