Seasonal Orchids

Orchid season is sliding by, and several species have already packed it in until next spring, but some new ones are still appearing. One highlight yesterday was an early Buttercup Donkey orchid in a precious roadside forest remnant on the way to Monga National Park yesterday (of which more later this week). 

Diuris aequalis north of Braidwood.
(This is a threatened species and I can't be more specific in a public forum.)

 Closer to home, I saw some new ones for the year on Black Mountain, part of Canberra Nature Park in central Canberra. A much commoner and more widespread donkey orchid is the Tiger Orchid, but no less beautiful for being familiar.

Diuris sulphurea, Black Mountain.

Actually this first one isn't really new - I've already mentioned it before in this blog - but it's one of my favourites and they're coming to an end for the season; the photo I think nicely illustrates its alternative name, Parson-in-the-Pulpit, for the column arising from the white base.

Glossodia major (Waxlip), Black Mountain.

Another one, both beautiful and uncommon, which I was happy to see, not having done so for a few years (not least because I've been away in November!) is Black-tongue Finger Orchid (also known, a little anaemically, as Pink Caps). I found just two, both already a bit past their best, but almost any pic of this beauty is worth posting.

Stegostyla congesta, Black Mountain.

Sun Orchids are always a delight, and at present only one, small-flowered, species is evident, though there will be more. This one has not been formally described yet; overall the taxonomy of sun orchids is still somewhat uncertain.

Thelymitra sp. aff. decora,  Ornate Sun Orchid; Black Mountain.

Finally, an orchid which is another special favourite; in fact the genus of bearded orchids is a sort of totem of mine, for reasons which should be fairly obvious (though sadly my own beard isn't retaining its lustrous colour to nearly the extent that the orchids seem to manage from year to year!).

Calochilus platychilus,  Purple Beard Orchid, Black Mountain.
(This one was until very recently called T. robertsonii,  but that species is now regarded as
limited to south-western Victoria and adjacent South Australia.)

As an unrepentant orchiholic, it's surprising even to me that I've not yet dedicated an entire posting to orchids; this is unlikely to be the last one though...

Bobuck

The Common Brushtail Possum Trichosurus vulpeculus is a familiar urban mammal in south-eastern Australia; in fact, given that it's had only 200 years to adapt to urban living, it's done so so successfully that I'd suggest it could be regarded as the most urban-adapted larger mammal in the world. 

Common Brushtail Possum, suburban Canberra.

However in the wetter mountain forests a closely related species, the Mountain Brushtail or Bobuck T. caninus, is much less familiar to most people. Just 10 years ago this species was split, the southern population retaining the Mountain Brushtail Possum common name, but given the new species name T. cunninghami. The northern animals became Short-eared Brushtail Possum.

This photo was taken a couple of Christmases ago in the Chichester State Forest, in mid-northern New South Wales west of Newcastle. It was as determined a camp scavenger as any Common Brushie I've met.

Short-eared Brushtail Possum, Chichester State Forest.

Back Monday!

On This Day, 26 October; Austrian National Day

On 25 October 1955 the last of the occupying troops (from Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the USA) left Austria where they had been stationed since the end of World War 2; the next day has been marked ever since as the Austrian national day. It was also on that day that Austria legalised its required position of permanent neutrality.

Apart from the fact that every travelling Australian has been presumed at some time to be Austrian, there have been relatively few connections between the countries, certainly from a natural history perspective. However one Austrian contributed greatly to early European biology in Australia, though he is sadly little known. His name is Ferdinand Bauer, and much better judges than I have regarded him as perhaps the best biological artist to visit the country. Orphaned at birth, he developed his craft, as well as studying Linnaean taxonomy and microscopy, to the point where at age 26 (in 1786) he was invited to accompany the great British biologist John Sibthorp on a tour of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean; some of his wealth of paintings from this trip helped illustrate the mighty Flora Graecae, one of the most significant botanical works of the age.

This set the scene for him to be head-hunted by Sir Joseph Banks to accompany Matthew Flinders on the Investigator on the most important of all the British scientific expeditions to Australia, along with the Scottish botanist Robert Brown, also one of the greatest of the age in his field. The body of work that Bauer produced from this trip is just breathtaking; plants, mammals, birds, fish, crustaceans, landscapes - and all stunning works of art, as well as biologically accurate. 

