From Monga to Gondwana (via some orchids)

Last November I waxed lyrical about one of my favourite national parks, Monga, which is just off the highway on the way from Canberra to the coast at Batemans Bay - a well-trodden route indeed in this part of the world. (One we are treading ourselves this weekend.) During this week I returned there, following a heads-up from my friend Martin of House of Fran-Mart - the primary motive was the fact that the Pinkwoods are flowering.

Pinkwood (or Plumwood) Eucryphia moorei, Monga National Park

Eucryphia is a small ancient rainforest genus of trees which can trace their antecedents directly back to Gondwana. Five species are from eastern Australia, while two grow in Patagonian rainforests. It is remarkable to find one genus growing in two continents which have been separated for at least 60 million years; not only must it have already evolved and existed in both places by then, but it has changed very little in the meantime. 

Ulmo Eucryphia cordifolia, southern Chile.
Photo courtesy Franz Xaver; my own photo of it is too terrible to use!

Until recently it was the sole occupant of family Eucryphiaceae, but more recent thinking places it in the related and much larger rainforest family Cunoniaceae (known in Australia for NSW Christmas Bush Ceratopetalum gummiferum and Coachwood C. apetalum). One species E. jinksii  was discovered in subtropical northern New South Wales less than 20 years ago; another E. wilkiei lives only in one population on one mountain in tropical Queensland.

Eucryphia wilkiei National Botanic Gardens, Canberra.

The best-known species in Australia is probably Leatherwood E. lucida from Tasmania, which produces strong-tasting honey - I think it is probably the pinnacle of honeys, but others find it too robust. It is no coincidence that Ulmo produces a similar honey in Chile and Argentina.

Pinkwood, the species I went to Monga to admire, is limited to New South Wales (other than an incursion of a kilometre or so into far eastern Victoria). It grows in a series of isolated populations in a unique type of cool temperate rainforest on near-coastal ranges in southern New South Wales.

I was lucky - the ground was liberally carpeted with untold millions of fallen petals. A few days more and I might have struggled to find any intact flowers.

Pinkwood petals scattered on a treefern (above) and the boardwalk (below),
as well as everywhere in between!

Up towards the ridge a little I was pleased to see the first of the Sunshine Wattle Acacia terminalis for the season; this lovely bright wattle flowers right through winter and can brighten a dull cold day. No requirement for that service on this day however!

Sunshine Wattle, Monga National Park.

The delightful Eastern Yellow Robins Eopsaltria australis are a feature of the park; if anything the young birds which are now making their way in the world are even more curious and confiding than their parents.

Immature Eastern Yellow Robin, which would have hatched in spring.
Below, it landed almost on my feet in pouncing on an insect snack.

 

Finally on birds I offer this pretty ordinary snap, as the only one I've ever managed of this ever-moving rainforest specialist, which is close to the southern limit of its range here.

Large-billed Scrubwren Sericornis magnirostris.
From side on the heavy bill points slightly upwards, as if glued on crookedly.

As suggested in the title, I also stopped between home and Monga to investigate a couple of orchid reports I'd been given; both sites are between Braidwood and Monga, but it's not wise, sadly, to be too precise with unusual orchid localities in a public forum.

Scarlet Greenhood Diplodium (Pterostylis) coccinum.
Greenhood orchids are of course supposed to be green; this stunner is a dramatic exception.

Mongarlowe Midge Orchid Corunastylis oligantha.
The midge orchids can be a bit tricky to locate, down among the grass;
these are less than 15cm high, with flowers only a few millimetres long.
They are one of the groups of 'upside down' orchids, in case you're having trouble interpreting the picture.

As I've said before, I'll talk about the upside down orchids in more detail at some stage. I'll also do a posting on some more autumn orchids.

Meantime, a last image of a very old and very beautiful flower whose ancestors looked like this when the southern lands were still one.

Pinkwood, Monga National Park.

