An Hour at Warrigal Waterhole

Driving the empty bus home recently from our central Australian tour, we stopped off at Warrigal Waterhole near Mount Isa, deep in the tropics in north-western Queensland. 'Warrigal' is a word once widely used - though less so now - for a Dingo, though it has also been applied to Aboriginal people living in a traditional manner, and feral horses. Since the root word was apparently from the language of the long-gone Sydney people (whose name may have been something like Dharuk) the use for the waterhole is either a 'whitefella' application, or a 'sounds like' borrowing from the local Kalkadoon language. 

Whatever the origin of the name, it was a delightful spot and an hour flew, despite sitting on granite rocks!

The access road is a four wheel drive track, and we had to abandon our bus early on and do a five kilometre return walk across rapidly warming open country - well it was only about 30 degrees, but warm enough.

The bus waits patiently; the road was more deeply rutted and gouged
than this picture suggests.

This is arid land, with tumbled gibbers (wind polished rocks tumbled from the eroding hills) and spiky Spinifex Grass (Triodia spp.) dominating. There are many termite mounds (the termites live by harvesting the spinifex), and a scattering of eucalypts and acacias.

Beautiful country in itself, but we were just passing though...

When we reached the gorge, there was still a serious obstacle to bypass...

He could well have been feral, but even 'domestic' cattle here are pretty wild;
we cautiously climbed the rocky hillside above him, and were relieved when he ambled off.

The waterhole itself is a beautiful oasis, cool and shady. Such places in desert lands are crucial for wildlife, and are great (and very pleasant) places to watch it.

The photos which follow were of birds drinking on a little sandy beach just out of picture in the
right foreground, and the rocks just behind it.
Even without them, the coolth of the shade and the reflections would have been beguiling enough.

While we were there ten bird species came in - of them I only failed to photograph a Grey-headed Honeyeater. One of the most ubiquitous - and delightful - birds in Australia is the Willie Wagtail, found from city centres to remote desert sites. And of course there was one here to keep an eye on us!

Willie Wagtail Rhipidura leucophrys, a fantail.

The most ubiquitous of the drinkers were Grey-fronted Honeyeaters Lichenostomus plumulus, found across much of inland Australia.

Grey-fronted Honeyeaters, above and below.
See here for a posting on this widespread genus of honeyeaters;
when I wrote it however I didn't have any photos of this species!

In the background of this photo is a young Long-tailed Finch Poephila acuticauda, here at the south-eastern edge of its tropical distribution. I hadn't expected to see them here, and it was one of four finch species which visited while we watched. Another finch gave us perhaps the most pleasure though, as we'd missed it in central Australia, and this was really our last chance for the trip.

Painted Finch Emblema pictum standing above the Grey-fronted Honeyeaters.

Painted Finches (showing black and red, in the foreground and on the rock to the left)
are widely found in the dry country, but only in rocky ranges where there is permanent water.
There is also a Long-tailed Finch at back left, and the ever-present Grey-fronted Honeyeaters.

Another Painted Finch (or rather the one above again), and top left (blurred by its movement) a Zebra Finch,
numerous throughout the Australian arid lands.

Zebra Finches Taeniopygia guttata (I've stopped pointing out the honeyeaters!).
Their little toy trumpet tootling calls are one of the key sounds of the outback. They are
superbly adapted to desert living, and I'll tell their story in their own posting one day.

The fourth species of finch was the pretty little Double-barred Finch Taeniopygia bichenovii, with blue bill and owl-like face; only one very poor photo I'm afraid.

One bedraggled little Double-bar, post-bath (plus Willie Wagtail, and the honeyeater of course).
Actually this is such a bad pic that I'm going to insert a better one of them, from a Darwin back yard!

Back to Warrigal Waterhole, where two species of elegant little doves were also much in evidence.

Diamond Doves Geopelia cuneata (red eye ring) and Peaceful Dove G. placida (blue eye ring, at the top) are,
like the finches, seed-eaters which must drink daily. Diamond Doves are Australia's smallest pigeon.

Lastly, a few individuals of one of our favourite dry country birds made a brief visit, but the bigger flock was too nervous of our presence to come down while we sat there.

Budgerigars Melopsittacus undulatus are real children of El Niño, breeding into vast flocks in the good times,
dying in the millions in droughts, with just a few surviving to build the new populations.

