On This Day, 16 July; Charles Sturt died

On this day in 1869 a man regarded as a hero of Australian exploration died in England. There were times in his life when it seemed as though his woeful lack of aptitude at politics and financial management might overshadow his other achievements, but at the end he was widely and respectfully consulted on Australian issues - these included the preparations for Augustus Gregory's successful Northern Australian Exploring Expedition of 1854.

Sturt's, or Thargomindah, Nightshade, Solanum sturtianum, Broken Hill.
Named by Ferdinand von Mueller, perhaps the greatest of all Australian botanists,
in 1854, just after Sturt had left Australia for the last time.

Sturt was born in Bengal, to a judge employed by the East India Company (in those days it apparently didn't seem at all inappropriate to retain your own judges!). Presumably it didn't pay very well, as there wasn't enough money for Charles to go to university in England; as was fairly normal in such circumstances he joined the army instead, seeing action in Spain and Canada and serving in occupying forces in Ireland and France. At the age of 32, still a relatively lowly captain, he landed in New South Wales where he was appointed military secretary to Governor Darling, and thus met, and was inspired by, established explorers such as Cunningham, Oxley and Mitchell. His first expedition, in 1828, along the Macquarie, Castlereagh and Darling Rivers in a fierce drought summer, set the tone for future such work in three ways. These were that there was little of importance to the colony in the lands he traversed (his Murray trip later was the exception), and his care for, and courtesy towards, the men under him - and Aboriginal people he encountered - was exemplary. Additionally, he was a meticulous collector of specimens for science along the way, which of course is a major qualification for him being the subject of today's posting.

The following year he undertook what was to be his most successful expedition, and one which made his name. They followed the Murrumbidgee to its junction with the Murray, which he named, not realising that Hume and Hovell had already called it the Hume well upstream; actually he had a pretty fair idea, but the governor had expressed his wish to have something significant named for the British Secretary of State for the Colonies. 

Junction of the Murrumbidgee (opposite) and Murray Rivers.
Sturt and his party were the first Europeans to see this impressive confluence, in 1829.

They proceeded in a whale boat, which they had carried in sections, for another 1200km to the sea, which the river reaches having flowed through the mighty Lake Alexandrina. 

Mouth of the Murray, near Goolwa, South Australia.
Currently it is open, though for most of the last decade it has not been.

 Then, living on flour and parrots, they rowed back against the flood... The glare rendered him blind for months afterwards, but he was granted land near where Canberra now stands. Even more importantly to him, he was famous and respected. However his lack of business nous let him down, and he had to turn to pioneering a route along the Murray by land to overland cattle to the hungry new colony of Adelaide. 

Turpentine Bush Eremophila sturtii, found across much of arid Australia.
Named by the great Scottish botanist Robert Brown, who Sturt asked to describe his collections form his 1844 expedition.

He moved to Adelaide, but again things didn't go well for him, and in 1844 at the age of nearly 50 he undertook one last epic expedition. Encouraged by stories he'd heard when he first arrived, he was a firm believer in the Great Inland Sea; it existed all right, but he was a good 20 million years too late for it. At Depot Glen in far north-western New South Wales they became trapped for 6 months on the only waterhole anywhere around - and were remarkably lucky to find it! The effects of heat and drought were horrific. He reported "every screw in our boxes has been drawn, and the horn handles of our instruments, as well as our combs, were split into fine laminae. The lead dropped out of our pencils... our hair, as well as the wool on our sheep, ceased to grow, and our nails had become brittle as glass. The flour lost 8% of its original weight .... and we found it difficult to write or draw, so rapidly did the fluid dry in our pens and brushes." Scurvy racked them, and the second-in-command, James Poole, died of it. Nonetheless, when rain did finally come, he pushed on rather than retreating, finally being defeated by the dunes of the Simpson Desert. They returned to Adelaide after 18 months, his health destroyed.

Sturt's Desert Rose Gossypium sturtianum, Alice Springs.
This superb member of the cotton genus is the Northern Territory floral emblem.

He was by now a committed Australian, but still felt obliged to return to England where he believed his children needed to be to ensure their futures. He lived out his days peacefully enough, though he was always short of money.

In addition to the plants mentioned above which were named for him (and others which were so named, but later found to have been already described), the best-known is undoubtedly Sturt's Desert Pea (also called just Sturt Pea) Swainsona formosa, the state emblem of South Australia, though it is found in all the mainland states except Victoria. However, although it has had various scientific names from collections in different parts of the country (including ones honouring William Dampier and John Oxley) it was never called formally for Sturt. Nor was he the first to record it - indeed William Dampier had done so back in 1699 on the north-western coast, and Cunningham had reported it from both there and western New South Wales. It seems however that Sturt first brought it to the public attention, when he found it near the site of the present Broken Hill during his great 1844 expedition. He reported it "in splendid blossom on the plains. It was growing amidst barrenness and decay, but its long runners were covered with flowers that gave a crimson tint to the ground." 

