This posting concludes my series on the mallee, among my very favourite habitats, which began here if you missed the start. It isn't necessary to read that in order to appreciate this one, but a bit of background might help.
As with the plants, which I talked about in offering number two, some animals are true mallee specialists, and many more live in the mallee as part of a wider arid and semi-arid range. (In reference to birds the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage refers to these species as 'mallee dependents', ie they are 'dependent on mallee where it is present, but also utilise non-mallee woodland or shrubland habitat that intergrades with mallee vegetation'.) All the photos which follow were taken in mallee.
While we're mentioning birds we might as well start with them. Firstly a few specialists; I should admit that among these mallee specialists are three of the very few southern Australian terrestrial birds that I've not seen. And there's one mallee specialist that really needs to open the conversation.
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| Mallee Fowls Leipoa ocellata, Dubbo Zoo. And it really pains me to have to use a photo (and an old slide scan at that) of captive birds, but while I've seen wild Mallee Fowl it's not been often, and never have I been able to lay camera on one. I regard that as a major failure, but sadly it alo reflects how this extraordinary bird, along with other mallee specialists, is struggling from habitat loss and feral animal predation. |
Mallee Fowl are megapodes ('big feet'), a group of 12 ancient species from Australia and islands north, all but one - this one - being rainforest birds. The general pattern is that the male does all the work, collecting a mighty mound of forest litter to form a huge compost heap, into which a female, if impressed, lays her egg - and so, potentially, do other females. He manages the temperature precisely, using his tongue as a very accurate thermometer, adding or scraping away vegetation as required. The chicks hatch deep in the mound, have to dig their way unassisted to the surface and make their way in the world all alone. That's all very well in a rainforest, but the hot dry mallee is not where I'd choose to build an essential compost heap. However, as Australia dried out in millennia past, the ancestral Mallee Fowl adapted, rather than retreating to the coast with the wet forests.
To help cope with the extra challenges they differ from all other megapodes in forming bonded pairs, but the male still does most of the heavy work. After the early winter rains he starts to dig out the sand to make a hole three metres across and a metre deep. Later in winter he begins to fill the hole with litter, bringing it in from up to 50 metres away and clearing the ground around. An egg chamber is dug in the litter and sand raked back over the top and fermentation begins.
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| Apparently abandoned mound in Wyperfeld NP, north-western Victoria; this was in October and the cavity should have been full of fermenting vegetation by now. The scale of the mound is clear though. |
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| A truly historic photo, and it shows! Taken 50 years ago near Keith, south-eastern South Australia. Look at the size of the sticks in the nest. |
Now the female takes an interest and she's been saving her energy for this. Each egg weighs a bit more than 10% of her body weight and she lays from 15 to 30 of them - ie in all up to three times her body weight, an extraordinary energy investment. Meantime he is every morning opening the mound to let it cool a bit, then immediately replaces it all. By summer the fermentation has slowed and the sun maintains the temperature, so he only has to open it every few days. By autumn the fermentation has finished and all heating must come from the sun so mid-morning he spreads most of the sand to warm, and replaces it all as the hours pass. Finally he gets a month off, then the whole cycle starts again.
This wasn't as succinct as I'd hoped, but it's a big story. Time to move on however, with a couple more mallee specialists (and slightly better photos).
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| Male Regent Parrot Polytelis anthopeplus, Hattah-Kulkyne NP, north-west Victoria. While this lovely endangered parrot breeds only in old River Red Gum hollows along the River Murray in western Victoria and NSW, and adjacent SA, it needs mallee within 20km for foraging for seeds. (An isolated, though large, population in the south-west of WA lives in open forests and woodlands.) |
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| Chestnut Quail-thrush Cinclosoma castanotum, Wyperfeld NP. Quail-thrushes can be pretty elusive, but this one was quite unconcerned by me early one morning. It is found only in mallee, especially with a spinifex or shrubby understorey. (I have to comment on the seriously weird common name. It was for a long time called Chestnut-backed for the obvious reason, and from Gould's species name. Further this was a useful distinguisher from the Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush. The fairly recent name change leaves me utterly perplexed.) |
The next few species are ones that I know mostly as mallee birds, but which also utilise other habitats.
