Antipasto anyone?
Red-headed Spider Ant (Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus) with beetle
In today’s world of fast food and drive-in take-aways it is easy to forget that for some creatures foraging for food is a hard slog. Take ants for example. They are social insects meaning like bees and termites they live in large groups. Each member of the group has a specific role and for some their role in life is to search for food and bring it back to the nest.
Ants may forage hundreds of metres from the nest. For species that are social foragers, that is search for and transport food as a coordinated group, the discoverer of a food source will plot the shortest route back to the nest using the sun to navigate. This ant will leave a scent trail on the ground for other ants to follow, which they detect through their antennae. Other ants following the trail also leave a chemical scent,
Jumper Ant (Myrmecia pilosula) with dragonfly’s head
thus reinforcing the trail. (I remember as a kid wiping my finger across ant scent trails and watching the insects search around and try to find the continuing trail – obviously in the era before iPads!). Ants may collectively drag the food back to the nest whole or chew it up into manageable pieces. Sometimes the prey is much larger than the ant itself (see photographs).
Bull Ants (pictured below), though social creatures, tend to be more solitary hunters and rely on their excellent (relatively speaking) eyesight to hunt rather than scent. Unlike most ants they will actually follow you with their eyes as you walk past.
Bull Ant (Myrmecia sp.) with lunch
These insects provide a useful service in cleaning up the debris of the natural world. (Those waiting for a punch-line are in for an anti-climax).
Weasel ?
Another photo contribution from the Hubbard family – this time it’s a Weasel Skink (Saproscincus mustelinus). It has interesting colouring with pale and darker flecks, giving it a pixellated effect. Its main distinguishing features are a white spot behind its eye and an orangey stripe on its side between hip and tail.
The Weasel Skink grows up to 65mm (snout to vent) with a fairly long tail. It is quite secretive, usually keeping under cover of leaf litter or fallen timber. It raises its body temperature by contact with its surroundings rather than basking directly in the sun, as many other skinks do.
Although the skink’s distribution covers much of eastern Victoria, this one was actually found in David’s garden in Seville. We would be interested to know of any reports in the Strath Creek/Flowerdale area.
So, why ‘weasel’? The Museum Victoria’s Discovery Centre offers the following: “Apparently the ‘weasel’ came about because the colour, size and shape of the body is similar to that of a weasel. A weasel … has a long slender body, … a small triangular shaped head with pointed snout and short legs, like the lizard. The colour of both is similar – light brown on top and white underneath … Sometimes some imagination is used when naming animals!” Indeed!!
Wild pollinators
One coming event that caught our eye on the Euroa Arboretum’s Biodiversity Spring calendar is the Wild Pollinator Count 2015, a citizen scientist project running from 15th to 22nd November, i.e. right now!
All you need to do to participate is to choose a sunny, warm, still day and watch your favourite flowering plant for 10 minutes, recording any insects landing on the flower(s). You’ll probably be amazed at the number and variety of wild pollinators around at this time of year and you can do multiple surveys on different plants. You can then submit your observations on the website and also send photos if you wish.
Below are a few pollinators on flowers photographed at our place – some we have managed to identify, with others we’d welcome any suggestions. Click on any of the images and view as a slide show using the arrows.
Strange sites
Last year Rosemary sent us a story and pictures of Grey Shrike-thrushes nesting in a peg basket (see Peg basket squatters). Now Sue has forwarded this photo of hungry shrike-thrush chicks in a bicycle helmet just outside her back door – an annual occurrence apparently.
The Grey Shrike-thrush is a species that has adapted particularly well to human habitation, it seems. We have come across them nesting in this area in a hanging coiled-up garden hose, a shearing shed with shearers operating all around, among stacked firewood in a wood shed, a busy farm nursery potting shed, and right now in the far corner of our own shed, as pictured at right.
If anyone has come across other strange nesting sites, feel free to comment, or send pictures to focusonfauna@gmail.com
A family that drinks together…
…drinks together. The elevated temperatures last week made our birdbath, the only source of water for some distance, a very popular place for both drinking and splashing – particularly with family groups.
When the weather is wetter animals such as possums and gliders, which get a lot of their water from the food they eat, can simply supplement this by licking the moisture off leaves. But when the temperatures are higher there is no surface moisture and so the birdbath is the place to be.
Common Ringtail Possums (Pseudocheirus peregrinus – from the Greek for ‘false hand’ referring to the claw arrangement of the front foot and the Latin for ‘pilgrim’) build a spherical nest made of shredded bark and grass called a drey. Up to two young are produced in autumn and remain in the pouch for four months. They are weaned after a further two months, during which time they may stay in the nest or get carried on the mother’s back. The bath has often been visited by a possum with one young but this is the first time we have seen two (pictured above).
Common Brushtail Possums (Trichosurus vulpecula – from the Greek for ‘furry-tailed’ and ‘little fox’) do not make nests but sleep in tree hollows and other cavities. Only a single young is produced, which similarly remains in the pouch for up to five months and then rides around on the mother’s back for a further two months until it is weaned. I’m guessing from the picture (right) that the two months is almost up.
