Ian Fraser, talking naturally

Back in 1885, just 13 years after Yellowstone National Park in the USA became the world's first national park, and only six years after Royal National Park in Sydney became Australia's first and the world's second, Russell Falls Reserve, 60 kilometres north-west of Hobart, was also declared (under the Waste Lands Act 1863!). The concern was primarily for protection of the scenery, as a basis for passive recreation. The 120 hectare reserve included both Russell and Horseshoe Falls at the foot of the mountain.

Russell Falls, set in wet forest and surrounded by Tree Ferns and with a
Blackwood Wattle Acacia melanoxylon growing in the stream.

Horseshoe Falls, near to Russell Falls and on the same walking track.
People visit the falls and forests for recreation now, as colonial Tasmanians did in the 19th century.

For those unfamiliar with Australia's geography, Tasmania is the island state off
the south-east coast, separated from the mainland by Bass Strait.

Mount Field is here indicated by the end of the red arrow.

In 1916 Mount Field and Freycinet Peninsula on the east coast were simultaneously declared the first national parks in Tasmania under the new Scenery Preservation Act. The mount - and subsequently park - were named for the wonderfully monickered Barron Field (very Dickenesque!) who came to Australia to take up a post as judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. He is better known however as the author of the 12 page best-seller First Fruits of Australian Poetry, though one might reasonably think some of the fruits to have been significantly over-ripe. As far as I can tell he never went to Tasmania.

The change in vegetation from near sea level at the entrance station to 1000 metres higher at Lake Dobson is dramatic. At the base the wet eucalypt forest is dominated by huge Eucalyptus regnans (Swamp Gum in Tasmania, Mountain Ash across the strait in Victoria) and E. obliqua, Messmate Stringybark. Swamp Gum (when in Rome...) is known as the world's tallest flowering plant and second only to Coastal Redwood Sequoia sempervirens of California; the tallest known specimen, from Victoria, was 132 metres high. The ones on Mount Field aren't of that stature, but are ancient and massive.

Swamp Gums over Tree Ferns, Mount Field

Massive base of ancient Swamp Gum

Swamp Gum 79 metres tall, Mount Field.

These forests drip, as evidenced by the height of the trees and the understorey.

Soft Tree Ferns Dicksonia antarctica and mosses, both of lineages far older than the eucalypts'.

Further up the mountain are temperate rainforests, though the eucalypts, especially the Messmate Stringybarks, penetrate their lower levels.

Messmate Stringybark base, growing in Sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum), family Atherospermataceae,
of old Gondwanan stock.
Messmate is of historic interest, as the first eucalypt to be scientifically described, having been collected
at Adventure Bay in Tasmania on James Cook's third expedition in 1887.
The specimens were lodged at Kew Gardens where they were studied by French botanist
Charles Louis L'Heritier de Brutelle.

A feature of the Tasmanian rainforests is the presence of pines of old Gondwanan families.

Celery-top Pine Phyllocladus aspleniifolius, Family Podocarpaceae, Mount Field.

Underfoot in the rainforest, mosses become even more dominant.

Mosses, Mount Field rainforests, above and below.

Then near the top of the mountain are sub-alpine woodlands, dominated by the endemic Tasmanian Snow Gum Eucalyptus coccifera.

Old Tasmanian Snow Gums, Wombat Moor, Mount Field.

I love the name Wombat Moor! The understorey to these snow gums is the evocatively - and utterly inaccurately! - named Pineapple Grass, actually a lily Astelia alpina Family Asteliaceae.

Pineapple Grass under Snow Gums, Wombat Moor.

Outside of these Snow Gum stands, the moor is largely treeless (as a moor should be!)


Wombat Moor, Mount Field. The start of the long walk to Lake Belcher passes through here.

Nearby however is a much shorter walk, and to my mind the loveliest in the park. The Pandani Grove walk passes through woodland around delightful little Lake Dobson; on these sheltered slopes the trees grow thickly and there is a rich understorey. The Pandani reference is to a big heath Richea pandanifolia, called Pandanus in Tasmania, though totally unrelated to the true pandanus of the tropics. Here are some highlights of this walk.