I've sat by many desert waterholes, but I can't remember such a peacefully busy time as we spent watching the birds come to Warrigal Waterhole.

BACK ON FRIDAY

On This Day, 6 June; Swedish National Day

Today is celebrated by Swedes as their National Day, commemorating the election of Gustav Eriksson as first king of Sweden in 1523 (no, I know kings aren't usually elected, but he was - they do things differently there). This gave Sweden independence from a Danish-dominated confederacy, though the day wasn't formally celebrated until 1916, and didn't become the official National Day until 1983. 

Nonetheless that's good enough for them, and good enough for our purpose, which is to celebrate Swedes whose names are commemorated in Australian plants and animals - in practice it's mostly plants. As was usual for the time, many of those celebrated had no connection with Australia or its biota, but were being honoured by their peers; at least today's featured Swedes were all biologists, not patrons or other non-biologists whose favours taxonomists often tried to win with a name.

I'll start with the one who really did come to Australia, Daniel Solander, a star pupil of Linnaeus himself (surely the greatest of all Swedish biologists) who was engaged by Sir Joseph Banks to sail as a naturalist on the Endeavour with James Cook in 1770. Solander had been invited to London to teach the new classification system, and became employed by the British Museum, from which he took leave to accompany Banks. Using the Linnaean system he catalogued the expedition's collections while still at sea; using little reference cards he filled 27 volumes of animals and 25 of plants. He became and remained a good friend of Banks, who employed him as librarian, but died in London aged just 49.

Geranium solanderi, Namadgi National Park, above Canberra.

There is an animal named for him too, the Providence Petrel Pterodroma solandri, named by John Gould 62 years after Solander's death. For a while there were two, but Coenraad Temminck's name Psittacus solanderi was pre-empted - the really weird thing is that it was Temminck himself who'd provided the earlier valid name!

Glossy Black-Cockatoo Calyptorhynchus lathami, named by Temminck for English ornithologist
John Latham in 1807, a fact he'd apparently forgotten 14 years later when he tried to name it again for Solander!

After Solander's early death, Banks appointed Jonas Dryander, another pupil of Linnaeus, to replace him as his private librarian - Swedes were much in demand at the time, thanks in large part to Linnaeus. A very large and impressive genus of Western Australian members of the family Proteaceae was named for him; to much consternation and angst however it seems that Dryandra will be subsumed - for excellent taxonomic reasons I hasten to add - into the larger and more widely familiar genus Banksia.

Dryandra sp. (at least for now, perhaps) near Albany.

Other eminent Swedes also bloom on in Australia, though the original owners of the names never came here or studied Australian plants. In my part of the world the best known is the man who gave his name to the genus of the Australian Capital Territory's floral emblem Wahlenbergia gloriosa. (That's a story, and a controversial one, in itself, but we talked about that here, in an earlier post.)

Wahlenbergia stricta (and visitor), family Campanulaceae, Canberra.
Goran Wahlenberg, who German Heinrich Schrader commemorated with the name in 1821, was a botanist and
medical professor who specialised in Arctic plants.

Abraham Baeck was another late 18th century botanist-physician, who became personal physician to the King of Sweden; he was also a close friend of Linnaeus, who honoured him with a mostly Australian genus of Myrtaceae.

Baeckea utilis, Kosciuszko National Park.

Swedish Royal Physicians are better represented in Australia than most of us probably suspect - a widespread genus of aromatic Australian shrubs in the garden herb family, including some familiar east coastal ones, is named for another one.

Westringia rigida, Nullarbor Plain, western South Australia.
Westringia was named for Johan Westring by English botanist John Smith.
Westring mixed his royal caring duties with studies of lichens.

Johann Frankenius was another eminent Swedish botanist and anatomist who made the first complete listing of Swedish plants. Again it was Linnaeus who honoured him with the name of a delightful Australian plant genus - though he was not, as one apparently reputable source suggests, a friend of Linnaeus, since he died some 40 year before Linnaeus was born.

Massed Frankenia sp., in dry lake bed near Mount Magnet, inland Western Australia.
The genus is widely spread in Mediterranean parts of the world, though the majority are Australian.

Finally, yet another botanical colleague of Linnaeus is found in many damp places in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, where sedges grow.

