We tend to think of dams as places where the feathered and furry come to drink – and of course they are. But if you hang around a dam long enough you’ll soon realise that dams also double as a swimming pool, bathroom and day spa.
Scarlet Robin – believe it or not
We all have our beauty routines. The bathroom at our house is littered with sample pots of pastes and potions with exotic names like ‘Doux Nettoyant Moussant’ (Gentle Foaming Cleanser) and ‘Masque ‘Anti-Soif’ Multi-Hydratant (Thirst Quenching Hydra-care Mask), which are applied in a set order at a set time every day. These are not mine. It may surprise you to know that fauna also have their set grooming routines. Some birds such as the Scarlet Robin (Petroica boodang) (pictured left) favour the cleaning regime that I use. It’s called the ‘splash-
Brown Thornbill Sit-and-soak
and-dash’. Others like the Brown Thornbill (Acanthiza pusilla) (pictured right) prefer to ‘sit-and-soak’. However some animals have a far more complex routine. Take the Rakali (Hydromys chrysogaster) shown in the video clip below for example. Its technique consists of a self-manicure, followed by a facial, a facial mud-pack, a rinse, a bath, another facial and finally a swim.
It is amazing how the differing routines at the dam mirror what happens in our house.
P.S. For those who have never seen a Rakali close up before, note the webbed feet and the distinctive white-tipped tail.
(The video below is a large file and may take some time to load.)
And the SMS text message read…
‘The tawny frogmouths r back. Xxx trud’ 15:49 12May
So around we went to observe the new arrivals. Trudie and Len live on a property nestled beneath what is officially known as Grannie Hill, between the pub and Coonans Reserve, Flowerdale. When we turned up, Len stood us in the middle of the yard and proudly pointed up at the nearby tree. I couldn’t see a thing. After several minutes of an ever-more frustrated Len waving his arms about, we spotted the two Tawny Frogmouths (Podargus strigoides) (from the Latin ‘strix’ meaning owl and ‘oides’ meaning form) sitting together on a branch (pictured left). They were perfectly camouflaged. Given our difficulty in seeing them and the fact that, chronologically, both Trud and Len have at least a decade’s head start on me, I politely inquired how they managed to see the birds in the first place. Apparently they heard the frogmouths calling.
A young Tawny – still wet behind the ears – and everywhere else
Tawny Frogmouths are not owls. Their diet is almost exclusively made up of insects and instead of actively hunting on the wing, the birds wait motionless until the prey comes to them. (That’s my kind of lifestyle – not the diet, but the mode of getting it). Tawny Frogmouths are nocturnal birds that during the day roost very close to tree trunks with an erect stance, beaks up in the air. This makes them very difficult to see. Like owls they have excellent hearing and eyesight.
So if you are walking in the bush and think you are being watched but can’t see anything, you probably are – by Tawny Frogmouths. To locate them, sit down, wait until nightfall and listen for their calls. To hear an example of the call on BirdLife Australia’s Birds in Backyards website, click HERE.
Tawny Frogmouths at Reedy Creek
Creek creatures
Mayfly nymph (Family Leptophlebiidae)
Waterwatch is again up and running in the Flowerdale/Strath Creek area with several local volunteers conducting monthly sampling and testing at various sites on the King Parrot and Strath Creeks. Waterwatch is a water quality monitoring network connecting local communities with river health and sustainable water issues and management.
Last Saturday David spent an afternoon with Waterwatch coordinators Danielle and Kirsten as they undertook a training and accreditation course on the King Parrot Creek run by Ed Tsyrlin, co-author of the wonderful guide to freshwater macro-invertebrates called ‘The Waterbug Book’. The afternoon course covered sampling techniques and identification of waterbugs.
So on Monday, armed with fresh enthusiasm, limited knowledge and a net, we collected a sample from the King Parrot Creek at Burslem’s Bridge and sorted through it to see what bugs we had. The more we looked, the more we found, with critters ranging from small shrimps to tiny specks. The photos below show just a few of them, which we have managed to identify with some help from Kirsten. Also included are a couple of photos from our wetland featured in a previous post, Dam right !, which we are now able to have a stab at identifying.