BACK ON TUESDAY

Oddbills 3

This is the third in a sporadic series on bird bills that are even more remarkable than this wonderful organ normally is. The previous offering in this series can be found here.

Today you get two for the price of one. Although our two stars are entirely unrelated (indeed neither has any apparent close relatives) they have surprisingly similar bills. 

The dramatic Shoebill Balaeniceps rex (ie 'king whale-head!') is a big bird indeed, standing up to 1.5 metres high and with a massive and unlikely-looking bill well over 20 centimetres long. It is a resident of the huge papyrus swamps of central east Africa, from Zambia north to Sudan. Due to the difficulty in penetrating these dense wet vastnesses it is not well known, and even its populations are uncertain. Like many other large birds it soars, and this is how it is often first seen, high over the reedbeds.

Shoebill, Murchison Falls National Park.
The slightly mad-looking eyes can be a bit disconcerting, but more so I suspect
if you were about to be seized by that huge bill!
The wickedly-hooked tip can be seen below.

I feel very privileged to have seen this special bird, but we couldn't get very close.
A scattered herd of elephants was starting to take interest in us and our local guide and driver, Livingstone, was forced to thread our way out in the four-wheel drive through some very tricky broken ground, while avoiding grumpy jumbos.

The bill is an all-purpose prey trap, though its emphasis is on large fish, especially lungfish and catfish. A range of other prey has been reported, and in some areas water snakes form a significant part of the diet. In addition to the hooked tip there are serrations along the edges, for further gripping and cutting efficiency. Adults will also carry loads of water in it for chicks in the ground-based nest for the first weeks of their life, until they can walk to water.

Half the world away, in another part of Gondwana, the Boat-billed Heron Cochlearius cochlearius is found throughout much of the tropical Americas, from Mexico south through central America and down to northern Argentina. Despite this large range it is not often seen - I've only seen it twice in nine trips to South America. It is currently placed in its own sub-family, but there are those who would reinstate an older view which believes that it warrants its own family, like the Shoebill.

Boat-billed Heron, Sacha Lodge, Amazonian Ecuador.
One of the reasons it is hard to find is that it is nocturnal, coming out from a secluded roost on dusk.
This beautiful bird was seen from a canoe in a channel in fading light, sorely testing both my basic camera and me!
(In the circumstances I wasn't too unhappy with this result.)
The snappy long black crest can just be seen.

It is only a third the size of the Shoebill, and so the similarly flattened and hooked bill is much smaller. It too snaps up a range of prey, especially fish and invertebrates and small land mammals. It also uses it as a scoop, in a way that no other heron does that I can think of. 

More marvellous bills coming up sometime in the future; I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I did.

MEANTIME, BACK FRIDAY

Seeking Hides

A rule of mine when travelling is never to drive past a sewage pond without visiting to see what birds are there. (You'd be astonished how many visitor information centres have no idea where their nearest ponds are!) It's becoming tricky actually, as lawyers increasingly impose themselves and more councils are closing their ponds to public access; really, there's not much other reason to visit some of those places!

Another 'must stop for' is a bird hide. Actually, the two are not necessarily exclusive of each other. In Paarl, north-east of Cape Town, the sewage works are delightfully called the Paarl Bird Sanctuary and come with welcome signs, an information shelter, hides and picnic tables! I was most impressed. Most hides are in wetlands, though not all. In Gluepot Reserve in the South Australian mallee, and at the excellent Arid Lands Botanic Garden in Port Augusta (also South Australia), there are good and productive hides facing small artificial drinking points in dry woodland.

Nor do hides necessarily have to feature birds, though most do.

White Rhinos, above, Nyala male below,
Kumasinga Waterhole, Mkuzi Reserve, Zululand, South Africa.

This superb hide, accessed by a wooden corridor two metres high and at least 200 metres long, overlooks a small pipe-fed pool. Needless to say, birds feature heavily too - a gorgeous Purple-crowned Turaco springs to mind.

