Living in an original muddie
An expedition with Sue to locate a White-faced Heron’s nest in the Strath Creek Pioneer Reserve yielded nothing, but on the way back we observed what looked like a mud nest of a White-winged Chough (Corcorax melanorhamphos) high up in one of the eucalypts. From our limited vantage point it was difficult to tell if it was from a previous season or this one. This week the tell-tale head of an adult looking over the nest rim (see picture left) confirmed an active nest site.
Choughs are ground-foraging birds that live in social groups of up to 20 individuals. Their diet mainly consists of seeds and invertebrates such as termites and beetles. At rest choughs are essentially black. The reason for the white-winged descriptor is obvious when the bird is flying or landing (see picture right). Choughs often get mistaken for the larger raven or currawong. Unmistakeable though are the red eyes of the adult which bulge when the bird is excited.
The nest is built of grass and mud or sometimes manure. From 3 to 5 eggs are usually laid by a single female in the group. Nest building is a shared group activity as is nest guarding and rearing the young. This is necessary as chick predation by birds such as currawongs is a major danger. The last time we documented a chough’s nest, three chicks survived in the nest.
We will update you as things progress this season.
Spare the fuzzy ones
During the warmer months of the year the bite from the Australian Common (AC) March Fly (Tabanus australicus) can take the shine off a BBQ and in my experience many of these flies are pre-emptively despatched during the course of a lazy summer’s afternoon outdoors. In reality it is only the female fly that bites. She requires blood with which to develop eggs and obtains it by biting warm-blooded creatures, including us. The male is a nectar feeder.
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Flower-feeding March Fly
Australian Common March Fly
Telling the difference between the AC and the FF March Fly can be difficult. The FF March Fly is ‘fuzzy’ being covered with dense hair to mimic a bee. The abdomen has large distinctive cream circles on a black background (pictured above). The AC March Fly (pictured left) has stripes on the abdomen. In close up the differences are obvious but when walking through the bush it’s still hard to tell.
Ultimately, to tell the difference you may have to wait until the fly decides to suck on a flower or on your leg.
FoF Entertainment Review
Event: Ecdysis – the musical
Genre: Drama
Classification: G – General exhibition, suitable for the whole family
Director: Mother Nature
Cast: Members of the Aeshnidae, Cordulegastroidea and Libelluliodea families (i.e. dragonflies)
Soundtrack: Various frogs, crickets & cicadas
Year: 2018
Plot summary: Ecdysis (the musical) is the coming of age story of a dragonfly as it transitions from nymph to adult. This process as the title suggests is called ecdysis. Dragonflies can spend between months and years of their lifecycle underwater as nymphs, depending on the species. During ecdysis the nymph leaves the water on a piece of vegetation. The adult emerges through a split in the back of the nymphal exoskeleton (see picture below). The wings are very small. Over the course of several hours internal hydraulics pump up both the body and the wings. I won’t give away the ending.
Rating: Five stars
Showing: NOW. On warm nights after dark, at a dam or wetland near you
Reviews: “By far and away the best couple of hours I have spent in a long time and the backing track was great” R. Litjens
“Truly the greatest show on earth” O. Donata
In a hole in the ground there lived a …
These opening words of Tolkien’s The Hobbit could equally apply to the little Spotted Pardalote that arose apparently out of nowhere from the grass in front of us while we were trying to photograph a White-winged Triller for a previous post on this blog.
In fact the pardalote emerged from the insignificant hole in the ground, pictured left, that marks the start of its nesting tunnel. The nest itself is made of shredded bark lined with softer material in a spherical chamber at the end of the tunnel, which can be as much as one metre or more long. The bird pictured here is a male with its rich yellow throat, but both parents are involved in nest construction and incubation.
The other pardalote in this district, the Striated Pardalote, sometimes also burrows into the ground, usually a creek bank, to build its nest, but more often it nests in a tree hollow.
So keep your eye out this summer, not just for snakes on the ground, but even for tiny colourful birds!
The Often Overlooked
In the valley the three snakes to watch out for (according to popular wisdom) are the Red-bellied Black, the Eastern Brown and the Tiger Snake. All three are classed as dangerously venomous and depending on the local environment one of the three will dominate. All are snakes of the Elapid family. That is having hollow syringe-like fangs at the front of the mouth that inject venom from a gland at the back of the jaw.
But spare a thought for the often overlooked fourth – the Lowlands Copperhead (Austrelaps superbus) so named, surprise, surprise for the colour of its head (see picture below) – a marking which may or may not be distinctive. The Copperhead is also an Elapid snake regarded as dangerously venomous and like the Black and Tiger snakes bears live young. The Eastern Brown Snake lays eggs.
Restricted to south-eastern Australia there are three species of Copperheads. They can tolerate temperatures far lower than the Black, Brown and Tiger Snakes. Therefore it is not uncommon to find them basking in the sun during seasons where one would not expect to see snakes. A daytime hunter, they are also known to hunt at night if the day temperature has been too hot. The Copperhead diet mainly consists of frogs. They are good swimmers and will also catch tadpoles for food.
These details do not bode well for one of my favourite pastimes, sitting on the side of a dam after a hot day watching the dragonflies emerge…stay tuned.
Whistler v. Triller
Rufous Whistler
In a revegetated gully at the back of our place there is a wealth of bird chatter at present. But the songs of two birds in particular dominate for much of the day, and it sounds like a battle to see which can impress the most. They are the Rufous Whistler and White-winged Triller.
Click on the audio icons below to hear their resounding calls which are well worth a listen.
