Tag: paper wasp

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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Yellow paper wasp nest

Some years ago I noted that I had seen yellow paper wasps, Ropalidia romandi, in my garden but hadn’t seen the nest, presumably also in my garden, which they were coming from. Its location could have been vital information, saving me from a nasty confrontation, so I kept on looking – with no success at all.

I finally spotted it very recently, above the roof-line of our high-set house in a paperbark tree (please visit this page if you want to call it a bottlebrush – it’s both) and overhanging the neighbours’ fence. A clear view of it was only possible from one or two locations even when I knew it was there, so I don’t feel too chagrined at missing it for so long.

Yellow Paper Wasp nest on Melaleuca
Yellow Paper Wasp nest on Melaleuca

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Insects in my new Townsville garden

Each garden attracts some different insects and spiders from its neighbours because of the different food plants and micro-habitats it offers. The difference between our old garden and our new one is most apparent in the butterflies, since their caterpillars often eat only one or two species of plant.

Here we haven’t (yet) got any Plumbago, so we have no Plumbago Blue butterflies; but we do have Cycads.

cycad blue butterfly
Cycad Blue on the rib of a caterpillar-chewed cycad frond

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Visiting Turtle Rock on Hervey’s Range

The Townsville branch of Wildlife Queensland has resumed its monthly-except-wet-season excursions and their April trip was to Turtle Rock, an indigenous rock shelter high on Hervey’s Range. It’s a site I had known about for years but never seen, so I was very happy to be able to join the expedition.

Turtle Rock is on private land between Sharps Rd and Edward Rd; access is across the paddocks from the former, a 20 minute walk which can be shortened by driving part-way (as most of us did) or to the foot of the rock (as one of us did). The landowners, the Fryer family, are happy to have people visiting the site at any time but a courtesy phone call is a good idea and may avoid any difficulties with the access track.

Turtle Rock
Turtle Rock rising from a sea of trees

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Mount Stuart’s small wildlife

peacock
Welcoming committee

Castle Hill dominates the central Townsville skyline but Mount Stuart takes over that role from anywhere further up Ross River. From Mundingburra all the way up to Kelso and across the river to the university and the hospital, Mount Stuart looms large.

That doesn’t mean people visit it very often, of course, but a road leading off the Charters Towers road just beyond the city winds up to a lookout beneath the radio masts. When I drove up a couple of days ago I was welcomed by a resident peacock (perhaps the same one who met me five years ago) and, after taking in the magnificent views over Magnetic Island, the Palm group and coastline all the way to Hinchinbrook, I wandered around the loop track.

The summit is a difficult environment for plants and animals alike: very exposed, very dry, and with only a thin covering of soil where there is any soil at all. Vegetation is ‘open woodland’ with a decent covering of tussocky grass, but most of the trees are tiny. Ants seem to be the most abundant invertebrates but there were other insects to be found as well as the spiders which prey on them.

* P.S. The ant has been identified by my friendly local expert as Meranoplus sp.

Lower down the mountain

Conditions half-way down the mountain are not quite so arid and I found more creatures per square metre than on the summit.

Notes

  • The two kinds of paper wasps are the two commonest around Townsville. More about them here and here.
  • The Spiny Orb-weaver pictured, Gasteracantha fornicata, is usually seen less often than its black cousins, Gasteracantha sacerdotalis, but outnumbered them on this trip.
  • “St Andrew’s Cross spider” is a common name which is applied loosely to several similar species. Argiope keyserlingi is the best known, A. picta is encountered from time to time, and this one may be unknown to science – which is a little bit exciting.
  • Golden Orb-weavers (Nephila sp.) are usually very big and not so brightly coloured but I have seen others around 12-15mm, like this one, in Western Queensland – at Aramac and Porcupine Gorge, for instance.