Farewell to 2022!

Now a well-established tradition on this blog, here is a review of our year through the filter of one photo per month. Again it hasn't been a great year, and for personal reasons we've not been able to venture far from home - in fact the longest we felt able to be away from Canberra was a week. Nonetheless we did manage some mini trips of a few nights, and in this we were assisted by our long-planned camper trailer which was finally delivered in January. And nature always provides a balm. We are in the third consecutive year dominated here by the La Niña phase of the Pacific climate cycle, so things were mostly wet and cool.

Overall I didn't have a lot of photos to choose from, but I found enough to present at least one version of our year, while trying not to use photos I've already posted here. As ever I don't make any pretence to photographic excellence; I have no training and my pics are definitely records rather than art. This collection was chosen for their associations rather than any perceived excellence. Ideally there'd be a random scatter of subjects, rather than starting with three invertebrates, having a couple of orchids in spring and ending with a couple of birds. But, that's how it was!

JANUARY

The day after we collected our camper trailer, we headed west with it to Cocoparra NP
in the Riverina, a favourite of ours. La Niña helped us here, as though it was pretty
warm it was nowhere near as hot as it can be out there in summer. This beauty, at
least four centimetres long, is a Giant Yellow Robber Fly Blepharotes coriarius,
Family Asilidae. (The yellow abdomen of its name is only visible when it's flying.)
It entertained us as we sat quietly in the shade one afternoon and the birds had settled down too.
A fierce predator, it is waiting for an insect to fly by.

FEBRUARY

Almost as soon as the summer school holidays ended we went camping again, this
time to the coast, south almost to the Victorian border at Beowa (then still known as
Ben Boyd) National Park. Four nights of coastal forest and sweeping heathlands, sandy beaches
and rugged rocky coastlines. It might seem odd to select a fairly modest-looking little
butterfly to represent this wonderful park - but I have! I love the warm colours,
delicate wing spots and very pointy antennae of this Splendid Ochre Trapezites symmomus.

MARCH

In late March we headed off north-west for three nights to another favourite park,
Weddin Mountains, a couple of hundred kilometres away on the western slopes.
This small-scale drama couldn't help but enthrall us, as it played out on the campground
picnic table while we were sitting there! This Slender Mud-dauber wasp Sceliphron laetum,
Family Sphecidae, had paralysed an orbweb spider and was looking for somewhere to
stash it. The odd thing was that she would normally have made a mud cell first, to receive
the paralysed spider. She may have been young and inexperienced, perhaps forgetting where
the cell was. Once she'd remembered and stored the spider she would have laid an egg on it
so it acts as a living larder for her offspring, then sealed the cell with mud.

APRIL

    We were home now for a couple of months and inevitably I visited the Jerrabomberra
Wetlands on the eastern edge of Canberra. This Hardhead Aythya australis was uneasy
about me being in the hide nearby and was here in the act of taking off from the water.
I was happy to have, by chance, caught it as it rose into the air; you can see the water
roiling around its legs as it paddles furiously to push off.
('Hardhead' is an old shooters' name, as the bird is reputedly difficult to kill, though there
is no evidence that this is to do with its skull. I think that the older name of White-eyed
Duck is less loaded and more useful as the eyes are a good field mark - though
admittedly only in the males.)

MAY

At the end of May we headed off for a week to the Warrumbungles NP, a magnificent
volcanic range some 550km to the north of here. We'd planned a couple of nights camping
en route but torrential rain and heavy winds thwarted us. Once we got to the park
the temperature didn't ever get to 10 degrees! Nonetheless we enjoyed the park and
made the most of the conditions. Belougery Split Rock, a massive volcanic plug,
loomed over the campground and on two consecutive evenings the setting sun
pierced the clouds on the horizon, and cheered us with this warm rich glow.