Pandanus growing in White Peppermint Eucalyptus pulchella woodland, Lake Dobson.


Pandanus in a rainforest pocket of Myrtle Beech Nothofagus cunninghamii, Lake Dobson.

Tasmanian Snow Gums, Mount Dobson.
New bark, above, and by the lake below.

Old Pencil Pine Athrotaxis cupressioides Family Cupressaceae, on the shore, Lake Dobson.

Pandanus buds, Lake Dobson.

Another heath, Trochocarpa thymifolia, Lake Dobson

And another, Cyathodes petiolaris.
All three of these heaths are Tasmanian endemiics.

Yet another Tasmanian endemic, Lomatis polymorpha, family Proteaceae.

This high level of endemism is typical of islands, and it is certainly true of Tasmania, yet another reason to visit.

You can make an easy day trip from Hobart to Mount Field - as we did on this occasion - or better still you can camp on site. Whatever you decide, your Tassie trip will be deficient if you don't spend at least a few hours there.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

Acacias are fundamental to Australian landscapes, though we sometimes forget here that they are equally characteristic of many African ones.

Mulga Acacia aneura woodland, Chambers Pillar, central Australia.

Acacia woodland, Murchison Falls NP, Uganda.

The minor tensions generated between Australian and African botanists by our tendency to think of acacias as 'ours' came to a head in 2003 with a proposal from a couple of Australian botanists to change the type specimen of Acacia from an African one to an Australian one. This was breathtakingly cheeky, with very little precedent, and was based on two factors. The first was the growing acceptance that Acacia as traditionally used for plants across Africa, Australia and America (and a few other places) was an artificial genus, comprising at least five distinct genera. The second is the fact that the majority of Acacias are Australian (some 1000 of the 1300 known species) which would have involved a massive task in changing names here. After consideration by subcommittees the proposal to change the rules in this case was ratified by the International Botanical Congress in Vienna in 2005, but challenged on procedural grounds. After another sometimes bitter six years the original decision was upheld at the next Congress in Melbourne in 2011.

However for some it didn't actually end there, with a number of influential botanists preferring to go on using Acacia in its broad sense and ignoring the Congress rulings. I don't share the sense of triumphalism some in Australia were displaying after the decision, and have sympathy with these bolshie botanists - if we can change the rules for one circumstance, we can do it whenever it seems convenient in the future. I can't help but think this might come back to bite us one day.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was the way Acacia foliage in Australia has evolved so differently in Australia from elsewhere (and for now for simplicity I'm going to continue to refer to Acacia in the older broader sense but to avoid controversy I'll use lower-case acacia as a group name!). In both Africa and America acacias are typified by divided - pinnate - leaves.

acacias in northern Cameroon (above)
and near Machu Picchu (Peru) below.

Many Australian acacia species - though a definite minority - also have compound leaves, with foliage ranging from having just a few pinnae (leaflets) to scores.

Acacia spectabilis Goobang NP, central New South Wales

Acacia elata, coastal New South Wales

Acacia deanei Goobang NP, central New South Wales.

Most of these leafy acacias live in moister parts of Australia; an advantage of compound leaves is that they confer a larger surface area which enables higher levels of photosynthesis, but the trade-off is in greater water loss.

Accordingly a very large number of Australian acacias, especially in drier situations, have done away with their leaves altogether, at least as adult plants. However, it's of course not that simple - if you're a plant you need leaves to photosynthesise, and there's no using conserving water if you can't function. So the compromise solution has been the evolution of phyllodes in Australian acacias (phyllodes are not unique to acacias, but they are probably most dominant there). A phyllode is a petiole - a leaf stalk - which has shed its leaf, flattened out and taken chlorophyll on board to take over the photosynthetic role. In acacias the phyllodes tend to hang down or stand stiffly erect to minimise exposure to the sun, and are tough and leathery (like a eucalypt leaf) to minimise water loss. Here is a small sample of the numerous phyllode types that Australian acacias display.