Sturt's Desert Pea Swainsona formosa, Broken Hill.
This is from near the site in the Barrier Ranges where Sturt found it flowering profusely,
and brought it to the public's attention.

There are much worse ways to be remembered.

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Trapping Desert Water; mulga and devil

To survive in an arid land where it might not rain meaningfully for years requires strategies. Many larger animals are nomads, following the rains across the landscape; Red Kangaroos and many desert birds do this. Many smaller ones escape into burrows, even going into a torpor until the day is right - desert frogs are specialists, spending most of their life dozing in a muddy cocoon while waiting for the rains. 

Plants don't have that option - though many actually do something similar, surviving the dry times as a buried seed, and sprouting and flowering quickly when the rains come. Trees don't have this luxury - it takes too long to grow to maturity and flower - and in Australia none is more typical of the inland vastnesses than the Mulga Acacia aneura, whose woodlands dominate an astonishing 20% of the huge country, well over 1.5 million square kilometres.

Mulga plains to the horizon; from Chambers Pillar, Northern Territory (above)
and near Quilpie, south-west Queensland (below).

The red soils in both photos above are typical of the mulga lands, ancient leached infertile material eroded over vast periods of time from old ranges, now gone entirely or ground down to their bases. Mulgas, like all acacias, can deal with the lack of nutrient in the soil with the help of colonies of symbiotic bacteria in lumpy nodules on the roots; these bacteria can convert atmospheric nitrogen directly into soluble salts that the plant can use. No plant can perform that trick unaided. 

Fighting for the scarce rains is another matter however, and Mulga is an excellent fighter. The phyllodes (modified leaf stems which are better at conserving water than true leaves, a useful trick by many species of wattles and apparently some peas) are held vertically, to reduce overheating; the silver-grey colour is another heat-reducing factor.

Flowering Mulga near Windorah, south-west Queensland; it takes a reasonable water
supply to allow a tree to flower on soil like this.
Note the erect foliage.

However, this erect foliage plays a role in water harvesting as well, in conjunction with the typical Mulga form, which is like an inverted cone.

Mulga and spinifex on sandstone, plateau above Palm Valley.

This form is an excellent one for trapping rain, which is directed down phyllodes and along branches to the ground near the base of the tree - in the case of a large tree, to within 50cm of the base, closer for younger plants. In this way a 25mm rainfall can deliver the equivalent of 150mm of rain to the Mulga's roots! A Mulga tap root can go down for metres to access deep cool moist soil, where the water it has harvested can be stored. In addition there is a net of shallow roots stretching at least to the diameter of the canopy; I've heard it said that a 10cm sapling can have a root spread of three metres. There's not much future for plants growing under a Mulga's canopy!

One animal, also a truly deserving symbol of the Australian drylands, also uses its structure to bring water to where it can absorb it - which in its case means its mouth, rather than roots!

Never was animal more inappropriately name - both in the vernacular and scientifically - than the gentle utterly harmless Thorny Devil Moloch horridus. Moloch was a particularly unpleasant god of the ancient middle east, who required child sacrifices. 'Harmless' might be contested if you're a small ant however, as the 10cm long lizard can scoff up to 5,000 of them at a time; perhaps it was an ant who named it. With its upcurved tail, slow rocking gait and rose-like thorns it is a truly odd-looking little animal, found right across the dry inland.

Thorny Devil, Alice Springs Desert Park.

One of its most remarkable characteristics though is not readily visible without closer examination. Its whole body is covered with a network of fine canals, arranged so that any moisture landing anywhere on its skin permeates slowly but inevitably to its mouth. This may be from rain, or dew, or just standing with a foot in a puddle! However none of these water sources would seem to require such an elaborate mechanism; in fact the system really comes into its own when there is no surface water, but simply moisture in the air. Then the thorns pay their way - water droplets condense on their tips, and end up via the skin channels in the lizard's mouth.

Two remarkable strategies for survival in a very harsh land. Isn't it a wonderful world??

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Puñihuil: penguins - and much more!

After the domestic dramas of last week (and my Night Parrot posting attracted more interest in a few days than anything else I've written!) I thought it was time to focus on Somewhere Completely Different. And while Puñihuil is in the southern hemisphere, it couldn't be much more dissimilar to the arid desert home of the Night Parrot. For a start, the island of Chiloé is lush and wet; while much of the Night Parrot's world gets well under 250mm of rain a year (and it is very irregular), Chiloé gets close to ten times that - reliably! At 42 degrees south it is about the latitude of Hobart (for those who know Australia), it can be very cold, and its west coast faces the mighty Pacific, so winds are a fact of life. 

