Microbat
We could often hear the squeak and movement of small bats in the mud-brick building of Seymour Baptist church and one day I found a dead one. I am not very good at microbat identification but I can narrow this to down to one of the Freetail Bats which the books say are difficult to be specific about, because taxonomists are still sorting them out. Probably Ozimops planiceps the Southern Freetail Bat. It might have helped if I photographed its face but it was not very attractive.
Anyway the large ears and the little rat-tail are typical of Freetail bats – hence the name; other bats have the tail encased in sheaths or retractable or absent. It is believed the tail serves as a rudder for quick direction changes.
These remarkable little creatures use echolocation to catch moths, mosquitoes, flying ants or beetles. They are very important in the ecosystem for this reason. They also have a high-pitched call when they are flying which I frequently heard on Summer nights when I was a child, but alas that part of my hearing range seems to have dropped off.
At the bend in the wing you can see the ‘thumb’ which is used like a claw for walking on the ground or moving around in the roost. There are many fascinating features in a microbat’s anatomy and behaviour. Their eyes, ears, noses, feet and those amazing wings are all very specialised.
The one thing Nature forgot to bother about was to make their faces pretty. Only the fruit bats have a face that could be called ‘cute’ like this Grey-headed Flying Fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) at Lake Guyatt, Sale, Victoria.
Microbats lack the large eyes and smooth snout that the megabats sport. They are much too specialised for insect-hunting in the dark to worry about appearance.
The war is over.
Last year our local Landcare group offered its members nesting boxes to instal on their properties. One of the boxes I’d received was a ‘Rosella Box’ that I installed 7 metres up on the east side of the building. Within six months a pair of Crimson Rosellas (Platycercus elegans) had moved in and successfully raised a brood of chicks (pictured left). In early spring this year rosellas were again checking out the nestbox.
But this year things are different. For the first time that I can remember the district has been overrun by Indian Mynas (Acridotheres tristis). These birds were first introduced from India to Victoria in the 1860’s to control insect pests and have since thrived. They are listed as one of the world’s most invasive species.
The nestbox on the wall was hot property. For about five weeks the Crimson Rosellas and the Indian Mynas were at war over it. It didn’t seem like a fair fight – a pair of rosellas against a flock of mynas. And in the end the numbers won out (pictured right).
The internet is filled with suggestions about how to remedy the situation including midnight raids on the nestbox to ‘remove’ an adult myna on successive nights and then removing the eggs. I suspect the word ‘remove’ is a euphemism for something far worse that I don’t wish to contemplate. My excuse for inaction is that the nestbox is too high for me to access unless I reconstruct the scaffolding I used to first instal it.
My myna problem still remains a major one.
Release the hounds, sorry, bugs
T’is the season that avid vegie gardeners look towards with mixed emotions. Spring is the time when much of the vegie garden comes to life but it is also the time that insect pests do their dastardly deeds. Shield bugs such as the Southern Green Shield Bug (Nezara viridula) (click HERE for more info) can do a lot of damage to vegetables such as tomatoes.
However not all shield bugs are bad. Some predate the very pests that we want to get rid of. Pictured below is a hatching of Spined Predatory Sheild Bugs (Oechalia schellenbergii) in my garden. These bugs have sucking mouthparts which they insert into other insects, inject enzymes and then suck out the juices. And the good news is that one of their known prey is the caterpillar of the Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae).
This shield bug undergoes five moulting stages before becoming an adult. The first instar (pictured above) is the only stage that is not predatory. That’s OK. I am prepared to wait for it to grow up a little before it tackles those caterpillars.
Release the bugs!
Bioblitz
The weekend of 24-27th October 2025 saw an event for nature lovers all over the Southern Hemishphere of our planet called the Great Southern Bioblitz and as part of it, a project was launched by Michael Cincotta and Chris Cobern to see whether we could amass a large number of records for Murrundindi Shire. There were spotlighting walks, bird surveys, fungi walks and activities from Eildon to Kinglake, Molesworth to Kanumbra, including Yea and Alexandra. The one condition was that observations had to be actual physical records – either a recording or a photo – and uploaded to the international website iNaturalist.
At the time of writing – and some late entries may yet be uploaded – there have been 3,103 osbservations of 1,012 different species, which includes plants, insects, birds, reptiles and animals of all kinds.
It was a huge effort and credit and thanks are due to Michael and Chris. This kind of blitz provides good raw data for research. Personally, my favourite observation was a pair of Dollarbirds (Eurystomus orientalis) patrolling the Goulburn River at Molesworth in the dusk. This bird is a Summer visitor from New Guinea which migrates South to breed. Ian Hunt in Highlands has a pair that nest each year in a hollow high in a dead tree on his farm.
Other interesting photos I managed to take are shown here but they represent a very small proportion of the work done by many others. Michael Cincotta captured 804 species, many of them plants.