Acacia anceps Eyre Peninsula, South Australia

Acacia floribunda, south coast New South Wales

Acacia hakeoides Goobang NP central New South Wales

Acacia inaequalitaria Kata Tjuta NP, central Australia

Acacia monticola Ormiston Pound, west MacDonnell Ranges, central Australia

Acacia pycnantha Canberra.
This is Australia's floral emblem, Golden Wattle

Acacia retivenea Bladensberg NP, tropical central Queensland

Acacia spondylophylla Ormiston Pound, west MacDonnell Ranges, central Australia

Acacia triptera Goonoo NP central western New South Wales

The hard spiky phyllodes on this last species, known as Spurwing Wattle, raise another interesting difference between Australian and other acacias; you'll note the Cameroonian and Peruvian species above both sport savage thorns (though they're less obvious in the Peruvian photo). Here are a couple more examples.

northern Cameroon

Acacia (Vachellia) rorudiana, Santa Cruz, Galápagos

Thorns, botanically, are modified pointed branches, complete with their own vascular system, which cannot be removed without tearing the wood; Australian acacias don't have them. It seems equally odd that they either never evolved them in the face of the large browsing herbivores which inhabited Australia until relatively recently while most of their relatives elsewhere did, or that they all lost them at some point in the past. Neither makes much sense to me.

However there a number of spiky Australian acacias, most of which rely, like the Spurwing Wattle above, on toughened sharp phyllodes.

Acacia genistifolia Canberra

Acacia tetragonophylla south-west Queensland.
This is known as Dead Finish, the logic being that if it dies of drought, there's no hope for anything else.

Other plant parts also provide protection however for some species.

Acacia paradoxa Canberra.
In this one - Kangaroo Thorn - the spikes are stipules, growing from the base of the petiole.

Acacia spinescens Lincoln NP South Australia.
Here the branches themselves are spike-tipped. (Technically I suppose they could thus be thorns,
but that usually refers to smaller branches growing off the main ones.)

And there's another thing...


Acacia mearnsii Canberra. Note the glands along the branch.

Such glands are common in African species, where they attract aggressive ants which defend the plant. In Australia however this does not seem to be the case, though you can find some websites which should know better asserting that it is - they have simply used African data. The Australian glands do exude small amounts of nectar (which acacia flowers do not) which attract a range of insects, including ants but not for the most part insect-hunting ants which would protect the plant. A lovely mystery to be solved...

And we could go on, but before I instead wrap up for today, let's return briefly to phyllodes. I've been asked, quite reasonably, how I know they aren't actually leaves? Well, there are doubtless some physiological reasons, but the best answer is "because we can see it happening".

Acacia rubida Redstem Wattle, Canberra.

Many acacias begin life with true divided leaves - perhaps because maximising photosynthesis is the top priority in the early establishment phase - then switch to phyllodes, water conservation being the long-haul imperative. In Redstem Wattle it is particularly evident. At the bottom of this sapling are the juvenile leaves, at the top are pure phyllodes. But halfway up, look carefully at the phyllode on the right of the stem. The compound leaf is still growing from the end of petiole, which is flattening and becoming a phyllode beginning from the base. On the bottom left petiole the process is just beginning.

The wonderful wattles - like everything else, there's much more to them than immediately meets the eye.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

Until recently, all I knew of Ushuaia, on Argentinian Tierra del Fuego, was that it claimed to be the world's southern-most city, and that it is the jump-off point for most of the Antarctic cruises. (I'm now convinced that their claim is justified; Chilean Puerto Williams, just across the Beagle Channel on Isla Navarino, is indeed just further south, but with only 2000 inhabitants can hardly claim to be a city; Ushuaia, with 60,000 people, certainly is.)