Gahnia grandis, Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania.
The saw sedges have savage little silicon teeth along the edges of the leaves,
which I'm sure is no reflection on Henry Gahn for whom they are named.

So, happy day to any Swedish readers I may have! If you can't visit soon, at least know that you're well represented in our bushland. And I trust the rest of you will join me in raising a glass to our Swedish friends. Skål!

BACK ON TUESDAY

WHAT did you say it's called?!

Well, we're just back from a month's trip to central Australia, showing a group of people the natural wonders of that magnificent area. Naturally enough there will be postings here flowing from that trip, but I've got quite a bit of work to do yet on my pics before they'll be ready to use. So today, a somewhat flippant look at some scientific names of plants and animals which would elicit a big WHOOPS! from the perpetrating author if they could see them with the benefit of our knowledge. Their mistakes range from changes that take place in specimens after death, to mislabelling, to good old-fashioned typos. In each case, bad luck, the rules of taxonomy don't allow us to correct a published name, no matter how misleading or even downright erroneous it may be!

One of my favourites is that of the common and widespread Australian Green Tree Frog, a magnificent animal which happily lives in buildings throughout northern and north-eastern Australia. It's called Green for a very good reason, but bizarrely its scientific name is Litoria caerulea, caerulea being Latin for dark blue. The reason lies in a curious quirk of chemistry, whereby the frog, when preserved in formalin, turns blue!

Green Tree Frog, Karumba, Queensland.
The green colour is based on reflected blue light from specially shaped cells (more on that here)
passing through an overlay of yellow pigment - the yellow pigment was stripped off by the preservative.

A rather lovely little orchid, which only flowers in the spring after hot summer fires, is misnamed similarly; when dried the red flowers turn black - hence Pyrorchis ('fire orchid') nigricans ('blackish').

Undertaker Orchid, Brisbane Ranges NP, Victoria.
This common name derives from the same phenomenon as the scientific Pyrorchis nigricans.

In some cases the author completely misunderstood what they were naming; this is particularly obvious in some of the early names for marsupials.

Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroos Dendrolagus lumholtzi, Yungaburra, Queensland.
The 19th century German naturalist and collector, Salomon Mueller, coined the genus name
Dendrolagus, meaning 'tree hare'.

Yellow-footed Rock-Wallaby Petrogale xanthopus, Flinders Ranges, South Australia.
This one is even weirder - Petrogale means 'rock weasel'! This was down to John Edward Gray,
Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, in 1837. Other marsupial genera were also named accordingly.

Fredrick Hasselqvist was a Swedish student of Linnaeus, who travelled through the middle east and Egypt, where he reported a bird that he said the Egyptians called Sacred Ibis; Linnaeus subsequently gave this name (ibis) to the bird. Sadly for both, it was the wrong bird...

Cattle Egrets Ardea ibis, Nowra, New South Wales.

Problems have arisen too when an atypical sample was used as the type specimen, on which the description and name was based. Snow Gums Eucalyptus pauciflora for instance have profuse flowers, but the specimen received by ill-fated Czech botanist Franz Sieber did not, hence the pauciflora - 'sparse flowering'. Another example is provided by the genus Xanthosia, the southern cross flowers, family Apiaceae. English botanist Edward Rudge received specimens from Sydney of the species he named Xanthosia pilosa - it was a bold decision to name the entire genus from the Greek for yellow on the basis of one specimen, and it backfired because not only are most species in the genus white-flowered, but X. pilosa itself is variable, and often has white flowers...

Xanthosia pilosa, Bundanoon, New South Wales.

A variation on this theme is provided by another genus, Ceratopetalum, family Cunoniaceae. The most familiar species here is NSW Christmas Bush C. gummiferum, which is also the type species. The genus name means 'horn-like petals', due to their shape. Unfortunately for the great John Smith who named the genus, another common species, the Coachwood of NSW sub-tropical rainforests, had no petals at all - it is hard to avoid the impression that Scottish botanist David Don was making a point when he called it Ceratopetalum apetalum, surely an utterly nonsensical name!

Coachwood Ceratopetalum apetalum, Morton NP, New South Wales.