These are the ones I got. I wish I could show you ‘the ones that got away’. We were aware of cuckoos, flycatchers, a goshawk on a nest (I don’t think my photo of his tail counts), gerygones and zimming dragonflies and butterflies that wouldn’t perch for us. Better luck next year.
I’ll huff and I’ll puff
Psyllids are small ‘cicada-looking’ insects that suck sap out of leaves (Click HERE for more info). When psyllid eggs hatch the nymphs also suck sap. As they do they extrude a sugar/wax type substance known as honeydew. They fashion this substance into protective houses under which they live. The houses are known as lerps and different psyllid species construct different shaped lerps. Pictured left are the White Clam lerp (Hyalinaspis sp.), left and the Sugar lerp (Glycaspis sp.), right. Lerps offer the nymph a humidity-controlled environment and shelter from predators. And there are many of those.
Ants are commonly found around lerps. The conical pyramid construction of the Sugar lerp is quite solid. Ants usually try to remove sugar from the wall of the lerp to take back to the nest. The roof of the White Clam lerp however is less sturdy.
Pictured above is an ant (Chelander rubriceps) devouring a psyllid nymph after breaking through the roof of the lerp.
Somehow it reminds me of a porcine childhood fable.
Sighting Sittellas
It is always a joy to find a flock of Varied Sittellas (Daphoenositta chrysoptera) and we have mentioned them in blogs here over the years. Recently, my photographer friend Chris Rowney shared with me some stunning photos.
What other bird can hop along the underside of a branch? Think of the physics of that! They feed on the bark of trees, usually hopping headfirst downwards, and if you can ever find a nest they are incredibly well-disguised with moss and bark, pasted onto a fork or branch often quite high in the tree.
This bird has completely different colours in other states – I have seen them with pure white heads in Qld. In the Northern Territory they have a jet black cap. Our Victorian one used to be called the Orange-winged Sittella – appropriately, as the photos show. Now they’re all lumped into ‘Varied Sittella’.
Sittellas do remind people who have travelled in North America or Europe of the Nuthatch which also has the pointed beak, is small and hops around on bark. It seems that they are not related at all genetically but any bird making a living on the bark of trees benefits from specialised feet, a needle beak and small size, so it is not surprising they look alike. The Nuthatch is called Sitta in Greek, so Sittella means ‘little nuthatch’.
I saw Sittellas this week and it never fails to cause great pleasure. I hope many readers can share that joy as they get out and wander the woodlands of our great land.
Welcome to the Country, Goldfinch
Once a creature has been introduced and settled in to a new environment, there must come a time when they are regarded as part of the local ecology. I heard a scientist say that even Cane Toads have caused no harm to native frogs – and the predators that die eating the poisonous critters soon learn to avoid them or at least avoid the poisonous bits. This is an introduction to my opinion that I don’t mind the European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis). A cheerful whistle, bright colours and causing no obvious harm, these English songsters are a happy find when I’m out in nature.
The name finch is given to birds that have a heavy triangular beak and eat seeds. Worldwide the group is complex and vast with many birds granted the name and many other finches being called something else. These finch-type birds are usually very social (congregating in flocks except for the breeding period), colourful and cheerful. Australian finches (Estrildidae – a different family) are represented only by the Red-browed firetail in central Victoria, while the introduced ‘finches’ include the House Sparrow, the Greenfinch and the Goldfinch.
A farmer once told me how he shot 7 sparrows with one shotgun cartridge – he put out some wheat and had the gun poking through a hole in the shearing shed at the line of House Sparrows that came to eat it. I have other friends that call all introduced birds ‘weeds’. I certainly feel little love for the Common Miner or the Starling but there comes a point where the creatures and plants naturalised in an environment have to be accepted and respected, albeit controlled if they are causing damage.
We all live on the one small planet and while every arrival and introduction causes some disruption and anxiety in a place, these changes cannot be reversed easily. Attempts to control horses, deer, feral cats, fire-ants, black berries, rats, wheel cactus or serrated tussock are undoubtedly important but costly and difficult. However, some introductions seem to cause little harm and perhaps we then need to trust in nature’s capacity to adapt and accommodate. I regard the Goldfinch as a pleasant newcomer not a weed.
Fairy Martin
Every time I see a flock of Welcome Swallows skimming over a lagoon hunting for insects, I check to see if there is a Fairy Martin flying with them. Fairy martins (Petrochelidon ariel) differ from swallows in having a square tail (not the long swallow-tail of the swallow) and having a white patch on their rump. I saw one today in a flock of swallows. It’s always a thrill. When they perch together it is easy to tell the difference. The smaller Fairy Martin has a red head compared with the black head of the Swallow.