JUNE

We were still in the Warrumbungles for the start of June, and this was probably our
bird highlight of the year. It's one that Lou had always wanted to see, and I'd never
successfully laid lens on one. Turquoise Parrots Neophema pulchella are mostly restricted
to New South Wales (going a little way into north-east Victoria and south-east Queensland)
and are found mostly in woodlands, especially in the vicinity of ranges. There was a scattered
little flock here, feeding on grass seeds and going down to drink at the creek.
This male is typically exquisite, and tiny! At only 20cm long and weighing just 40 grams
they are scarcely bigger than a Budgie; the little Red-rumped Parrots that were also
present looked quite hulking by comparison.

JULY

Is this cheating? I don't mind if you think so. It really is one of the most impressive
pieces of public natural history art that I've ever seen. Called Varanus (the goanna genus
name), by sculptor Glen Star, it is 20 metres long and lurks in woodland at Gum Swamp,
itself one of our favourite wetlands, on the outskirts of Forbes, some 300km NNW of here.
In recent times the wetlands area has been looking tired, and not very accessible.
All that has now changed, with new access, excellent new walking tracks and magnificent
new two-storey hides. And of course some very good outdoor art work.

AUGUST

We made a special effort this spring to chase wildflowers (and especially orchids,
of course), starting at the end of August back at the Weddin Mountains. Now I really don't have
many photos for August, but I'm quite happy to offer this one as I'm always a big fan of
donkey orchids and this is almost certainly the first orchid we saw for this spring. This one is
Goonoo Donkey Orchid Diuris goonooensis; Goonoo is an extensive forest area near Dubbo.

SEPTEMBER

We were in the Blue Mountains for a few nights in September, when it was pretty cold and
wet, and we were probably too early for most of the flowers in the high mountains. One walk we
usually do there is the Coachwood Glen rainforest walk at the head of the Megalong Valley
below Medlow Bath. It's always cool and green and refreshing, and usually very reliable
for a range of fungi. I'm not very good at fungi, to my chagrin, but I think these
delicate brackets are fresh young Microporus affinis.

OCTOBER

This is a special one, Dainty or Hard Hills Spider Orchid Caladenia ampla, found only
in western Victoria and adjacent South Australia and listed as Critically Endangered.
This was in the Deep Lead Conservation Park near Stawell (a known site, I'm not giving
away any secrets with that). We spent nearly a week in nearby Gariwerd (also known as
Grampians) National Park, where it rained a lot, as this photo can attest, but we had
an excellent time. Many flowers, many orchids, but none more exciting than this.
(Hard Hills is the name of the reserve from where it was initially described.)

NOVEMBER

By now I was teaching my Understanding Birds night course for adults at
the ANU, for the first time in three years, so travel was off again for a while.
At Isabella Ponds in southern Canberra I was just wandering around one day when this
young male Superb Parrot flew down almost at my feet, and proceeded to search the
path for seeds. It's a nationally threatened species, which in the past bred in the
woodlands to the north of Canberra. Since the Millenial Drought however they have
become widespread in Canberra suburbs, but they're still quite novel this far south.
It was a lovely moment.

DECEMBER

This photo, taken just a couple of weeks ago through my study window, is not nearly as
grim as it might look! Far from being on the point of expiring on the balcony rail,
this Red Wattlebird was taking advantage of a rare sunny day (things have improved since
then) to stretch out and open its feathers to the sunshine to discomfit parasites such as feather lice.
I am constantly reminded how fortunate we are with our heavily planted small yard, which attracts
a good range of native birds, invertebrates and small lizards.

So this was my year, or at least a version of it; this year however there probably weren't many other versions I could have offered. Of course I have no idea what 2023 might bring, though the plan is to take a group overseas, to Costa Rica, for the first time in four years. Thanks for reading along with me, both today and through the past year. That means a lot to me. 

Whatever is coming we can be sure that nature is always there to inspire us and keep us in perspective, and I have every intention of continuing to share it with you through these posts. May your 2023 start peacefully and naturally.

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 19 JANUARY

 

I love to receive your comments and in future will be notifying you personally by email when a new posting appears, if you'd like me to. All current subscribers have been added to this mailing list and have already been contacted. This will mean one email every three weeks at the current rate of posting. I promise never to use the list for any other purpose and will never share it.
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Gariwerd/Grampians National Park; a range of flowers

[See notice at end re resumption of posts]

In my most recent post, I introduced the wonderful Gariwerd (or Grampians) National Park in western Victoria, one of our favourites. There wasn't room in one post to do it justice, so I left most of the flower photos to this second instalment. Accordingly this is simply a celebration of some of the wildflowers we enjoyed there in a couple of spring visits - one in the dry September of 2019, just before La Niña began to drench Australia and COVID changed everything, and the other only a few weeks ago in the very wet October of 2022. It's really just an annotated photo gallery. For the most part you'll be able to tell which photos were from which trip - the most recent ones tend to be in very dull light and often with raindrops still on the flowers!

In the last post I introduced some plants that are endemic to Gariwerd, but many of those that follow are quite widespread. However the ranges are particularly rich in spring flowers and worth celebrating for that, so quite of lot of flowers follow! There are also some species here that are only found in western Victoria. There's no particular rationale for the order in which the photos appear, though I have kept members of the same plant families together. Let's start with some wattles, and why not?

Spike Wattle Acacia oxycedrus growing among the rocks near Boroka Lookout,
above and below.

The wicked thorns and flowers in (much more benign) spikes make this wattle
very distinctive. It grows in heathy dry forest along the coast and hinterlands
of south-eastern Australia.

Myrtle Wattle A. myrtifolia grows in near-coastal areas (at its closest point Gariwerd is
only 85k from the sea) from south-western Australia all the way to south-east Queensland.

Golden Wattle A. pycnantha which, as I'm sure you're aware (if you're Australian at least),
is our national floral emblem. It does occur in six of the eight states and territories,
being only absent from Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Wirilda Acacia retinodes, which can produce the very pale flowers at almost any
time of year (here in September) but peaks in summer. The long slender single-veined
phyllodes have a distinctive bluish tinge.

The heaths are prominent (as they are in the understorey of many south-eastern drier forests and coastal heathlands). I've just used 'heath' in two different senses in that sentence. The Australian plants related to the northern hemisphere family Ericaceae were long put into their own family Epacridaceae, but as is the wont of modern botanical taxonomy it has been subsumed into a huge and somewhat amorphous enlarged Ericaceae. (I've quietly lamented the loss of nuance in this trend, and won't do so again here.) The other use of 'heath' is as a habitat descriptor, referring to an understorey or near-treeless expanse of hard-leaved shrubs growing in low-nutrient wet or dry sandy soils. (Members of the heath family are often prominent in such habitats.)

Here are three heath species which are commonly found in Gariwerd, the first of which is the Victorian floral emblem (though it also grows in South Australia, south-eastern NSW and throughout Tasmania).

Common Heath Epacris impressa (above and below) ranges in colour from
deep red to pale pink to white. Here are a couple of variants. It is very (and
pleasingly) common throughout Gariwerd and well beyond.

Pine Heath Astroloma pinifolium really does have very pine-like foliage, as well as
unusual green-tipped yellow flowers.

Golden Heath Styphelia adscendens is another striking heath species, with long
stamens and furry rolled-back petals. Like many other species featured here
it is also found well beyond the ranges of Gariwerd.

Members of the Proteaceae family are prominent here, as pretty much everywhere in Australia. Last time we met the lovely Flame Grevillea, which is restricted to Gariwerd, and the Rock Banksia, which is found only here and on Mornington Peninsula. Here are a couple of other family members.

Mountain Grevillea G. alpina, a very attractive, widespread and variable species found in drier
forests of Victoria and south-eastern NSW (including the ACT). At times it's been suggested
that more than one species is involved, which seems intuitively plausible,
but it seems the genetics doesn't support the idea.

Holly Grevillea G. aquifolium, a striking species found mostly in western Victoria, and
to a lesser extent in south-eastern South Australia.

Beaked Hakea (or Turkey-gobbler) H. rostrata (all three names come from the
distinctively shaped large woody fruit). Found from central Victoria
to well into South Australia.

Victorian Smokebush Conospermum mitchellii. Of 52 named species of smokebush,
only eight are found outside of WA; this one is limited to western Victoria, especially
Gariwerd. Many of the WA species have blue-grey flowers which, en masse, look
like smoke haze from a distance, but this one is gleaming white.

Pea plants are of course everywhere, and last time I featured the Gariwerd endemic Grampians Parrot-Pea. Here are three other, more widespread peas of Gariwerd.

Showy Parrot-Pea Dillwynia sericea, found from Kangaroo Island to the far
north of NSW. I don't get bored with it though...

Rough Bush-Pea Pultenea scabra, a familiar pea on the south-eastern mainland,
with very distinctive leaves.

Spreading Eutaxia E. microphylla, also found far beyond Gariwerd.

Running Postman Kennedia prostrata, always a pleasure to encounter, which can
be done virtually right across southern Australia.

In a prolonged wet period like this one sundews are found almost everywhere, but in other times they are restricted to perennially damp situations, where they trap and digest insects with their sticky-haired leaves baited with sugary droplets, to compensate for low nutrient soils. 

Tall Sundew Drosera auriculata; its long-haired leaves can be seen at the bottom
of the picture. The flower is held high above above them to prevent accidental
digestion of the pollinators!

Scented Sundew Drosera whittakeri, whose deathtrap leaves are all lying
on the ground. No flowers in this photo, but the leaves are beautiful in themselves.

From here until the last bundle of offerings, each family is represented by just one species.

Rough Star-hair Astrotricha ledifolia (Family Araliaceae), a widespread family which
includes ivy and ginseng. A very distinctive shrub with hairy flower stems, found in
scattered locations across Victoria.

Pale Grass-Lily Caesia parviflora, a widespread and attractive little lily.

By contrast with some previous widespread species, this glorious Blue Tinsel-Lily
Calectasia intermedia is found only from Gariwerd west to the SA border, and in adjacent
areas of that state. Moroever it is the only Calectasia - and indeed the only member of the family
Dasypogonaceae - found outside of Western Australia.

Snow Myrtle Calytrix alpestris, another lovely plant, especially in flower, has a
similar (though slightly wider) distribution to the Calectasia, in heathlands of
western Victoria and adjacent South Australia.

Bundled Guinea Flower Hibbertia fasciculata is probably the most conspicuous
of the several species of guinea flower in Gariwerd, with dense furry cylindrical
leaves up the often erect stem. Family Dillenaceae.

Wedge-leaf Hop Bush Dodonea cuneata has very inconspicuous little
green flowers but beautiful big glossy red winged fruits.

Large-leaf Ray Flower Cyphanthera anthocercidea is a rare and Endangered species, found
only in Gariwerd and nearby Mount Arapiles, and on the other side of the state in a few
localities in Gippsland. It is in the Solanaceae family, with tomatoes, potatoes and tobacco,
plus quite a few Australian species.

Love Creeper Comesperma volubile, a very pretty climber in the family Polygalaceae.
Unlike the previous species this one has a huge range across near-coastal southern
Australia from Brisbane to Tasmania to north of Perth.

Shrubby Velvet Bush Lasiopetalum macrophyllum Family Malvaceae (though until fairly
recently it was in the much smaller family Sterculiaceae, and who knows what is yet to
come?). In Victoria it is found mostly in the far east, except for a few populations
in Gariwerd - including this one at Golton Gorge.

Bendigo or Fairy Waxflower Philotheca (formerly Eriostemon) verrucosa, another beautiful
snowy white flower. Found in Victoria mostly in Gariwerd and the central Goldfields, and
in Tasmania, plus outliers in the Mount Lofty Ranges. Family Rutaceae (like citruses and boronias).

Round-leaf Mintbush Prostanthera rotundifolia, a profusely flowering beauty
found in rocky areas throughout south-eastern Australia.

Dusty Miller Spyridium parvifolium at Boroka Lookout.
The 'dusty' pale leaves surrounding the inconspicuous flowers draw attention
to them. I like to think this gives us an indication of how petals originally developed.