Attempts to determine behaviour based on fossil evidence can be very exciting - but to set such opinions in stone (as it were) by basing names on them can be fraught. The Mongolian dinosaur genus we call Oviraptor (the 'egg thief'), one of the small hunters of the time, was so called by US palaeontologist Henry Osborn in the 1920s, because its skull was found virtually on top of a nest of dinosaur eggs. Later it became clear that the eggs were its own, and it was tending them when it died; I believe that its descendants' lawyers are preparing a case for defamation.

A simple typo can be fatal for an unwary author too - once published it can't be corrected, as a couple of eminent botanists have discovered. One of the most eminent, the Scot Robert Brown, wanted to honour his French colleague, the magnificently named Jean-Baptiste Louis Claude Théodore Leschenault de La Tour, botanist on the Baudin expedition to Australia. Unfortunately Brown's French failed him, and he omitted the 's' from Leschenault's name. It was corrected for a while, but eventually the taxonomy police ruled that Brown's error had to stand.

Lechenaultia biloba, Yandin Hill Lookout, Western Australia.
A magnificent tribute to Leschenault, and we honour him as intended in the vernacular names -
in this case simply Blue Leschenaultia.

Brachyscome is a familiar Australian daisy genus, named by another Frenchman, Henry Cassini, in 1816 - the name means 'short hair', but he soon after realised that the correct Greek construction when joining the words was Brachycome and corrected it (I confess that I much prefer the 'correct' version). This is a contentious one, but the ruling came down on the side of consistency, so Brachyscome it is in the Floras and on the labels in botanic gardens.

Brachy(s)come nivalis, Namadgi NP, above Canberra.

There are several significant examples from Australia of specimens being mislabelled (working too many late nights and long days?), or labels being illegible or even mixed up. The Squirrel Glider is Petaurus norfolcensis, but has never occurred on Norfolk Island and the specimen originated in Sydney.

Green Rosella Platycercus caledonicus, Ben Lomond NP, Tasmania.
This species is restricted to Tasmania, but somehow the specimen label read 'Nova Caledonia' (ie New Caledonia).

Laughing Kookaburras Dacelo novaeguineae, Canberra.
A very familiar Australian kingfisher indeed, but despite the name, not found in New Guinea.
Somehow the place of origin morphed from New South Wales to New Guinea, but in this case it seems to have been
a deliberate porky on the part of Frenchman Pierre Sonnerat, who obtained the skin in New South Wales, but wanted
to claim he'd explored New Guinea, so described it as from there. He had form - he also tried to pass off stolen penguin skins as having been collected by him in New Guinea! His compatriot Johann Hermann believed him and named it accordingly. It is ironic that Hermann's name was lost for over a century, and the species name gigas ('big'), applied by Dutchman Pieter Boddaert, was used, which in this case seems just. However in the 1950s Hermann's priority was established (he'd published just before Boddaert), perhaps unfortunately in this instance...

So, names... Just human conceits of course, albeit invaluable ones for communication. If we can be amused by them, so much the better. They're never as important and interesting as the organisms on which we've bestowed them of course though.

BACK ON FRIDAY (for Sweden's national day)

On This Day, 30 April; Charles Moore and Kustav Kunze died

Both Charles Moore and Gustav Kunze have made a visible mark on the Australian botanical landscape (or at least its labelling!), and while neither were anywhere near being major players, any story is made up of lots of small incidents and characters. 

Moore was born Charles Muir in Scotland, but when his family moved to Ireland they changed their surname to Moore - no explanations available I'm afraid! Charles trained at Kew, and returned to Ireland to work as a botanical surveyor. His work impressed the English botanist John Lindley who was doing a lot of work on the Australian material which was flooding back to Europe, and at Lindley's recommendation Moore was appointed NSW Government Botanist in 1848 (aged just 28), which included responsibility for the botanic gardens.

Charles Moore, date and photographer unknown.
Courtesy State Library of New South Wales.

He got off to a bad start, through no fault of his own, because the man acting in the job, John Bidwill, was popular and was a local, and Australians were already starting to resent having London impose outsiders on them. The gardens' Committee of Management opposed him and attempted to undermine him for decades to come. Nonetheless Moore threw himself into the job with enthusiasm, and it was not an easy brief, to rejuvenate the badly run-down gardens while maintaining and restoring both their scientific and recreational values. His system of informatively labelling all specimens is still followed.