Outdoor art or athletic event?
‘Plop-on-a-rock’
If you have living in your locale Common Wombats (Vombatus ursinus), Eastern Grey Kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) or Swamp Wallabies (Wallabia bicolor) you will be familiar with the phenomenon known in our house as the ‘plop-on-a-rock’. You’re walking along and there you see precariously perched on a rock or piece of wood or even on a tuff of grass, poo from the aforementioned creatures.
‘Bog-in-a-log’
One can only wonder at why these public installations exist. A friend of mine who is a Swamp Wallaby guru suggests that as the wallaby drags its tail over a protruding object like a rock, hairs at the base of the tail trigger the events which lead to what we see. Far be it for me to second-guess the experts but there seems to be a degree of exhibitionism in the resulting structures. Thinking about it, the athleticism and sheer precision involved in the creation is staggering (not that I have tried it mind you). I have recently even found poo inside the upright hollowed tree stump of a Silver Birch (Betula pendula) (pictured above right). Precision indeed.
Evidence of ‘A**e-on-the-grass’
Are these installations a result of a macropod public art competition or an event in the kangaroo Olympics? I don’t know. If anyone can shed light on this please comment.
Who’s calling?
Bibron’s Toadlet ?
So we have yet to find the ubiquitous but cryptic Victorian Smooth Froglet. However, we did find the dark frog pictured above, which in the blown-up image doesn’t seem particularly small, until you see the comparison with a 5 cent piece in the photo below. We think (but are happy to be corrected) that it is a Bibron’s Toadlet (Pseudophryne bibronii) because of the coarse black and white marbling on its belly and the boomerang-shaped ridges on its shoulders, features typical of a Bibron’s Toadlet. It did tend to hop though, whereas Bibron’s Toadlets are reputed to prefer walking to hopping.
Anyway, we had a call but no frog, and a frog but no call! Further investigation however revealed that in amongst the numerous Victorian Smooth Froglet calls, there was an occasional short ‘cre-e-ek’ that seemed to correspond roughly to the field guide description of Bibron’s Toadlet’s call.
The audio below gives the VSF’s call, both individually and collectively, followed by what we assume is the BT’s call recorded at the wetland.
For more information on these notoriously secretive frogs, and indeed on all Victorian frogs, go to http://frogs.org.au/frogs/of/Victoria/
The Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority, in partnership with Museum Victoria, has developed the iSpy Frogs app which covers 20 frogs found within the Goulburn Broken Catchment. It is currently only available for Apple iPhone, iPod and iPad devices and can be downloaded free from the App Store.
The big and the small of it
Beetles belong to the order Coleoptera (from the Greek koleos meaning sheath and ptera meaning wing). The name describes the two hard wing covers that protect the flying wings underneath. The Coleoptera make up more than 30% of the total number of animals on earth. So you would expect they would come in all different shapes and sizes.
This was evident when I was riding my bicycle recently and was hit in the helmet by a Rhinoceros Beetle (Dasygnathus trituberculatus), (pictured above), a member of the Black Scarab family. At over 3 cm long it is not the biggest beetle around, but it is large enough to give you a loud thump on the head. The male beetles have a single horn on the front and two forward-facing horns on the thorax. The horns are used for digging and for fighting other males during the mating season. These beetles, gram-for-gram, are some of the strongest animals on earth in terms of load-carrying ability.
Compare that to the weevil (species unknown, pictured right) that invaded our picnic a couple of days after my bicycling encounter. At barely 2 mm long, this weevil is one of over 60,000 species worldwide. Weevils are herbivores — which is why you might have found them frolicking in your flour canister. So when I found this critter on my sandwich, it was a relief to know it wasn’t after the salami. That’s my favourite bit.
How much can a koala bear?
Forget Pink. I prefer the classics…maybe Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain
When it comes to listening to the music of Pink* it seems a koala can’t bear much. Driving up Junction Hill at lunch-time with the CD system in the truck playing (too) loudly I noticed a wombat-like creature hitch-hiking on the road ahead. As I got closer it proved to be a Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), (derived from the Greek words phaskolos meaning ‘pouch’ and arktos meaning ‘bear’, and the Latin word cinereus meaning ‘ash coloured’). It didn’t appear too perturbed until I wound the window down. The dulcet tones of Pink seemed to give it fright and it didn’t stop galloping until the music was switched off. Then it proceeded to climb a tree and sat there looking at me.