Pink Bells Tetratheca ciliata, found everywhere in Gariwerd and a constant source of pleasure.
Its flowers are bigger than those of other Tetratheca I know. Tetratheca's family Tremandraceae
has been subsumed into the bigger and ancient Gondwanan family Eleocarpaceae, following
a common pattern in botanical taxonomy in recent times.

Fairy's Apron Utricularia dichotoma. These tiny flowers grow in wet areas (this one
was part of a colony growing in thick moss on a rock sheet). They prey on very small
organisms in the water beneath them, by means of little 'bladders' which 'suck' in water
and tiny organisms.

Grass Tree Xanthorrhoea australis; this is a familiar sight in many places (though I never
tire of them) but I was intrigued by the oddly chopped-off flower spike, present on
several of these plants in the area near Mount Zero in the north.

And finally, those who know me will not be at all surprised that I'm going to end this Gariwerd floral odyssey with a selection of the orchids we saw. Some are common and widespread, others not nearly so much, but I enjoy them all every time; I hope you do too!

Waxlip Orchid (or Parson-in-the-Pulpit) Glossodia major; this orchid
is familiar to anyone who goes into the south-east Australian bush in spring,
but I can never ignore it! On both our most recent visits to Gariwerd we saw these in swathes.

Leopard Orchid Diuris pardina, another very common Gariwerd orchid,
and also widespread in south-eastern Australia.

Trim Greenhood Diplodium (or Pterostylis) concinum; for more on the fascinating
greenhoods, see my recent post on them here. This one has a similar broad
south-eastern distribution to the last two species.

Emerald-Lip Greenhood Bunochilus (or Pterostylis) smaragdynus, here coming to the
very end of its flowering. It was the only plant we found, and only the top couple of flowers
are still fairly fresh; the lower ones have swollen ovaries and shrivelled flowers, having
been fertilised.

Gnat Orchid Cyrtostylis reniformis, yet another species widespread in the south-east but,
despite growing in colonies, it's not always easy to see in the shady situations where it often grows.

Rabbit Ears Thelymitra antennifera; the odd name refers to the red-brown erect lobes
on the column in the middle of the flower. It's one of the sun orchids, but is a bit more
willing to open on cloudy days than many others in the group.
A widespread orchid across southern Australia, but not as far north as NSW.

Pygmy Caladenia, or Tiny Fingers, Caladenia pusilla, a very small finger orchid indeed;
it is found scattered across south-eastern Australia, but is rarely apparently common.
However its diminutive size and similarity to other, much commoner, caladenias
probably confuses the situation. We only found this one, up near Mount Zero.

And to finish, a beautiful spider orchid which is giving me considerable angst
regarding its identity. I enquired on a very knowledgeable orchid facebook
group, where I was assured by a couple of authorities that it is the Critically
Endangered Dainty Spider Orchid Caladenia ampla. I'd have no argument with that,
and it certainly looks like it, but the Flora of Victoria tells me that while it
grows nearby it doesn't actually live in Gariwerd itself. If anyone reading this
can advise me of what I'm missing here I'd be very grateful indeed!

And that might just about do us on some of the fabulous flowers of this fabulous park; it's turned out to be a longer post than even I'd anticipated! If you've gone the full journey with me I'm very grateful, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. And it's worth bearing in mind that while spring is clearly peak wildflower season there, any time of year it's a great destination, including for flowers. Please do drop by when you can, you won't regret it.

I'M TAKING A SHORT BREAK FROM BLOGGING UNTIL JANUARY.
I'LL NOTIFY YOU, AS USUAL, WHEN THE NEXT ONE GOES UP;
SEE BELOW IF YOU'RE NOT ON MY NOTIFICATIONS LIST AND WOULD LIKE TO BE.

 

I love to receive your comments and in future will be notifying you personally by email when a new posting appears, if you'd like me to. All current subscribers have been added to this mailing list and have already been contacted. This will mean one email every three weeks at the current rate of posting. I promise never to use the list for any other purpose and will never share it.
Should you wish to be added to it, just send me an email at calochilus51@internode.on.net. You can ask to be removed from the list at any time,or could simply mark an email as Spam, so you won't see future ones.