Fairy Martins are summer visitors to Victoria where they build incredible mud bottle nests under a bridge or culvert or verandah in colonies. They may also be seen hawking for insects over water or at the end of the season, flocking together to prepare for migrating North. I once saw a flock of 66 on a fence in Limestone Road.
We more commonly get the Tree Martin (Petrochelidon nigricans) which also migrates down in warmer months but it nests in holes in trees, and has a dark grey head. I used to see them every Spring seeking nest holes on Constitution Hill in Yea
The martins are clearly in the swallow family but that square tail and white rump are very distinctive. (Tree martins also have the white rump but it is more ‘muddy’/greyish.)
The Fairy Martin is a particularly nimble, delicate, pretty, acrobatic, airborne sprite usually found near water. When I feel like a lumbering earthbound lump, the thought of the Fairy Martin makes my spirit soar.
The reed section
Now that Spring has arrived, today I encountered my first Australian Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus australis). If they are found in Victoria in Winter, they’re hard to find. I have always assumed they are Spring migrants but it is possible some individuals lurk silent and hidden in the off-season. They turn up at the same patch of reeds each season and call loudly, only occasionally rising to the top of the reeds.
The Reed Warbler’s loud ‘chuck chuck chuck krutchy-krutchy’ call is the sound of Summer for me and it carries loudly from every decent patch of Phragmites reeds. In this video, it is hard to see the bird (right on top of the reeds) but it is a typical environment and you can hear that call.
Another reed bird is the Golden-headed Cisticola (Cisticola exilis). (It is pronounced ‘sis-TICKle-er’). I usually detect their presence by their little buzzing call which may be heard in reed beds near water, or sometimes in long grass – even Phalaris – well away from it. I have sometimes been able to make a kissing noise with my lips and they will rise to the top of the grass or reeds to see who is calling. In non-breeding season, cisticolas have a black-streaked head and are a very handsome little bird. In breeding season, their head turns a rich gold colour from whence their name derives.
If beautiful birds like these are to become more widespread in any district, the habitat must be regenerated. They like beds of reeds, swamps, rank grasses and sedges, marshy places. They don’t need many trees. If we can (re-)generate acres of such places, we may even get other denizens of reedbeds: the booming bittern, the incredibly rare Painted Snipe, button-quail, waders, chats and fieldwrens, not to mention more variety of turtles, frogs and insects. This would enrich our local environment and help to secure their fragile hold on existence.
The Duettists
I have been able to identify three species of birds that sing duets for various reasons, and they are each fairly common.
Eastern Whipbird
First, there is the Eastern Whipbird (Psophodes olivacaeus) . As they skulk around in thick growth on the ground floor of forests they seem to use the duet as a way of keeping in touch. One will call with the famous whip-crack call and it is immediately answered with a two note ‘psiew-psiew’. The books say with confidence that the male cracks the whip and the female submissively responds, but since it is impossible to tell male from female by appearance, I wonder if anyone has seriously studied if the calls are so gendered? Maybe it’s any two whipbirds foraging in the forest? Maybe the female calls first? Anyway, that it is a duet is undoubted. In David Wakefield’s recording here, there are some calls unanswered and some with the classic duet, and at the end there are some other strange churring calls that Whipbirds make.
Magpie-larks
Another famous duettist is the Magpie-Lark (Grallina cyanoleuca). They often duet as they strut around on roadsides and prepare their mud nests. You can hear in David Wakefield’s recording, there are two singers at least:
“Research on Australian magpie-larks has documented clear boundaries between duet dialects, with pairs at the edges of dialect zones sometimes producing hybrid duet forms that incorporate elements from both traditions. When birds disperse across dialect boundaries and form pairs with mates from different acoustic traditions, they must negotiate a common duetting pattern, often adopting elements from both partners’ backgrounds.”
From International Bird-life
Grey Butcherbird
I was unaware that the glorious, rollicking call of the Grey Butcherbird (Cracticus torquatus) is actually often a duet. According to Birdlife Australia,
“Some Grey Butcherbirds, for example, sing a melodious tune that sounds very much like “whistle while you work”. This is answered by a second bird with “tool-to-tool”, all of the same note, to which the first bird responds with a lilting “tool-till-tooool”, and then the second bird repeats “tool-to-tool”. It all flows so easily that it sounds like a single call. Magic!”
I’m not sure that I can work out the alleged phrases the Birdlife quotation above detects, but in this David Wakefield recording from 2017 careful listening definitely discerns at least two birds overlapping.
Various reasons have been proposed for duetting: establishing territories, maintaining pair bonds, signalling partnerships to rivals. The precision of the duets is sometimes astoundingly precise. I have sung harmony in duets with other singers and it reminds me that in nature, as with humans, the most beautiful achievements arise when individuals work together in perfect synchrony.
Focus On Fauna 