Bauer's Banksia coccinea, from Flora Novae Hollandiae, per Wikipedia.
This species also featured in a previous posting.

When Brown's best specimens from years of work were lost when the ship the Porpoise struck a reef off Queensland, Brown and Bauer took lodgings in Sydney and set about replacing them. Back home Bauer tried to publish an account of his adventures but with money short at the end of the Napoleonic wars it failed commercially. More importantly Bauer was not a self-promoter and after his death he faded from the public memory. A large collection of his work still languishes unpublished in the Vienna Natural History Museum. This is a link to some paintings in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.

His slightly older brother Franz worked for Banks as botanical artist at Kew Gardens for 50 years; he was apparently equally talented. Banks at least ensured the brothers are not totally forgotten in Australia when he named the lovely shrub genus Bauera for them; there are four species now recognised, all in south-eastern Australia.

Bauera rubioides, Bundanoon, New South Wales; above and below.

Additionally Flinders named Cape Bauer on western Eyre Peninsula (in South Australia) for him. In the dark days of World War I, to jingoistic ears it sounded German which was enough to cause it to be changed, but since then saner counsel has prevailed.

Cape Bauer near Streaky Bay, South Australia.

 Happy national day Austria - and thanks for sending us Ferdinand!

One Bittern, Twice Shy

This one also harks back to one of my first postings, entitled When is a REALLY Lousy Photo OK? Bitterns represent a subfamily of herons, generally short-necked skulkers, often partly nocturnal, of dense reed-beds. Until last week I'd never managed to photograph one, but an Australian Little Bittern has been hanging around near the bird hides at Jerrabomberra Wetlands for the past week or so. Others (including my friend Martin of House of FranMart - see alongside) have had more luck catching it in the open, but it hasn't happened for me yet.

On the other hand it's probably worth illustrating its extremely cryptic nature - after all, you can always get decent pics on the web! This species was only recently separated from the widely distributed Little Bittern and given the name Ixobrychus dubius, though the erratic English/Australian ornithologist Gregory Mathews recognised it as such, and applied this name, back in 1912. It is one of the world's smallest herons, being scarcely more than 30cm long and 100 grams in weight. 

OK, here it is...

No??

Does this help?

OK, fair enough; here's the blown-up version.

Still pretty dodgy I fully admit. But sometimes, that's all you see. And it's taken me some decades to get that one... Back tomorrow with something perhaps a bit more tangible!

Postcard from the Past

I have previously paid tribute to Namadgi National Park, and I shall doubtless be doing so again. On Sunday I spent the day in the eastern part of the park, but I want to talk briefly about just one site that is a remarkable juxtaposition of two stages in the history of the park, both immensely long ago, but still with a vast gap of time between them. 

450 million years ago nearly all life - and almost certainly all animal life - still lived in the oceans. Very primitive jawless fish were the most advanced vertebrate life, and tiny meadows of mossy plants were tentatively becoming established as the forerunners of modern forests. At that time our part of the world was still beneath a shallow sea; the siltstones compressed from the muds and fine sands of that sea form the base rock of much of Namadgi.

450 million year old sedimentary outcrops, Mount Clear Campground, southern Namadgi National Park.

Fifty million years later things had moved on quite a bit; the toothed fish that are our direct antecedents were starting to make their mark in the ocean, and on land small invertebrates, millipede-like animals, primitive spiders, mites and insects, were starting to inhabit the mini-forests, which by now were 30cm tall. And in 400 million year old muds at Murchison Gorge in Western Australia are the tracks of a Eurypterid, a 'sea scorpion', the first predator ashore.

Deep in the earth under what is now Namadgi vast gobs of magma - molten rock and minerals - were forcing their way through the cracks in the already 50 million year old siltstone, gradually cooling and crystallising to granites. (I'm not a geologist, this is very much the simplified version!) As the vast stretches of time eroded away the softer sediments, the granites were exposed as the wonderful huge tors that dominate many Namadgi ridgelines.