Churnwood Citronella moorei, family Cardiopteridaceae, Bunya Mountains National Park, Queensland.
This rainforest tree was collected by Moore in northern New South Wales and named by English
botanist George Bentham.

Within two years he was off collecting in the Solomons, New Caledonia and New Hebrides. He built an educational centre and lectured in it to students for the next 30 years. Later he conducted expeditions throughout wetter New South Wales, including Lord Howe Island, and into Queensland, and made trips to Europe, including on behalf of the citrus growers' association!

He corresponded with the great Ferdinand von Mueller of Melbourne and supplied him with many specimens, but later they reportedly fell out, though I can't ascertain the cause and von Mueller was still naming species for him at least until 1881. 

Macrozamia moorei, in dry ironbark forest, Mt Moffat NP, central Queensland.
This big cycad - the largest Macrozamia species in Australia - was named by von Mueller for Moore in 1881.

Less gloriously perhaps, he notoriously had one JC Dunlop and his wife tossed out of the gardens for displaying 'uxorious affection'; it is not made clear to what extent they were affectionate! Dunlop was outraged and successfully sued Moore (in the Water Police Court??), but no less august a person than the Colonial Secretary crushed the unfortunate magistrate's ruling.

Moore became a very influential figure, and served on many scientific committees; he published a significant Handbook of the Flora of New South Wales in 1893, retired in 1896 - after guiding the gardens and botanical research in the state for 48 years - and died 'today' in 1905.

Pinkwood or Plumwood Eucryphia moorei, Monga National Park, New South Wales; named by von Mueller in 1863.
An ancient Gondwanan, with five Australian and two South American species.

Gustav Kunze died long before Moore, and never came to Australia, but he did have a significant and beautiful Australian genus named for him. Kunzea is in the family Myrtaceae, closely related to Callistemon and like that genus the flowers are dominated by long stamens.

Kunzea recurva, Stirling Ranges National Park, Western Australia.

Kunze was a German botanist and entomologist, professor at Leipzig University; fellow German botanist (and zoologist) Ludwig Reichenbach named the genus for him in 1828. Kunze was born in 1793 and died on 30 April 1851. His main botanical interests were ferns and orchids, but I'm sure he would have been pleased with his Australian namesake.

Kunzea parvifolia, near Canberra.
This lovely shrub covers disturbed land, including unworked farmland, in spring, in its
role as an ecological coloniser. For the same reason it is sometimes also regarded as a weed.

 I'm about to go away for a few weeks, taking a group of people to central Australia - please come back and visit again when I get back!

BACK ON 4 JUNE.

Ball's Pyramid; mighty outlier of Lord Howe Island

I often think of a wonderful week we spent a while back on Lord Howe Island, out in the Tasman Sea (part of the Pacific Ocean) 600km off New South Wales. For some more information, here's a past posting, which in turn has links to others. It's a relatively recent (about seven million years old) crescent-shaped volcanic crater remnant some 10 kilometres long.

Lord Howe Island is clearly marked just to the east of the word Newcastle in the Tasman Sea.
It is on the edge of the Lord Howe Rise, an extensive seamount chain stretching north for some 1000km,
surrounded by water more than 4000m deep.

One of our most memorable afternoons of a memorable week was a boat trip out to Ball's Pyramid, a spectacular eroded remnant of the shield volcano 24km to the south-east of Lord Howe. 

The sizes of the two islands give an idea of the remoteness of the pyramid from Lord Howe.
Map courtesy of Oregon State University.

We were very privileged, in that the trip is cancelled due to bad weather more often than it is run, and I've met people who've failed to get there in several attempts. We however had a perfect afternoon, albeit with a moderately heavy swell running. Our guide was the wonderful Ian Hutton, synonymous with Lord Howe natural history, a quiet, charming and immensely erudite man whose retiring personality can give the misimpression of abruptness.

The pyramid is a huge overwhelmingly steep and rugged near-vertical lump of rock, which imposes on the southern skyline of Lord Howe even at such a distance. It rears 550 metres straight up out of the ocean, though is only twice that in length and just 300 metres wide; it claims to be the tallest volcanic seastack in the world.

Ball's Pyramid looming in the distance from Clear Place, on the north-east coast of Lord Howe,
at least 30km away.