Recently however I was going to be 'in the area' (really!) and decided we should extend our Patagonian trip to see what was there. It was one of the best decisions I've made. The town itself, facing the Beagle Channel, is a real surprise and a worthwhile destination in its own right, but you don't read these posts to hear about towns; just out of town is the world's southern-most national park, Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego and we spent a delightful day there.


Ushaia is at the end of the red arrow and Tierra del Fuego National Park is immediately to the west, bounded to the south by the Beagle Channel and the west by the Chilean border. Don't think this means it is tiny however - the whole island covers 4.8 million hectares, and the park is 60,000 hectares, extending inland (north) for 60 kilometres.

In a day we saw nowhere near the whole of the park - indeed you need to be prepared to do some serious mountain hiking for that - but we absorbed some beautiful Nothofagus (southern beech) forest, alongside the lovely Beagle Channel.

Zarathiegui Bay, Beagle Channel, above and below.
The channel separates the main island of Tierra del Fuego (the 'Isla Grande')
from the many smaller islands immediately to the south.
It runs 240km from the west (where it is entirely in Chile) to the east, where it forms the boundary between
Chile and Argentina - see map above. It was named for the survey vessel commanded by Robert FitzRoy (after the suicide of Captain Pringle Stokes) during the expedition of 1826 to 1830.
(It was on the follow-up survey, beginning the following year, that Charles Darwin joined him.)

Wind-shaped Magellanic Beech Nothofagus betuloides, on the shores of the channel.

Across the channel the mighty Andes emerge from the sea to extend for 7000 kilometres to the north.

The beginning - or end, depending on your perspective - of the Andes, across the Beagle Channel
from Tierra del Fuego National Park.

The old beech forests are superb; with a growing season of perhaps only a few weeks a year, they are venerable indeed.

Looking through the Magellanic Beech to the Beagle Channel and the Andes beyond.
This is a very beautiful place (and no, it's not always sunny!)

The understorey is quite open; here there are mosses, ferns and saplings of Canelo (see below).
In these Gondwanan relics, you could easily be in Tasmania or New Zealand - and of course
they once all formed part of the same temperate rainforests.

Old beeches growing over mossy boulders.

Ancient beech bases, draped in mosses, with Fishbone Ferns Blechnum penna-marina
and Canelo seedlings.


Canelo or Winter's Bark Drimys winteri, of the very old Gondwanan family Winteraceae - it is often described as close to being the oldest living flowering plant family. The Australian native peppers Tasmannia are very closely related, and indeed until recently were included in the same genus. Until relatively recent times when citrus was identified as a source of Vitamin C to combat scurvy, ships rounding the Horn would take on loads of Canelo bark as an antidote. The first to do so was John Winter, captain of the Elizabeth, accompanying Francis Drake in the Golden Hind in 1577 - hence the scientific name and English common name. (But how he knew, I can't imagine.)

Clearings such as this one can be carpeted with orchids in summer.

Dog Orchid Codonorchis lessonii, above and below.
This is a very common Patagonian orchid, supposedly named for its scent, though I've not noticed it!

Beech Orange Fungus, or Pan de Indio (Indian Bread) Cyttaria harioti.
Darwin collected these and when Joseph Hooker of Kew Gardens recognised them as being very similar to
beech fungi from New Zealand and Australia, they began to postulate a former great southern continent.
As the Spanish name suggests they were indeed eaten, in considerable quantities, by indigenous
Patagonians, who also brewed an alcoholic beverage from them.
I've tried the fungi (though not, sadly, the beverage) and it's not too bad.
The fungus uses a chemical to form the massive gall in which the fungus lives and feeds,
and from which it produces the spore bodies (the 'oranges') in summer.

Holly-leafed Barberry Berberis ilicifolia Family Berberidaceae, is one of many barberries found in Patagonia.
The berries of many are used for jams and liqueurs.

Rainberry Rubus geoides, Family Rosaceae.

Birds are fairly prominent in the forests and on the channel.

The Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus in Zarathiegui Bay, above and below, were as
numerous as I've ever seen them anywhere.