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| Southern Scrub-robin Drymodes brunneopygia, Coorong NP, South Australia. A mostly ground-living robin, one of the familiar calls of old mallee. I think of it as a mallee bird, but it is also found in associated heathlands. |
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| Chestnut-crowned Babbler Pomatostomus ruficeps western NSW. I always find this babbler a difficult species to get close to, and this one was no exception, though the diagnostic cap and wing bars are clear enough. Mostly a mallee bird, but does also extend into the dry Mulga Acacia aneura and Belah Casuarina cristata lands beyond. |
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| Splendid Fairywren Malurus splendens, Hattah-Kulkyne NP. Splendid indeed, though perhaps not a very helpful name. In eastern Australia this lovely bird lives widely in mallee, and I expect to see it in almost any mallee I'm in, but is also found well to the north in the mulga. In the south-west, in the absence of the Superb Fairywren, it lives in wetter habitats. |
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| Grey-fronted Honeyeater Ptilotula plumula, Gawler Ranges NP, SA. This is not a common honeyeater in the mallee, but can be found throughout most of it (and is possibly mistaken for Yellow-plumed Honeyeater at times); however it continues through dry country to the north and north-west coasts. |
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| Yellow-plumed Honeyeater Ptilotula ornata, eating lerps on mallee, Nundroo, western SA. Again this is one I think of as essentially a mallee honeyeater - perhaps the dominant smaller honeyeater there - in eastern Australia, but extends its habitat preferences in the west. |
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| Brown-headed Honeyeater (Melithreptus brevirostris, Gluepot Mallee Reserve, South Australian Riverlands. A member of a genus of short-billed insect-eating honeyeaters, found throughout the mallee and in drier forests and woodlands beyond it. (And more on this very significant Birds Australia mature mallee reserve here.) |
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| Striped Honeyeater Plectorhyncha lanceolata, Gluepot (on one of the above-ground water troughs, out of the reach of kangaroos and goats). One of my favourite honeyeaters, no doubt because it's so strange, not really looking like a honeyeater at all. Another straight-billed insect-eater, again found throughout the eastern mallee (east of Eyre Peninsula) but also beyond in dry forests, plus a seemingly anomalous population in eastern subtropical swamp forests. The only member of its genus. |
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| Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater Acanthagenys rufogularis, another with no close relatives, whose fluting calls provide a key part of the soundtrack throughout the mallee and beyond pretty well anywhere west of the Great Dividing Range. I love its pink bill, blue eyes and salmony throat. |
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| White-eared Honeyeater Nesoptilotis leucotis, Gluepot. I grew up in South Australia thinking of this as a quintessentially mallee bird, but when I came east I discovered that it is equally at home in any eucalypt habitat, including up in the Snow Gums! |
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| Pink Cockatoo Cacatua leadbeateri, Mutawintji NP, western NSW. An exquisite, and sadly declining, cockatoo found throughout arid and semi-arid woodlands, including the mallee. |
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| Another truly exquisite parrot, a male Mulga Parrot Psephotellus varius, Wyperfeld NP, equally at home in the mallee and other dry woodlands as in the mulga. |
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| Australian Ringneck Barnardius zonarius, Gluepot. This one belongs to a subspecies known as the Mallee Ringneck for the obvious reason, found throughout the eastern mallee and further north in other arid woodlands. It seems to fill the ecological niche of rosellas in these drier areas. |
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| Male Purple-backed Fairywren Malurus assimilis, Dhilba Guuranda–Innes National Park, Yorke Peninsula, South Australia. It is found throughout most of the continent in a series of subspecies, but in the mallee lands that is key habitat for it. |
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| Rainbow Bee-eaters Merops ornatus, here in south-western NSW, can turn up pretty well anywhere in southern Australia where they migrate from the north to breed, but this one was in mallee, so why not? |
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| Red-backed Kingfisher Todiramphus pyrrhopygius, is the Australian arid land kingfisher, and is found throughout the mallee. |
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| Male Red-capped Robin Petroica goodenovii, Cocoparra NP, near Griffith central western NSW. This is another widespread inland bird which is also very much at home in the mallee. |
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| Grey-crowned Babbler Pomatostomus superciliosus, Flinders Rangers NP, SA. The same habitat comments apply as for the previous species. |
Mammals are of course an important part of the mallee, but most of them are small and nocturnal. A couple are more conspicuous though, none more so than the ubiquitous Western Grey Kangaroo Macropus fuliginosus, which is also known as the Mallee Kangaroo though it's certainly not limited to mallee. For a long time it was thought to be the same species as the Eastern Grey Kangaroo M. giganteus, until CSIRO scientists in Canberra noticed that the 'brown' kangaroos in an enclosure didn't interbreed with the 'grey' ones. They are found in much of drier southern Australia and originally didn't overlap much with the more moisture-dependent Eastern Greys. However in recent decades the Easterns have penetrated further and further inland, taking advantage of agricultural water supplies, to the apparent detriment of the Western Greys (my observation, I'm not sure that it's been studied).