Chiloé indicated by the red arrow.

Some 25 kilometres south-west of the town of Ancud lies the little sandy bay of Puñihuil, with volcanic islets just offshore, accessed by a narrow winding country road (though perfectly safe and comfortable).

 

Puñihuil indicated by red arrow.

It is the little islets which are the main attractions, supporting important seabird nesting colonies which are both easily accessible to people wanting to view them, and largely safe from people going ashore. 

Puñihuil islets from the cliffs above the bay.
Photo courtesy Wikipedia; somehow in five visits I've omitted to take this shot!

The beach at Punihuil, with Kelp Gulls Larus dominicanus overhead.

The seafood restaurant at the end of the beach is also a feature!

When I first went there in 2006, boat trips from the beach to view the wildlife were run by the Alfaguara Project, dedicated to marine conservation (and especially Blue Whales). Since then the Project has worked to coordinate local tour operators - including the local fishermen - to run the tours cooperatively, thus helping their incomes and giving them a greater incentive to protect the values of the bay. Since 2009 the number of visitors permitted daily is capped, to further protect the animals.

 

Boat trip on the bay - a very calm day! When I first went, trips were run in inflatable zodiacs,
but the embarkation and landing are still 'wet'.

I mentioned the penguins as an attraction, but the key point is that two species breed together there; this is the only place where Magellanic Penguins Spheniscus magellanicus (a cold water species found as far south as the Gulf of Magellan and the Falklands) are found nesting alongside Humboldt's Penguin S. humboldti, here at the southern limit of its range, which extends north into the tropics in Peru. Nonetheless, it is a penguin, and it can only live in the tropics within the cold Humboldt's Current.

 

Magellanic (above) and Humboldt's (below) Penguins, Punihuil;
please bear in mind that all these shots are taken from a small boat in heavily swelling seas!
While very similar (and closely related), Humboldt's has only one breast ring, while Magellanic has that plus a collar.

 

Another feature is the pairs of lovely Kelp Geese Chloephaga hybrida, also found from here south on wild rocky shores. These South American 'geese' are in fact apparently most closely related to the shelducks (though at least one of my Chilean birding friends sees that as something of an affront!).

 

Strongly dimorphic, the male Kelp Goose is white, his mate almost black.

Another fascinating and very South American group of ducks is also in the shelduck group (though this relationship is currently being revisited), and is also found at Puñihuil. The steamer ducks are so-called from their habit of churning up the water in powerful courtship rushes; two of the four species are flightless, and here was my first encounter with the fascinating Flightless (or Fuegian) Steamer Duck Tachyeres pteneres, a powerful swimmer at home among the rocks and sea-swells.

The almost ridiculously small wings of the Flightless Steamer Duck are evident here.

Additionally four cormorant species breed here.

Imperial Cormorants Phalacrocorax atriceps (left) and Neotropical Cormorants Phalacrocorax brasilianus (right), Punihuil. Imperials are found south to the Antarctic Peninsula, while Neotropics range from the Gulf of Magellan to the Amazon basin.

Rock Cormorants Phalacrocorax magellanicus are striking marine cormorants
found all along the southern coasts of the continent.

Red-legged Cormorants Phalacrocorax gaimardi are surely among the most beautiful of all cormorants; sadly they are also one of the scarcest of South American cormorants, though doing well on Punihuil.
(And I did mention it rained a lot here!)

Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus on unusually flat seas, Punihuil.
The tubular nostrils that are a feature of this major seabird family are very evident here.

Finally, there is one star of the show that isn't a bird. Marine Otters Lontra felina are rare almost everywhere, but there is a small and apparently stable population at Puñihuil. These are not to be confused with Sea Otters Enhydra lutris, a much bigger animal of the north Pacific. Lontra is a genus of American river otters, of which only the Marine Otter has taken to the sea; and from my observations at Puñihuil it  has done so very well indeed. It will emerge from the surf with a crab or other prey, and effortlessly skip onto the rocks to eat it.

Marine Otters, Punihuil, hunting (above) and dining.

 

Chile is an overlooked part of South America by many visitors. That, in my opinion, is a mistake. Chiloé, in turn, isn't on the route of most of those who do get to Chile - also a mistake, though the general absence of tourists means it remains generally unspoilt, so maybe I should keep quiet! And Puñihuil- well, if I've not yet persuaded you of its charms, I should probably give up this blog!

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