A rare event

Buloke Allocasuarina luehmannii is an uncommon tree  that can be found in two different habitats in our district – on the red volcanic soils of the Moolort Plains, where it was once very common and sparsely scattered throughout the box-ironbark country. I came across a small stand this evening in the Sandon State Forest near Strathlea and was pleasantly surprised to see a number of the female trees with a good seed crop. Buloke is an unusual plant in that the male and female flowers are found on separate trees. The male flowers form a mass of orange stamens at the tip of the branchlets, while the female flowers form a dense tuft of red styles along the branchlets.

The male flowers of the Buloke, Sandon State Forest, 31st January 2012.

Mature Buloke fruits showing the characteristic wheel-shaped cone.

Bulokes certainly don’t flower and set seed successfully every year from my experience. The female trees in this grove were at different stages of fruit maturity – the cones on the tree above were still quite green while those pictured below had actually started to shed their seed.

Mature Buloke fruits with some opened seed capsules.

Fallen Buloke seeds don’t stay viable for long and successful germination hinges on heavy rainfall in mid to late summer. This tends to be a very rare event and ideal conditions for regeneration may only occur every few decades. This aspect of their ecology combined with a long history of exploitation for firewood and building materials, such as shingle roofing, means that Buloke is now regarded as a threatened species.

Mature female Buloke with a heavy seed crop, Sandon State Forest, 31st January 2012.

Up the creek with a paddle #3

In the final instalment of our Australia Day adventure I thought it worth sharing some shots of egrets and herons. No matter how many times you come across these birds their elegance and beauty can always be appreciated. 

Great Egret leaving its perch, Joyces Creek, 26th January 2012.

White-faced Heron in flight, Joyces Creek, 26th January 2012.

Up the creek with a paddle #2

Birds are not quite so edgy when approached by boat so our recent trip up Joyces Creek provided a great opportunity to see some waterbirds close-up, including some cormorants. At the moment three different cormorants can be commonly seen on Cairn Curran; Little Pied, Little Black and Great Cormorant. The latter two are similar – pretty much black all over, with the main differences in the facial markings. Little Black Cormorants Phalacrocorax sulcirostris have beautiful blue eyes and black skin around the face with an overall greenish sheen to the plumage, while Great Cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo have a large patch of bare yellow skin at the base of the bill and under the eye. The area behind this features white plumage in breeding birds. Most of the Great Cormorants around at the moment appear to be immatures.

Little Black Cormorant, Joyces Creek, 26th January 2012.

Immature Great Cormorant, Joyces Creek, 26th January 2012.

A close-up of the facial features on an immature Great Cormorant.

Most species of cormorants tend to feed alone but Little Black Cormorants can sometimes be seen feeding in tight-knit groups (up to 30 individuals) on schools of fish.

Little Black Cormorant fishing, Cairn Curran Reservoir, 23rd January 2012.

Up the creek with a paddle #1

Australia Day started with an early morning paddle up Joyces Creek, starting from the old railway bridge on Cairn Curran. With Dean’s expert guidance we navigated about 4 kilometres upstream, past the wonderful Plaistow homestead and beyond the confluence of Joyces and Middle Creeks. Having never done this trip before it was an absolute delight to see the country from a completely different perspective. Of course birds were the main objective and we weren’t disappointed. A highlight was seeing a Yellow-billed Spoonbill and its rarer cousin the Royal Spoonbill, feeding in the shallows below Plaistow.

Yellow-billed and Royal Spoonbills, Joyces Creek, 26th January 2012.

Royal Spoonbill ruffling its feathers.

Royal Spoonbill perched and ready for ...

... take-off!

Scarlet visitors

My allegiance to a favourite waterhole has shifted – the last two visits scarcely yielding a bird. There are plenty of other options and a pair of dams near South German Track are proving popular with bush birds at the moment. Earlier this week an evening visit highlight was a family of Scarlet Robins Petroica multicolor – adult male and female and two juvenile birds, all stopping by to drink and bathe.

Adult male Scarlet Robin, South German Track, 26th January 2012.

Adult female Scarlet Robin.

Juvenile Scarlet Robins superficially resemble the adult female – the bird pictured below has an incomplete reddish wash on the breast. Young birds can be distinguished by a more streaked appearance, especially on the crown and upper parts and a buff eye-ring.

One of the two juvenile Scarlet Robins seen visiting the dam near South German Track.

A dam extravaganza

by Patrick Kavanagh

We’ve had a Little Pied Cormorant frequenting our dam recently and I thought I’d try to catch a photo of him. Birds were nowhere to be seen but as I sat by the dam I was able to see so much happening around me. There were myriad Blue Skimmer Orthetrum caledonicum dragonfly males, which from my reading on are the only ones of this species with the distinct powdery blue coating. Females are yellow and black, as are teneral males (having just emerged into adult form) but the latter are brighter yellow. The males were spending a lot of time chasing each other around the dam.