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| Western Grey Kangaroos, Mungo National Park, south-western NSW. Long ago a friend who'd spent his working life as an ecologist in the dry country commented to me that the two Grey Kangaroos should be called Grey and Brown Kangaroos respectively, and I've seen it like that ever since. |
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| Southern Hairy-nosed Wombats Lasiorhinus latifrons, Brookfield CP, near Blanchetown, SA. One of three wombat species, a highly specialised arid land dweller found only on limestone in mallee and saltbush shrubland in limited areas centred on South Australia but extending a little way into south-western NSW and far eastern WA, on the Nullarbor Plain. |
Of course there are tens of thousands of invertebrate species found in the mallee, many of them doubtless specialising in the habitat. However none of the small sample I've selected here are limited to the mallee, indeed all of them seem to be found widely. Butterflies and moths are of course ubiquitous, at least in the right conditions.
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| Bardi, or Rain Moth Abantiades atripalpis, one of the ghost moths in the Family Hepialidae, Mungo NP. This genus is restricted to Australia, and this species is found across the southern part of the country, including of course the mallee. This one seemed to have recently emerged from its pupal case. |
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| Bardi Moth pupal case by the burrow from which it has emerged, triggered by the previous night's rains (hence the Rain Moth name) |
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| Australian Painted Lady Vanessa kershawi, feeding on Poached Egg Daisy Polycalymma stuartii in mallee in Hattah-Kulkyne NP. A very familiar butterfly right across the southern half of Australia. |
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| Satin-green Forester Pollanisus viridipulverulenta Yeldulknie CP, Eyre Peninsula, SA. Found widely in south-eastern Australia, the larvae feed mostly on Hibbertia spp. |
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| If I had to guess at these ants, in the Gawler Ranges NP, north of Eyre Peninsula, SA, I would suggest Polyracchis sp, but I really don't know. |
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| As for this strange structure at Gluepot, I'm only assuming it's an ant nest! I've not seen anything like it. |
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| This one on the other hand I'm confident is a Colourful Burrowing Cockroach Macropanesthia kraussiana; they too were out and about after the rain at Mungo NP. The Atlas of Living Australia has only seven records for it, two of them at Mungo and the rest scattered between there and south-east Queensland. On the other hand Dave Rentz's Guide to the Cockroaches of Australia shows it as occurring throughout Victoria and up the east coast, but not in NSW... |
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| This Huntsman Spider in Wyperfeld NP had been temporarily disturbed from its rather risky home in a metal 'envelope' with a hinged lid on a pole. The envelope contains good information on the site, on a laminated sheet of paper. I assume that this disturbance happens regularly and that the spider resumes its home when we've moved on. |
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| Central Military Dragon Ctenophorus isolepis, Great Sandy Desert, eastern WA. These dragons never ventured far from the spinifex clumps, and the feral cat footprints everywhere in the sand explained their caution. They were the only lizard we saw regularly and the spinifex, plus their lightning speed, ensured their survival. This desert supported 'open' mallee, not as dense as in less arid situations, but a mallee habitat nonetheless. |
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| Painted Dragon Ctenophorus pictus, Cape Bauer, western South Australia. This colourful dragon is found throughout the eastern mallee lands and north beyond them. |
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| Eastern Mallee Ctenophorus spinodomus, Hattah-Kulkyne NP. Unlike the two previous dragon species, this one is a true mallee specialist, and not found outside the mallee-spinifex habitat eastward from the far east of South Austalia. Until 2019 it was included with Ctenophorus fordi, found in mallee lands to the west of this one's range; C. fordi is now known as Mallee Military Dragon, though the inclusion of 'Western' would seem logical! |
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| Western, or Dwarf, Bearded Dragon Pogona minor, Lesueur NP, south-western WA. Though it is found throughout much of WA, it is very much at home in the mallee, as here. |
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| Leopard Skink Ctenotus pantherinus, just alongside its sheltering spinifex clump, in Sharp-capped Mallee Eucalyptus oxymitra habitat in a harsh gravel landscape near the start of the Ormiston Pound walk in Tjoritja/Western MacDonnells NP. They live largely on termites, which are also largely dependent on the spinifex. |
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| Boulenger's Skink Morethia boulengeri, Gluepot Reserve. Clearly any animal living in Gluepot lives in mallee, but this skink is also found across most of arid and semi-arid Autralia. |
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| Shingleback (or Sleepy Lizard as I grew up calling them) Tiliqua rugosa, south of Broken Hill. It's a skink, though the similarity between this and the more typical skink above is not at all obvious. It is very common in mallee, but is found in semi-arid areas from the Indian Ocean to Canberra and north into central Queensland. It's also one of my favourite lizards... |
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| Eastern Tree Dtella Gehyra versicolor, peeping out from its home in one of the toilet blocks at Gluepot Reserve. Here it is certainly deep within the mallee but it is also found in other semi-arid habitats throughout much of eastern Australia. |
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| Sand Goanna Varanus gouldii, lower Darling River, NSW. It is typical of many goannas that they stand erect to examine their surrounds. Another species which is at home in the mallee but is not confined to it. |
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