Koalas feed mainly on eucalypts but will eat a wide range of plants in conjunction with their gum-leaf diet. In the Flowerdale area the main food sources include Victorian Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus ssp. bicostata), Manna Gum (E. viminalis ssp. viminalis) and Mountain Grey Gum (E. cypellocarpa). If you want to know what they eat where you live, check out the Australian Koala Foundation website (www.savethe koala.com/about-koalas/trees-koalas). The foundation has issued a National Tree Protection List by region that outlines the trees koalas prefer in your ‘hood.
As koalas spend the major part of the day sleeping and are usually only active at night when they feed, seeing one moving about in daylight hours was a real treat even if its grasp on pop music was questionable.
*Pink is a R&B/pop musician named by Billboard magazine as the #1 pop musician of the decade. Still no idea? – you need to get out more.
Kite flying
Whistling Kite
The whistling kite can sometimes be confused with the similar-sized Little Eagle – for instance there was some discussion and consultation with experts before the bird in a previous post (see HERE) was positively identified as a Whistling Kite. As well as a different under-wing pattern, Whistling Kites have a longer, more rounded tail and a less robust appearance. The kite’s body plumage tends to be more uniform in colour than the eagle and it lacks the barring across the tail that the Little Eagle has.
The bird pictured appears to be immature, as shown by the spots on the upper wings.
Whistling Kites are of course a lot easier to identify when they are actually whistling – a very distinctive call that can be heard by clicking on the arrowhead of the audio bar below.
To all the unbelievers
For all those who thought the recent photo of the Rakali (Hydromys chrysogaster) in our dam (click HERE to view) was one of:
a. a teddy bear being pulled through the dam on a piece of string (as if)
b. a cushion with a black button sewn on it, similarly being pulled through the dam on a piece of string (double, as if)
c. a funny (Rakali-shaped) floating log
d. a cosmetically enhanced otter
e. anything other than a genuine, true-blue, Australian Native Water Rat,
these photos are for you.
A cushion I am not
Pick a Box
Sugar Glider
Inspired by Ronlit’s recent post It’s back!, and with the first frost of the year the other night, we thought it was time for a maintenance check on our fauna nest-boxes, and an inspection for any occupants. This proved to be a rewarding experience – of the 13 boxes we have installed, 6 were occupied by Sugar Gliders (Petaurus breviceps) and a seventh had a well-constructed Brush-tailed Phascogale (Phascogale tapoatafa) nest of shredded-bark with lots of fresh scats (droppings) and a strong smell, so probably had a phascogale in residence.
The boxes are of various designs with different sizes, shapes and entrance-hole location and diameter. The Sugar Gliders don’t seem to be too fussy, as long as there is a warm dry space inside. However, if you are considering installing nest-boxes, it pays to do it right. There is some really good information on nest-boxes in a pamphlet available from the Strathbogie Ranges-Nature View website as a pdf download called Nest-box Know-how which was developed from a forum at Violet Town last year .
The occupied boxes are shown below with their corresponding occupants. Several of the boxes, some made by Rotary, were donated following the Black Saturday fires.
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- A well-used (and badly decorated) glider box
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- A jumble of Sugar Gliders
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- Glider/phascogale box
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- Typical Sugar Glider cup nest of eucalypt leaves
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- Home-made box designed for treecreeper or owlet nightjar
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- Sugar Glider
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- Well-designed glider/phascogale box provided by La Trobe Wildlife Sanctuary
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- Sugar Glider – note entrance hole behind baffle
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- Glider/phascogale box
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- Sugar Glider – note wire ladder to help the glider exit
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- Box designed for rosellas
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- Sugar Glider and remains of former rosella occupant – who needs leaves?
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- Specially designed phascogale box with rear entrance and baffle
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- Brush-tailed Phascogale nest – the entrance baffle is obscured
Focus On Fauna 