Enormous 400 million year old granite tors high above Ororral Valley, Namadgi National Park.

Which brings us back to the site I mentioned at the start; in a cutting in the Boboyan Road south of the Gudgenby River crossing at Glendale, is a site where the old sediments are juxtaposed with the granites, 50 million years their junior.

450 million year old sedimentaries left, and 400 million year old granites right.

I always stop here  to wonder at the concept of crossing 50 million years of time in one step.

Lesueur National Park

When the question of flower-rich Western Australian national parks arises, three names are cited: Fitzgerald River, Stirling Ranges - and Lesueur. Most eastern Australians who are interested in natural history know of the first two, rather less are familiar with the last. Unlike the better-known two parks, Lesueur is north of Perth, 250km up the coast on the sandplains inland from Jurien. In its 27,000 hectares some 900 plant species are known - this is 10% of all the species in this vast plant-rich state. In some places 80 species can be found in just 10 square metres; moreover, in a similar site a kilometre away half the species may be different. Given such figures, we might reasonably expect to be talking about tropical rainforests or coral reefs; instead this is sandy gravelly plains country, with much of the scrubby vegetation being less than a couple of metres high. These sandy heathlands are known as Kwongan in the west. The soil nutrient levels are horribly low, by European agricultural standards. It seems that in such apparently harsh conditions plants can't afford to compete with neighbours for scarce nutrients, so must change, albeit slightly, to use subtly different resources; this has driven rapid evolutionary responses and produced some of the highest plant diversity in the world. 

Mount Lesueur; named for Charles Lesueur, a brilliant self-taught painter-naturalist on the
unhappy and ill-fated Baudin expedition of 1801, the third and grandest of the French scientific expeditions
to Australia, sponsored by Napoleon.

 Moreover these low soil nutrient levels have saved the place; in 1850 colonial botanist James Drummond collected plants and rhapsodised over the area, but agriculturalists and pastoralists dismissed it as useless and it lay undisturbed until the mid-20th century when the coal-mining industry started taking an interest. The community response was fierce, and in 1992 it was finally declared national park. 

Until recently it could only be accessed by 4WD vehicle, but now a superb 18km circuit drive, with walking tracks and facilities, means that anyone can revel in its riches.

Calytrix leschenaultii, Family Myrtaceae.
The magnificently named Jean-Baptiste Louis-Claude-Theodore Leschenault de la Tour
was chief botanist to the Baudin expedition.

Verticordia grandis, Family Myrtaceae.
The wonderful Verticordias ('heart turners') warrant their own posting, and they'll get it one day.

Sphaerolobium pulchellum. Family Fabaceae.

Darwinia virescens, Family Myrtaceae.

Conostephium pendulum, Family Epacridaceae.

Hakea neurophylla. Family Proteaceae.

Isopogon linearis. Family Proteaceae.

 And of course the nectar-sippers will follow the flowers.

White-cheeked Honeyeater.
This is a remarkable species, from the heaths of the south-west, with a disjunct population o the east coast,
3,000km away, and another in mountain rainforests of the Queensland tropics.

It also provides a key breeding area for Carnaby's (Short-billed) Black-Cockatoo, a species in tragic decline.

 Another animal group richly represented in the kwongan is reptiles; the Australian deserts have perhaps the world's greatest diversity of lizards, but the kwongan is not far behind.

Western Bearded Dragon, Pogona minor.

So, next time you're in the west, don't miss this very special park.

Celebrating Nests

Every October Birdlife Australia (originally the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union, then Birds Australia and most recently Birdlife, since a merger with Bird Observers' Club of Australia) declares a Bird Week. This week is it. This year the theme is nests; see here for more information. Here is my own contribution; just a selection of different types of nests, with regard to structure, position and building materials.

A nest can be anything from literally nothing at all, to the most complex structure conceivable. And imagine building such a structure using primarily your teeth! (Birds carry material in either beak or claws, but generally do the construction with the beak only.)

So, it can be the most rudimentary scrape, for disguise:

Red-capped Plover nest, Comerong Island.

 or a lined indentation or ground scrape:

Southern Lapwing, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile.

or an existing hollow:

Chilean Flicker chick, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile.

