Capping Uanda Bore

Guest post by Jessie Alford

Diane Alford wrote about Rainsby, a cattle property near Aramac, here nearly ten years ago. Jessie and her husband Tim have taken over its management since then; Jessie wrote this for her Facebook page but was happy to share it more widely.

The people of Western Queensland have depended on artesian bores for a century but have realised that the supply is not endless. Here’s one small step towards reducing the waste.

Bore drain on Rainsby
Uanda bore – permanent water in dry country

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No Laughing Matter

Guest post by Liz Downes

Early on Saturday morning my daughter heard a lot of scuffling going on in the leaves near the back fence and, through her bedroom window, saw two kookaburras locked together in some kind of struggle. After closer examination through binoculars she identified one as a Laughing Kooka and the other as a Blue-winged.  The latter, let’s call him Bluey, had more extensive and more vivid blue plumage and also a pale, “scary-looking” eye compared with the Laughing one’s deceptively gentle-looking brown eye.

What she discovered was that Laughing Boy had its beak jammed down the throat of Bluey, which in turn had its own beak firmly clamped down on the intruder, and they were dancing about like that apparently unable, or unwilling, to unlock themselves.

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Yellow paper wasps on the move

A reader’s recent query grew into an interesting discussion and, with her permission, I have turned it into a blog post as I did with the Kookaburra story a year ago. The photos are hers, as is most of the text; I’ve just edited it lightly for clarity and continuity. My emails are in italics, while my introductory and linking text is formatted (illogically, I know) as quoted text like this.

Pat to Malcolm, 12 April

Hi, Malcolm,

We live on the banks of the Barron River in Mareeba and I’m pretty sure these wasps are the yellow paper wasp you wrote about and put on line.

The initial nest was in a low lying branch in my front yard and I accidentally hit the branch or nest and out came wasps and I got stung. (I’m allergic, so a bit of a big deal.)

After a few days I noticed a swarm at my front porch, and although not wanting to poison them we had to encourage them to move on, and mostly they did. One tiny nest remained and my husband will remove it this evening.

But this morning on the big eucalyptus tree in our back area toward the river, the swarm looks like it is in the thousands, and building very different sort of ‘nests’ down the trunk of the white tree, a vertical row of individual pieces protruding off the tree. It doesn’t look like the usual nest but the nest in the bunya tree in our front yard (at least I think it’s a bunya – super straight, very tall and with cones) might be the same kind except that it’s about 50 feet up on the bunya.

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Helping Our Wildlife In Crisis

Reposted from Wildlife Queensland’s Townsville Branch Blog

In the face of the ongoing, horrific and completely unprecedented devastation of wildlife and habitat across our country please consider making a donation to the wonderful wildlife carers and rescuers desperately trying to help those animals that have survived. Many will have severe injuries and all will find their familiar territory transformed to an alien landscape without shelter, food or water.

Below is a list of some of the Wildlife Care and Rescue groups dealing with this crisis in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland.

If anyone has information for Western Australian groups covering the fire-affected areas (I believe mostly in the SE of the state at present) please let WQ know. Or indeed any other organisations in particular need  or which you can vouch for – this list can be added to. It is only a small selection – but we are truly in uncharted territory and these groups need your now more than ever before. THANK YOU!!
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Kookaburras in Annandale

Between the floods and the resumption of regular service on Green Path we received an email via the Contact page. The observations in it were so good that I asked permission to publish it, and here’s the result. I have used italics for my words to keep them separate; apart from that, I’ve done just a tiny bit of editing for consistency and brevity, and added links where appropriate.

Tue 19/03/2019

G’day Malcolm

My name is Ray and my wife (Judy) and I are retired and live in Annandale, backed onto the creek that runs from the Army base under the A1 and the “Richard I Bong” Bridge on Macarthur Drive. Got your email address from the Green Path website and you seemed quite experienced in birdlife. Thought you might be able to enlighten us – if you have time.

We have been visited lately by  four Blue-winged and one Laughing Kookaburras (see pics attached).

kookaburras, blue-winged and laughing
The visitors (photo: Ray)

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