Rufous Whistler:
White-winged Triller:
White-winged Triller
Both these birds are spring/summer migrants to Victoria, spending the colder months in the warmer climes of northern Australia. The male triller pictured here (it’s elusive – hence the long-distance shot!) is in its pied (black and white) breeding plumage. From March to August it changes its outfit to mainly brown and grey, more closely resembling the female. The male Rufous Whistler retains its impressive plumage throughout the year.
As a songster, the Rufous Whistler probably wins the day, but the White-winged Triller is certainly no slouch in the vocal stakes.
The Box – The Young and the Restless
Grasshopper instar
After the ’09 fires a grove of Yellow Box saplings started growing on our property. Being a mecca for young invertebrates and therefore birds and other creatures I began monitoring the fauna that lived there. Now the saplings are trees and hard to access. So recently I found three Grey Boxes (Eucalyptus microcarpus) that have just started their life. Only knee high they make it easy to check for critters and I can sit down and photograph – a real luxury. Once again I am going to see what lives in these very young trees. I will call this series The Box, after a TV series broadcast when I was young which I was never allowed to watch because of something that they now call Adult Themes.
Gumtree Hopper instar
Many insects mature through a series of stages called instars. As the instars grow they becomes too big for their external skeletons (exoskeletons) and therefore have to moult and form new, bigger ones. This is called incomplete metamorphosis. In most cases the instars look like smaller versions of the adult, just without wings. The wings appear after the final moult.
Spring is the time when insects lay eggs and the young hatch. It is also the time when eucalyptus trees are growing the tender new shoots on which some of these instars feed. A close look at the box trees reveals a veritable nursery of young instars, some of which are pictured. The adult cockroach can be seen HERE. To date each insect has not moved from the plant it was first observed on.
Austral Ellipsidion Cockroach (Ellipsidion australe) instar
Maybe they become restless when they are teenagers.
The diff is in the quiff
Cockatoos are distinguished from other parrots by having a crest on the top of the head that can be raised, usually when landing or when excited. In some birds, like the Galah, the crest is barely noticeable and in others like the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo it is the distinguishing feature. Cockatoos also lack the feathers with a light diffracting surface which gives other parrots such bright colours, particularly blues and greens.
The Black-Cockatoos, of which there are five species, make up the genus Calyptorhynchus, the scientific name being derived from the Greek kalupto meaning ‘covered’ and rhunkhos meaning ‘bill’, i.e. covered bill. It refers not to the crest but the feathers which hide the lower part of the bill.
The Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus) pictured above has a moderate sized crest. They are distributed along the eastern and south-eastern Australia and are commonly heard in our valley just before rain (click on the call below). A ‘squadron’ of these birds is an impressive sight as they ‘lope’ through the skies.
The Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus banksii) pictured above (male) and right (female) comprise several races distributed throughout Australia. In Victoria they are restricted to the far south-west corner (race graptogyne) where they are considered rare. I came across a pair recently of Red-Tails recently in WA. What impressed me was the size of the crest which can be extended to cover the upper bill as well. What a quiff!
Elvis would be impressed.
It’s all white
The camouflage tactics of the White Crab Spider (Thomisus spectabilis) have been previously documented but it has only been recently that I have seen them in action.
Spring blossoms are a mecca for pollinators of all sorts – bees, wasps, beetles and for amateur photographers like myself it is a time to get up close and personal with them in the hope of getting at least one decent picture. Recently a heavily blossomed Melaleuca was abuzz with pollinators rapidly moving from flower to flower. It was therefore quite strange to see a European Honeybee motionless on one of the blooms.
Closer examination revealed the bee to be prey to a White Crab Spider (pictured above). These spiders are ambush predators, hiding amid the flowers and then grabbing with powerful front legs any pollinator that ventures too close. The prey is then rendered immobile with venom. In the picture (above) it is easy to see how the spider can easily blend into the background of the flower. Just try to make out the legs!
It’s all white though. These spiders are not harmful to humans.
Out of its usual range
The discovery of something that you have not seen before is cause for great excitement. Particularly when you are at home and think that you have probably seen all the birds, for example, that there are to be seen in the district. So excitement there was when a reported red, black and white bird (not a Robin) was observed in the uppermost branches of a local Melaleuca. And any unknown bird with striking colouration, i.e. red, is doubly exciting. On colours alone we guessed that it may have been a Mistletoebird. But to be sure we had to call in technology in the form of a camera with a telephoto lens and a bird identification app on our iPads, in our case Pizzey and Knight. We also had to hope the bird was hanging around so that we could get another look at it.
The beak shape (pictured above) pointed us in the Honeyeater direction and the red coloured head narrowed it down to two suspects – the Red-headed Honeyeater, which is distributed along the northern coastline of Australia and unheard of in this area, or the Scarlet Honeyeater, distributed along the eastern seaboard and still uncommon here. Either way it was a bird neither of us had seen before (a ‘lifer’ in twitching terms) and outside its usual range. Geoff (Murrindindi Birdwatchers) and Macwake both confirmed the bird to be a male Scarlet Honeyeater (Myzomela sanguinolenta), a bird Macwake had documented in a blog this time last year.
The Scarlet Honeyeater is a seasonal migrant spending most of the year along the east coast between Sydney and Cooktown but migrating less commonly south of Sydney during summer. The scientific name is derived from the Greek muzao for suck, meli for honey and the Latin sanguinolentus meaning blood-red, i.e. a blood-red honeysucker, which is entirely appropriate given its food source is mainly nectar.
Adding a bird to the list is great, especially one so striking.
Focus On Fauna 