The juveniles are obviously being taught at a young age ‘Don’t drink and drive…or walk’
A nesting story
After spotting this intricately constructed Grey Fantail’s nest in Coonans Reserve, Flowerdale recently, we were reminded to finally get round to editing the many video clips of a pair of Grey Fantails that nested in the back of our shed last January (see previous post A Grey Fan-tale).
We managed to record the full story, from nest construction right through to the successful fledging of two young chicks, which we thought was well worth sharing. Three clips can be seen on YouTube as follows:
Nest building
Feeding
Leaving the nest
A Real Life Nursery Rhyme
Everyone knows the story of Humpty Dumpty – an ovoid-shaped character that one moment was sitting on a wall and the next was not. A real-life enactment of that happened at our house recently. WARNING, there is no happy ending.
For more than a month Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena), pictured left, have been building a nest under our deck. Hirundo is Latin for swallow and neoxena comes from the Greek words neos meaning new and xenos meaning visitor. Those who have encountered these birds before will know that welcome is a relative term. The construction and subsequent occupation of the nest usually results in an enormous splatter of faeces on the ground below the nest. But for the sake of being able to watch ‘close-up’ the development of young swallows in the nest it was worth the mess. The nest was built on a horizontal PVC pipe. Looking down through the deck we counted four eggs and the parents were ever attentive on the nest.
On Saturday night a very large storm swept up the valley and on Sunday morning the nest was no more. Strewn on the ground were pieces of mud and unfortunately, broken eggs. It did provide a good opportunity to study how the nest was constructed. We all know that the swallow nest is built of mud. It is sometimes mixed with grass and carried by the beak-full to the construction site. (I sometimes think that wasps are smarter carrying their mud balls in their legs). What I didn’t realise was that the nests are lined with twigs, feathers and fur. Beautiful, if it stays attached to the wall.
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The two parents returned to the failed nesting site for weeks after the incident. But at another nest site (pictured left) we may get a ‘Happy ever after‘ ending.
Bum steer
The birds in question are the Golden Whistler and Crested Shrike-tit, and as you can see from the photos below, although they both have yellow, black and white colouring and are similar in size, they are distinctly different in patterning, bill-shape and body stance. They also differ in habits and call – click on the audio bars below to hear local examples of the calls.
What’s in a name?
Readers of this blog will have noted that every animal is described by its common name (in Bold text) followed by its scientific or binomial name (in italics and brackets).
I’m nothing to crow about
The common name is what most people use to describe an animal, such as magpie or water-rat. The trouble with using the common name is that in different locations that name could mean different things. For example the Australian Magpie was called that because it looked like a bird in England called the Magpie. The European Magpie however is of the crow family – an entirely different beastie. Stranger still, the same animal could have different names depending on location, for example, the Magpie Lark (Grallina cyanoleuca) in Victoria (pictured below) is called a Mudlark in WA and a Pee-Wee in NSW.
Identity crisis? Which state am I in.
Every plant, animal, fungus, etc. on earth has one and only one binomial name – making identification of everything very exact. The binomial name has a two-word format – Genus species, where the Genus is a noun and starts with a capital letter and the species is an adjective and has no capital. Both words have to be either Latin or the latinised form of another language, usually Ancient Greek.
The Australian Magpie has the binomial name Cracticus tibicen. Cracticus is from the Greek word kraktikos meaning a flute-player and tibicen is from the Greek word meaning noisy – a very apt description of this bird’s loud and melodious call.
Water-rat is a common name used to describe a whole lot of rodents around the world. The binomial name for the Australian Water-rat or Rakali is Hydromys chrysogaster. It is derived from four Greek words – hudro meaning water, mys meaning mouse, khr so meaning gold (as in colour) and gaster meaning belly – the literal translation is Golden-bellied water-mouse.
So remember when you are travelling around the world (or even interstate) the common name could mean different things. To be specific you’ll need to use the binomial name. It also helps if you speak a Mediterranean language at home.
Make every bird count!
As part of National Bird Week 2015, which runs from 19th to 25th October, BirdLife Australia is conducting its second annual AUSSIE BACKYARD BIRD COUNT.
You can get involved as a citizen scientist, even if you’re a relative novice. All you need is 20 minutes and keen eyesight (or binoculars) in your ‘backyard’ of choice, which may be your actual backyard, a local park or reserve, or your favourite patch of bush.
Simply record the birds you know and look up those you don’t on the new Aussie Bird Count app or through the website. There you can find statistics and information on how many people are taking part near you and the number of birds and species counted in your local area, and the whole of Australia!
If you’re in the Flowerdale-Strath Creek area, you can come along to an introductory walk and talk about the count on Saturday 17th October starting at 10am in Coonans Reserve, Upper King Parrot Creek Road, Flowerdale. Sue McNair, Environment Officer with Murrindindi Shire Council, will have all the information to get you started on the count. Download the flyer for the event here: Make every bird count. Sue is hoping for a good response so the bird data can be used in the Shire’s environmental planning processes.
So, join in the count wherever you are – not only will you get to know your feathered neighbours, but you’ll be contributing to a vital pool of information from across the nation that will help determine how Australian birds are faring.
Last year 800,000 birds were counted – this year let’s make it one million!
Focus On Fauna 