Elsewhere in South Africa I recall the impressive Sable Hide in Kruger National Park, where one can rent a fold-down bed for the night. This is an especial treat because in most of Kruger you are forbidden to get out of the vehicle, on pain of instant expulsion from the park. (Or death, depending on whether the rangers get to you before an elephant, lion or buffalo.)

So, what is a hide? Essentially it is just a little room, usually wooden, with slot windows in front and perhaps the sides, and benches to sit on. Ideally the approach will be screened so that birds are not scared off even before you get to the hide.

Cygnus Hide, Kellys Swamp, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra. The brush fences screen the approaches to the hide from the birds on the water (to the left of the picture).

Crucially, it has a back wall (or usually a wooden baffle, inside or outside, masking the doorway) so that watchers sitting at the windows are not silhouetted from the front of the hide. Birds are nervous about this, and generally won't come as close. It's a universally recognised requirement, so it's a surprise to find a few hides that overlook this necessity. In Australia, Abattoir Swamp Environmental Park near Julatten in tropical Queensland is one which is notorious for this design flaw (at least it was last time I was there, some years ago now; if it's been rectified I'd be glad to pass on the good news). This hide is also notorious for being bird-poor in a very bird-rich area, though of course I can't say that this is the only reason. New hides near Lake Cargelligo in central western New South Wales were built similarly flawed, though I've heard that there is interest in fixing them.

Embarrassingly and incomprehensibly, the formerly excellent hides at Kellys Swamp, Jerrabomberra Wetlands - Canberra's premier wetlands - have recently been severely compromised by having the internal baffles removed so that the incumbent birders are now clearly silhouetted!

Cygnus Hide, Kellys Swamp, from a bird's eye view. Anyone sitting in the middle of the hide is now clearly outlined against the sky behind. Nor is the problem just from straight in front, as the shot below from off to one side illustrates.

Additionally, there were extra benches along the internal baffles, so there is now also less seating area. The rationale is a complete mystery. At one stage it was vaguely suggested that some people might be nervous about coming into a dark hide, but I've never met or heard of a birder unwilling to use these hides (though I know of hundreds who do). A direct written question to the board administering the wetland failed to elicit a response, so one must assume that no such survey was ever actually done and that hideophobia is an urban wetland myth. [Since I first posted this it's been brought to my attention that the need for wheelchair access was another motivating factor; if so, it would not have been difficult to extend the hide back a bit to allow manvouevring space around the baffle.]

The little screen to the right of shot in the first picture of the hide above is supposed to overcome this problem but, as the subsequent photos show, it is nowhere near high enough.

My consolation comes from my experience of cycles and corporate memory; one day someone will say "isn't it funny that they never thought to put baffles in those hides?", and they will reappear!

In Peru and Ecuador (and probably elsewhere in South America) there are hides erected at clay licks where parrots come in to collect clay at cliff faces or river banks - apparently primarily as a sodium source, though we can talk more about that another day. Some, such as this one near Amazonia Lodge on the Rio Madre de Dios, are very basic open structures, but backed by a vegetated bank.

Needless to say, the views here as elsewhere are not guaranteed!

My very favourite bird hide anywhere however is this superb two storey structure which boasts its own toilet! It is run by the Blanquillo Lodge further downstream from Amazonia Lodge.

This is only a section of it. As the parrots move to new sections of the clay bank (visible through the wooden supports below the hide itself) the hide is extended; it is at least a hundred metres long. Note the solid back wall.

Here are some views from it.

Orange-cheeked Parrots Pyrilia barrabandi and Blue-headed Parrots Pionus menstruus.

Red and Green Macaws Ara chloropterus, above and below.

Yellow-crowned Parrots Amazona ochrocephala, Mealy A. farinosa and Blue-headed Parrots.

Zone-tailed Hawk Buteo albonotatus.This is not the only predator to chance its arm (or wing) at the licks. An entry in the log book for the previous week described how an Ocelot sprang from the foliage and seized a macaw!