The trip, in an open boat, leaves from the harbour in the sheltered bay just south of the north-western 'hook' of the island (see outline in second map above) and travels north to pass along the eastern coast, giving views of the island not otherwise obtainable.

Mount Eliza, far north-west corner of the island.

The trip home completes the circumnavigation, passing close to the base of the mighty hills that form the south of the island, Mounts Gower and Lidgbird. (The names were applied with an honest lack of modesty in 1788 by Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, the first European to sight the Lord Howe group.)

Mount Gower (above) and Mount Lidgbird (below) from the sea.

These views however, while superb, are very much the supporting acts. Once clear of the main island, the vertical bulk of the pyramid becomes increasingly riveting.

The only thing that distracts the eye is the abundance of seabirds, and especially the wheeling
Flesh-footed Shearwaters Puffinus carneipes, whose main breeding areas include Lord Howe.

You can watch the shearwaters for a long time, banking into the wind and riding down its waves,
over and again, without seeing them flap. They are supremely at home in the winds,
second, if that, only to the albatrosses. Their family name, Procellariidae, means 'storm birds'.
And with a wingspan of 130cm, they're very impressive indeed.

The sheer wall of rock rising half a kilometre above us is very dramatic indeed.

In fact, it is so abruptly vertical that, close up, it is pretty much impossible to convey an accurate impression.

A wider angle shot of the pyramid, from close up on the south side.

The seabirds are constant and magnificent (and encouraged by fish scraps and fish oil!).

Flesh-footed Shearwaters, above and below.
The tubular nostrils, characteristic of the group, are clearly visible above.

While dominant, the Flesh-footeds are not the only family members present. The delicate and tiny storm-petrels are usually only seen far out to see, and in my experience provide immense challenges to photographers; while not in any way extolling the photos I managed of them that day, they are infinitely better than anything else I'd ever achieved with regard to them!

White-bellied Storm-Petrel Fregetta grallaria.This 'pattering' feeding behaviour on the sea surface is typical of the birds long known to
sailors as 'Mother Carey's Chickens'.
('Petrel' incidentally, seems to have arisen in English by the start of the 17th century, with no evident influence from another language, but with no obvious English origin either; later attempts to explain it by reference to Peter - who supposedly walked on water - or from 'pitteral', referring to 'pitter patter', are speculative, though the latter seems to have some merit.)

Nearly all the Lord Howe seabirds nest on Ball's Pyramid (though ironically, not the abundant Flesh-footed Shearwaters) including the locally scarce Kermadec Petrel Pterodroma neglecta - indeed this is the only place in Australian waters that it does breed. Rolling seas and boat operators' much-appreciated caution about approaching too close make photography a bit tricky, but here are a couple of attempts - these were the first Grey Ternlets I'd ever seen.

Grey Ternlets Procelsterna albivitta and Common Noddies Anous stolidus,above and below.

 

However perhaps the most interesting inhabitant of Ball's Pyramid is not a bird, and is not accessible to visitors. The stack wasn't successfully climbed until a team from Sydney did so in 1965; the dangers involved, and the presence of numerous nesting birds, mean that it is now mostly restricted to researchers. However an otherwise unsuccessful climb in 1964 found a dead insect, which excited great interest as it had been presumed extinct since 1920. Like several endemic bird species, the magnificent Lord Howe Island Stick Insect Dryococelus australis was rapidly exterminated on Lord Howe by Black Rats escaping from the SS Makambo which ran aground in 1918 - yes, it took them just two years to wipe out the entire species. But fortunately, not quite... Despite the appearance of more dead animals, it took 37 years for scientists and rangers to find live ones; they are nocturnal and success required a climb of at least a third the height of the pyramid at night!

They found just 24 individuals in just a few Melaleuca bushes. Captive breeding at Melbourne Zoo has been very successful. In time, when ambitious but realistic plans to eliminate all mice and rats from Lord Howe have proved effective, it should be possible to rerelease the insects onto the main island. Meantime I understand that it is possible to see some at the excellent island Visitor Centre and Museum, though they weren't there when we were.

Lord Howe Island Stick Insect, courtesy Melbourne Zoo.

If you get any opportunity at all to do so, please visit Lord Howe - it's one of the Special Places. And when you do, I hope you're as lucky as we were in getting out to the unforgettable Ball's Pyramid.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY