Japanese Visitor
Today’s topic features a bird that is rare in our district, but then it is rare nearly everywhere. The Latham’s Snipe (Gallinago hardwickii) with striking stripes and a long beak flies to Australia from Japan each Summer and feeds along grassy waterways and edges of swamps and lakes.
They are a shy and cryptic bird. Usually, they spot you … well before you spot them. Once you get within about 20 metres or so they are off in a zig-zagging whirr. It was considered a great skill to shoot them in the old days before hunting was outlawed. Their eyes are strategically placed to enable them to see up and behind almost as well as ahead.
I saw one up Deepdene Rd in a wetland overflow. That’s typical: a bit of water, a lot of grass, sometimes on mudflats probing the mud with that strong beak. This summer there have been reports of significant numbers of Latham’s Snipe in some wetland areas; it’s a good year for them. So I hope more are found in the district this year.
Latham’s Snipe are non-breeding visitors to Australia, tripping down to the south-east of the continent from their breeding grounds in Japan and Russia. It’s a remarkably long trip, and one female was fitted with a tracking device. She flew three days non-stop from Japan to northern Australia.
The birds leave again to head north in late February/early March, arriving back in their breeding grounds in Japan and far-eastern Russia by April/May. The entire global population, estimated to be somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 individuals, is thought to visit Australia during our warmer months.
It’s always magical to spot a snipe. There are even rarer ones on our continent – Painted Snipe, Pintail Snipe – but this one (that you are most likely to see) is distinguished and rare enough to be greatly rewarding.
Xmas baubles for free
One of the largest families of beetles is Chrysomelidae or the Leaf Beetles. Both the adult beetles and their larvae are herbivores generally eating the young leaves of specific plants during summer.
Eucalyptus Leaf Beetles, pictured left are sometimes called Tortoise Beetles because they can withdraw their legs under the shell when threatened and are often mistaken for Ladybird Beetles because of their shape. They are highly coloured. The adults feed on eucalyptus leaves leaving tell-tale half-moon shaped indentations in the leaf margin when eating.
Even more spectacular in appearance are the leaf beetles of the genus Callidemum, (Callidemum hypochalceum pictured above and right). These beetles have a metallic sheen on their carapace, so much so that it was difficult to photograph without getting your reflection in the image. Their plant of choice is Dodonea (Hop-bush).
If your Xmas tree happens to be a Hop-bush, you may be lucky enough to get these baubles for free.
Lock up your larvae
Christmas time is the time of the Scarabs – think Xmas Beetles, Fiddler Beetles and Spotted Flower Chafers (Neorrhina punctata), pictured left. I have childhood memories of there being are lots of them around at Xmas but there don’t seem so many around any more. It is also the time of the year when scarab beetle grubs, those big white grubs that live in the ground get nervous (I am anthropomorphising a bit).
Major predators of scarab grubs are Hairy Flower Wasps. These are largish sized wasps and some, like the Yellow Hairy Flower Wasp (Radumeris radula) pictured below, quite frankly are very hairy. The adult wasps feed on the nectar. After mating the female wasp searches for scarab larvae in the ground. When found the wasp paralyses the scarab grub and lays a single egg on it. When the egg hatches the wasp larva devours the still living but paralysed beetle grub.
Hairy Flower Wasps come in several colours. Black Hairy Flower Wasps (Austroscolia soror) pictured right, typical fly low over piles of mulch or wood chips in the search for grubs.
Scarab grubs can do a lot of damage in agriculture and agroforestry if out of balance. As scary as the wasps look we should encourage these hairy friends to hang around.
Leaden You Know
One of our district’s summer migrants is the Leaden Flycatcher (Myiagra rubecula). Not very common in farmland, Leaden flycatchers like open woodland with lots of eucalypts but little understorey. I can count on finding them at Constitution Hill in Yea, or at the Old Cemetery and in some years they are common in Yea Wetlands. They come to these Southern climes in order to breed.
Leaden flycatchers have a ringing distinctive call – a loud pleasant towhee-towhee; plus like other flycatchers they also make a metallic buzzing and grinding noise.
If you follow the call and track one down, it will be sitting on a branch and it will shiver its tail as it calls, as if it is a great effort.
There are two other possible flycatchers in the district – the Restless Flycatcher (with completely white throat and belly) and the Satin flycatcher which looks very similar to the Leaden but is confined to the tall damp forests of places like Toolangi or King Lake. The names denote the supposed difference in the brightness of the black coloration -Satin being shiny and Leaden being dull.
It might have a more leaden colour than its cousins, but the Leaden flycatcher, personally, I find lifts the leaden heart and quickens the leaden step with its cheery song, shivering tail and smart tuxedo.
Follow the clues
The flowering of the Cassinia has finished. My next go to plant for insect photography is Sweet Bursaria (Bursaria spinosa). Its flowers also attract a whirlwind of insects although of a different kind. There are no Jewel Beetles but Ladybirds abound.
The sighting of a motionless Western Honeybee (Apis mellifera), pictured left can only mean one of two things. Either it is tired and is having a sleep (unlikely) or it is dead having been ambush by a predator. If it is the latter the finger is firmly pointed at a Spectacular Crab Spider (Thomisus spectabilis) as being the perp.
The Spectacular Crab Spider is a noted ambush hunter of bees. It hides amongst flowers until a bee approaches and then pounces and kills it. And it does not just hunt in white flowers. This spider can over time change its colour to yellow to hunt in yellow flowers as well. More than that, as most insect have vision stretching into the ultraviolet the spider can match its UV reflectance with that of the surrounding flowers.
A search of the flowers around the dead bee revealed no lurking spider. But after another 30 minutes of searching the accused was located on another flower bract (pictured above).
I can barely see it. It is lucky I am not a bee.
Jewel Boxes of Nature
Most plants are pollinated by insects so it is not usual to see Western Honey Bees (Apis mellifera) for example visiting their flowers. In some cases however the sheer number of flowers or the amount of pollen and nectar a plant produces creates an environment attracting hundreds of insects. I call these Jewel Boxes because they are attract a diversity of animals. Common Cassinia (Cassinia aculeata) is one of these. At the moment it is covered with all manner of flies, moths, beetles and spiders. Not all these invertebrates are pollinators. To be true pollinators they would need to have hair or combs on the legs with which to first trap pollen and then transport it to the next flower. A lot of these critters are there just to feed.
The most stunning of the visitors are the Jewel Beetles (pictured above). Jewel Beetles are a large family of beetles many of which are noted for their iridescent wing cases. There are about 1200 known species in Australia. The adults feed on nectar but the larvae are wood borers.
The young might be boring but the adults are not.
That’ll be a Cattle Egret
There were no cattle egrets in Australia until the cattle arrived. The cattle egret (Ardea ibis) was native to Africa 150 years ago where it wandered behind elephants and other herbivores. Then it started to turn up in other places – Spain, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean in the late 1800s. In 1940 it appeared in Florida and Texas, and then it arrived in Australia as well. It is a “natural introduction” – nobody brought it here. The first Victorian record is near Lake Colac in 1949.
As the name implies, cattle egrets like to hang around cattle. You see them in the paddocks in conjunction with flocks of domestic cattle where it feeds on small invertebrates, worms, frogs and lizards stirred up by the feet of the moving cattle. It is also not unusual to see the bird on the backs of cattle taking ticks and flies from the hide.
In late Spring the male transforms into its golden-headed form which is quite a striking contrast.
While our other Australian egrets – called rather unimaginatively Great, Intermediate and Little – are not faring so well and are possibly in decline, the Cattle Egret is thriving. We provide them with cows and green grass and that’s all they require.
Not all froth and bubble
Both adult and young Spittlebugs suck the sap of plants. Young nymphs create a protective environment in which to live by excreting the excess water from the sap in the form of a foam, pictured left. The foam serves several purposes. Firstly it creates a moist environment to live in so that the nymphs don’t dehydrate. Secondly the foam acts as a thermally insulative barrier from the outside world and lastly the foam gives the young spittlebugs a place to hide.
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Not all spittlebugs however live in the froth and bubble. There is a small family of spittlebugs known as Tube Spittlebugs that suck the sap of eucalyptus trees. They extract calcium from the sap and construct a calcareous tube or cone that is attached to the tree, pictured right. The cone is filled with excreted fluid in which the spittlebug lives. The nymph has to leave the cone to moult at which time it creates a temporary foam ‘dressing room’ for itself to change in.
Such modest creatures.
Cute Summer Visitor
Not many people actually get to see the White-throated Gerygone (Gerygone olivacea), but they might hear its beautiful warbling song. Gerygone (pronounced Jer-i-gon-ee) means ‘children of song’ which is highly suitable. Seymour Bushland Park is frequently visited by the Western Gerygone, (which is tiny and completely plain in colour) but the White-throated spreads further through the Highlands to Trawool, Yea Wetlands, and the forests.
Both gerygones have an amazing up-and-down call that carries quite a long way. Once I was out with a group of birders in Seymour Bushland Park and I witnessed an elderly lady whistle the call of the Western Gerygone whereupon one flew into view. Then she altered the whistle slightly to mimic the White-throated and one of them obligingly flew to a nearby tree and replied. It was an astonishing performance! I’m not sure I can tell the difference in the bush, as they both have a beautiful up-and-down clear whistle. Below is a wonderful recording by David Wakefield of the White-throated.
It is always a wonderful thing to hear a Gerygone, but it is plain lucky to get a good look at one.
AI or Alien?
These days in this AI world it is hard to determine if a photograph is real or just some computer-generated image. And sometimes when you actually see something it’s still hard to believe it exists.
The Common Cassinia (Cassinia aceulata) on the property are in full flower and the insects and arachnids are flocking to them. The flower heads are festooned with beetles, spiders, moths and flies. One beastie that has turned up that I have never seen before is pictured below, a Small-headed Fly (Ogcodes sp.). As the name suggests the head looks small when compared to the rest of the body giving it an otherworldly hunched-back appearance. It almost looks AI-generated.
And if the looks aren’t weird enough the lifestyle is like something out of Alien the Movie. The Small-headed Fly is a parasitoid of spiders meaning its young prey on spiders for food. But rather than lay the eggs on a paralysed spider as is the case with wasps the adult fly deposits the eggs in the vicinity of spiders. When the eggs hatch the larvae (maggots) actively hunt down any nearby spiders, climb up their leg and bury themselves in the spiders body where they continue to grow. Less AI and more Alien.
I think the answer to the title question is a bit of both.
Focus On Fauna 