Finally, I must share with you this somewhat sobering sight from Peru. The previous year we had delighted in Andean Cocks-of-the-Rock Rupicola peruvianus displaying from a little rainforest hide by the road. In the intervening February very heavy rains had caused many landslides, including the one that reduced the hide to this.

Ruins of Cock-of-the-Rock Hide, San Pedro, Peru, 2010, above and below.
Fortunately it wasn't being used at the time!
When I was last there, the scene below had been dense rainforest.

However, you shouldn't really be put off using hides by this - most of them never get struck by landslides, thunderbolts or mortar shells! 

And there are few if any better places on earth for just contemplating life, in between enjoying the wildlife at close range.

Red, Black and Conspicuous

It's been a while now since my last posting on colours in nature - red on that occasion - wherein I promised to get back to look at some of the many organisms, especially birds, which combine red and black to very striking effect. At least it's striking to our eyes, but we must assume that it is to other creatures as well, given its relative prevalence. Red is a colour intended to be seen; to attract a mate, to warn of the hazards of trying to eat the wearer, or in a plant to attract an animal to pollinate or distribute seeds in ripe fruit.

Masked Crimson Tanager Ramphocelus nigrogularis, Amazonia Lodge, Peru.
In this species both sexes carry the bright colours, though the female is slightly duller.

I think in the case of animals the combination with black is a variation on the theme, though in shadowy situations such as rainforest it presumably breaks up the outline and perhaps confuses predators for the essential extra second or so.

Black-necked Red Cotinga Phoenicircus nigricollis, Yasuni NP, Ecuador.
This is regarded as a tough bird to find, and I feel very privileged to have actually got a usable photo of one.
In this case the female has brown instead of black.

We know very little about this bird, though males seem to display. While there is some doubt about whether it's more closely related to cotingas or manikins, this does fit in with a pair of much better-known cotinga species, the cocks-of-the-rock. Here the males form a display lek, with the most successful birds taking the prized central positions, to where the waiting females head. Like the Black-necked Red Cotinga, she too is brown rather than red.

Andean Cock-of-the-Rock Rupicola peruvianus:
males, Manu, Peru above; female, Aguas Calientes, Peru, below.

It is significant that in many smaller red and black birds only the male is coloured; his job is to intimidate other males, impress females with his condition and his ability to survive despite being so conspicuous, and perhaps to distract predators from her, the nest and eggs. She has no need at all to be easily seen.

Scarlet Robin Petroica boodang, Canberra; male above, female below.
The shot above doesn't show how black he is on top.

Other examples of startlingly red and black males with brown-grey females follow.

Long-tailed Meadowlark Sturnella loyca, Chilean Patagonia.
Male above, female below.

 

Northern Red Bishop Euplectes franciscanus, Murchison Falls NP, Uganda.
Not only are bishop and weaver females brown, but they are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

Red-backed Fairy-wren Malurus melanocephalus, Ingham, Queensland.
Like all fairy-wrens females, she is plain brown, whereas he glows through the scrub.

 On the other hand the females of some larger, more pugnacious species can afford to be as conspicuous as their blokes.

Papyrus Gonolek Laniarius mufumbiri, near Kagadi, Uganda.
A bush-shrike, this is a notorious skulker, which is another reason for both members of the pair to be visisble.

Magellanic Woodpecker Campephilus magellanicus,Torres del Paine NP, southern Chile.
This is the male; she has less red in the head, but still stands out. This is a big, dramatic woodpecker!

Examples of red and black in other organisms (and I'm limiting myself here to bright reds, not rusty or orange) are less easy to find.

Millipede, Mt Kupe, western Cameroon.
Many millipedes taste bad, and I suspect that this one is emphasising the point.

Nor can I find many plant examples, but I'm happy to go out today with one of my favourite Australian wildflowers, and the floral emblem of my birth-state, South Australia.

Sturt's Desert Peas Swainsona formosa, Broken Hill, New South Wales.
Sprawling across the ground, these are bird-pollinated and perhaps have to be particularly striking to catch the attention of passing honeyeaters. On the other hand a bird would have to be particularly dense to miss this display!