Male Blue Skimmer dragonfly.

The female Blue Skimmer.

Damselflies (which can be discerned from dragonflies because they fold their wings at rest) such as Eastern Billabongflies  Austroagrion watsoni and Aurora Bluetails were abundant amongst the water plants at one side of the dam.

An Eastern Billabongfly.

A male Aurora Bluetail.

Water Treaders (mesovelids) were skimming the surface of the dam and these mostly seemed coupled. Also more sedate in this area was a Scarlet Percher dragonfly and a Fishing Spider Dolomedes instabilis, which like the Water Treaders can skim across the surface of the water using surface tension to stay dry.

A pair of coupled Water Treaders.

A Fishing Spider on the floating pondweed.

In case I sound like I know what I’m talking about, I found Arachne.org and http://photos.rnr.id.au/ very helpful in identifying these species and can highly recommend a visit, as well as a visit to a dam near you.

A dangerous time

Grebes have featured a number of times recently, but at the risk of ‘grebe overload’ I thought the following observations worth sharing. Exploring one of the bush dams near South German Track I spotted two tiny (and I mean tiny!) shapes paddling amongst dead branches near the edge of the dam. They proved to be very recently hatched Australasian Grebes … surely not more than a couple of days old. The characteristic striping, which disappears rapidly as they grow can be seen on the plumage and even the bill.

Juvenile Australasian Grebe, South German Track, 26th January 2012.

Presumably the striping provides camouflage at a vulnerable stage of life.

Mysteriously the parents were nowhere to be seen – their floating nest visible some distance away. At this site there are two dams, the first closest to the road is higher in the catchment and I had spotted a well-advanced juvenile at the upper dam on my arrival. I’m wondering if the parents may have been there as well, overlooked as I passed – perhaps the tiny youngsters were the offspring of their most recent breeding effort.

Australasian Grebes nest, South German Track, 26th January 2012.

Whatever the situation I suspect the baby grebes were at great risk without the parents nearby – a Little Pied Cormorant was perched just overhead and while this species prefers yabbies, fish and frogs I suspect the unattended grebe chicks would have made a tasty morsel!

The alert and hungry cormorant.

Lift-off!

The remarkable powers of birds never cease to amaze me. How a bird can go from one moment being deep underwater in search of a meal to high velocity flight leaves me feeling quite inadequate. Earlier this week I spotted this Australasian Darter fishing in the waters of Cairn Curran Reservoir.

Webbed feet and flexible wings come in handy ...

... for this expert fisher!

Their routine is now pretty familiar to me after watching lots of these birds in recent months. They tend to hunt for perhaps thirty minutes at a time before departing to perch somewhere nearby to dry their wings. Unlike many water birds darters lack any real ability to waterproof their feathers – while they do have a ‘preen gland’ it is not very well developed.

Grebe sequence

There are quite a number of Great Crested Grebes Podiceps cristatus on Cairn Curran Reservoir at the moment – at least two pairs can be seen in the Joyces Creek area. Last year they bred successfully but I didn’t manage to find any active nests this year. This evening one of the birds let me observe from a safe distance as it was feeding. For a Great Crested Grebe this involves a series of underwater excursions in search of small fish, staying submerged for up to a minute at a time.

Great Crested Grebe, Cairn Curran Reservoir, 23rd January 2012.

Caught in the act of diving ...

Hold your breath!

This species prefers large open water bodies, especially natural wetlands, but in a dramatically altered landscape it has adapted well to the habitat offered by artificial storages such as Cairn Curran Reservoir.

Raptor landings

I hadn’t ventured out onto the Moolort Plains searching for raptors for some time, until yesterday evening. While actual numbers are not high at the moment the diversity is good and I managed to see an Australian Hobby, a pair of Whistling Kites, a few Brown Falcons and a number of Black-shouldered Kites and Australian Kestrels. One of the kestrels, an immature bird was spotted devouring a mouse and after finishing its meal made a brief flight before returning to the perch.

Immature Australian Kestrel coming in to land, Moolort Plains, 20th January 2012.

I also spotted a Black-shouldered Kite perched amongst some Galahs and Indian Mynahs (aka ‘Rats of the air’) near Plaistow homestead. As I approached the kite took flight, then returned to the perch, causing quite a commotion amongst the mynahs – unfortunately an exotic meal of mynahs is not really possible for this small raptor!

Black-shouldered Kite scattering a flock of Indian Mynahs, Joyces Creek, 20th January 2012.