Scarlet Macaws, Peruvian Amazonia.

or an excavated burrow:

Magellanic Penguin and chick, Seno Otway, Chilean Patagonia.

Pied Kingfisher, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.

Then there are the wonderfully complex constructed nests, which may be hanging:

White-throated Gerygone, Canberra.

Yellow-rumped Casique, Manu National Park, Peru; build huge colonial grass nests.

Or in a fork:

Patogonian Tyrant on nest, Alerce Andino National Park, southern Chile.
This was one of the most beautiful nests I ever saw, heavily disguised with mosses.

Or on a branch, perhaps of sticks:

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, Canberra.

Or a wonderful mud construction:

Fairy Martin nests, south-west Queensland.

White-winged Choughs, Forbes, New South Wales.

Or a massive stick construction on a rock stack:

Ospreys, Eyre Peninsula, South Australia.

Or even floating on water, where the heat from decomposing vegetation helps incubate the eggs:

Australasian Grebes, Canberra.

Black Swan, Batemans Bay, New South Wales.

And of course this is only a glimpse at some of the solutions that birds have derived to cope with the problem of protecting and incubating their eggs, and later their chicks. More another day - but meantime, in southern Australia at least, this is the time to go and look at some!

Mottlecah Opening

Mottlecah, Eucalyptus macrocarpa, is one of most dramatically-flowering of all eucalypts, though the tree itself is small and scrubby (of mallee form, multi-stemmed, growing from a subterranean lignotuber). The silvery stalkless leaves are up to 12cm long, while the magnificent red flowers are more than 10cm across! Nearly all eastern Australian eucalypts are white-flowered and are unusually generalist in their pollinators - birds, insects and bats are all involved - but many of the Western Australian species, including Mottlecah, specialise in birds, especially honeyeaters such as the Western (Little) Wattlebird.

Mottlecah, Yandin Lookout Road, north of Perth.
Above, bud cap about to drop to reveal the flower.

Back tomorrow!

The Murnong and the Corella

The other day, on Gungahlin Hill, I came across a few Murnongs, or Yam Daisies, Microseris lanceolata. I am always pleased when this happens; they are not rare, but they are not an everyday discovery.

Murnong, Gungahlin Hill.

They are superficially similar to exotic Dandelions Taraxacum spp. and Catsears Hypochaeris spp. An easy distinguisher is the leaves.

Murnong leaves are erect, slender and smooth. Dandelions and Catsears have toothed-leafed rosettes flat on
the ground; Dandelions have smooth rosettes, those of Catsears are bristly.

When I say 'not rare', that is until you consider what used to be. Accounts from the grassy plains and open woodlands of southern New South Wales and northern Victoria tell of swathes of Murnong flowers turning the plains golden to the horizon. Their small sweet tubers were harvested by Aboriginal people, eaten raw or roasted to a delicious treacly consistency. European settlers learnt the trick from them.

There are stories of wagon wheels turning up thousands of Murnong tubers from the soft soil, leaving them to rot on the surface. Then the sheep came, eating the plants and learning to push into the soil to eat the tubers as well. The plough finished the job. 

One animal which relied heavily on the tubers is the Long-billed Corella, Cacatua tenuirostris, whose long slender hooked upper mandible evolved to extract the tubers from the ground. 

Long-billed Corellas, Urana, New South Wales.

The corella numbers crashed, steadying and then rallying only when they discovered that the grains that replaced the Murnong were also edible. This of course was a capital offence, and numbers went down again. Today they are common in limited areas, based on the Riverina area of central southern New South Wales and adjacent Victoria, though there are signs they may be steadily expanding their range, which I find to be good news indeed. I certainly saw more Long-bills on a recent visit to their heartland than I ever had before; my observations suggest that they are also eating exotic tubers in weedy areas now.

This recovery is due to their ability to adapt and change; sadly the Murnongs can't do that and only where native grassland and woodland remnants survive do they persist. Fortunately they also extend into the high country and while never abundant there, can still be found among the Snow Gums. I regret though that I'll never see the Murnong flowers spreading out of sight, and the clouds of corellas settling on them.