BACK ON SUNDAY

Huntress in the House

I suspect that if I were rather smaller - the size of a silverfish say - I would find this a pretty terrifying prospect. I probably wouldn't be given much time to consider the matter however.

Female Huntsman Spider Isopeda villosa, on our bedroom wall.
I am grateful to Dr Linda S Rayor of Cornell University for identifying her for me, instantly and graciously,
and to Dr Dave Rowell of the Australian National University for forwarding my request to her.

The greatest initial threat to me, in my temporary guise as a silverfish, would be those eight long quick legs. Most spiders have two pairs facing forwards and two back, and walk fairly deliberately with the bodies held high. 

Orbweb Spider (possibly Eriophora transmarina, a very variable species) showing the leg configuration
of most spiders.

The huntsmen (in this case Family Sparassidae) have all four pairs bending backwards; perhaps counter-intuitively they run sideways however! Their body touches the ground as they run.

Another view of 'our' huntress. The splayed out legs can be seen clearly, along with the fact that each has seven joints.
The two joints closest to the body are short, but in huntsmen the outermost one, the tarsus (the 'foot') is unusually long. Overall this gives great agility.

The photos here were taken on a vertical wall, which she glides over as easily as if it were horizontal. Most spiders have three little claws on the tip of each tarsus - the outermost leg segment. In this magnified shot of the two rearmost tarsi, we can see that she has two such claws; what we can't really make out is that instead of the third claw she has a brush running the length of the underside of the tarsus to further help her grip the surface.

We can just see the two claws on each tarsus.

We can also clearly see the hairs which cover her legs (her name villosa means hairy). These are sensitive to vibrations, including those of air currents.

A closer view of the head wouldn't give me much confidence either, in my silverfish persona.

Eight eyes (four small ones above four large ones) would ensure I was clearly visible to her, were I a silverfish. The massive chelicerae (fangs), between two palps, are definitely all the better to eat me with. More below.

Unlike insects, with three body segments, spiders have just two; they have an abdomen like an insect, but a single cephalothorax includes head and 'chest', and carries the legs. The first pair of appendages on the cephalothorax are the massive chelicerae, seen here immediately below the four larger eyes. They comprise the large basal segments, which can be effective crushers, folded into which (out of sight) are hard sharp fangs, which inject venom via a tube. Her mouth parts are hidden behind them. Rapidly resuming my human persona, even if I were to harass her enough to make her bite me, the venom would do me no harm - it is mostly designed to break down insect bodies for easy digestion. The fangs would give me a painful - and fully deserved - stab though. 

Outside the chelicerae is a pair of six-jointed palps, resembling short legs (see pic above). They are sensory and are used to help manipulate food; in the male however they are swollen at the tip and are effectively sexual organs, carrying and transferring sperm.

These spiders are often referred to as tarantulas. The name it seems originated with the town of Taranto in Italy, which also gave its name to the dance Tarantella. The spider, which was actually a wolf spider of the family Lycosidae, was reputed to cause the dance by biting - or alternatively the dance was the antidote to the bite, it all depends on your choice of myth. It seems that the bite of the local wolf spider could in fact cause considerable distress, though there are diverging views on this. However this is the opinion of Bert Brunet in his excellent Silken Web; a natural history of Australian spiders, and I readily defer to him. Other opinions always welcomed however! 

Whatever the truth of that, the name became transferred to the primitive big hairy scary-looking (but generally harmless) ground-dwelling American spiders of the family Theraphosidae, though the family is found through much of the warmer world. How and why the name then transferred here, to yet another family of spiders, is unclear. 

Tarantulas; above Blanquillo Lodge Peru, below Sacha Lodge Ecuador

Whatever you choose to call her, our huntress is a very welcome member of our household. Tough luck silverfish!

Next time it's probably time to return to the long-promised discussion of red and black creatures.

BACK ON THURSDAY