The South American 'geese' that dominate many Patagonian landscapes are actually closer to the shelducks.
These Ashy-headed Geese Chloephaga poliocephala are among the most striking of them.

Two old passerine groups, the sub-oscines, dominate in South America, though are barely known elsewhere in the world; representatives of both the funariids (oven birds) and tyrant flycatchers are present in Tierra del Fuego National Park.

Dark-bellied Cinclodes Cinclodes patagonicus, a common funariid.

Tufted Tit-tyrant Anairetes parulus, a tyrant flycatcher which, unlike the cinclodes,
is found along the entire 7000km of western South America.

Mammals are certainly present, though not readily encountered. One species however, the North American Beaver, has become a serious problem since being introduced in the 1940s to try to start a fur trade. Numbers in Tierra del Fuego have been estimated at tens of thousands, and huge areas of native forest are under threat as trees fail to recover from being felled (the local species tend not to coppice), and are drowned by raised water levels from beaver dams. Control measures have begun, but it's a huge job.

Beaver lodge (no longer occupied) with drowned trees, Tierra del Fuego National Park.

But we need to end on a happier note, and this magnificent weevil seems appropriate for the role.


Weevil, Lago Roca. We were told that local people had regarded it as sacred, but I can't find any information on that.

Yes, I know it's a long way to the end of the world, but it's worth it! And if you find yourself in the vicinity of Ushuaia, do drop into Tierra del Fuego National Park too - it'll be well worth your while.

BACK ON THURSDAY

I hear so many stories of people coming to Australia and expecting to see kangaroos in the main streets that I suspect that some of them must be true. And here in Canberra it's pretty close to the way things are! In suburbs near the numerous hill reserves which are scattered through the urban area it's common to see roos grazing the lawn or drinking from garden ponds in dry spells. And driving anywhere in Canberra can be potentially hazardous when the roos are on the move. I could meet you at the airport and pretty much guarantee to find you Eastern Grey Kangaroos within about 10 minutes.

Eastern Grey Kangaroos Macropus giganteus, just a few minutes from my Canberra suburban home.

These animals are showing the classic kangaroo characteristics of powerful hind legs, short forelimbs with grasping paws and a long heavy counter-balancing tail. Lounging about stretched out on the ground is typical daytime behaviour too.

The long hind legs are an adaptation to hopping, a form of locomotion which seems to have arisen in the ancestral kangaroos at least 30 million years ago. While members of a few rodent families, and a member of one other family of small marsupials (the carnivorous Kultarr) have independently evolved hopping, the kangaroos are the only large vertebrates ever to have developed the trick. (Tales of hopping dinosaurs seem to be no more than tales.)

Eastern Grey Kangaroos on the move.

It's not an efficient mode of locomotion at low speeds; at less than 12km an hour a trotting dog for instance uses less energy. As speed increases however the hopping kangaroo begins to pull ahead energetically, and increases its relative efficiency further as its speed increases. At 22km per hour, the highest speed that I'm aware that energy expenditure has been measured, a hopping kangaroo uses less than 75% of the energy a similarly sized dog would. At speeds of 40kph - which a kangaroo can readily achieve - it would be expected to be twice as efficient.

The reason for this has been tentatively suggested in terms of the muscles and tendons acting like springs, storing kinetic energy which is used in the next leap. Doubtless this occurs, but we now know that galloping animals also utilise this 'bouncing ball' strategy, so a roo's advantage can't be attributed solely to this. It seems that the explanation lies in the much longer stride a hopping kangaroo can achieve. An animal can increase speed either by taking longer strides, or by taking more steps or hops per minute; it is the latter which uses much more energy. A kangaroo's gait allows it to simply to take longer and longer hops as it accelerates, to more than four metres per bound. At very high speeds it will also start to put in extra hops, which presumably uses more energy.

At very low speeds however, such as when feeding, a kangaroo 'caterpillars' along, using five limbs, the tail being co-opted for this purpose.

Red-necked Wallaby Macropus rufogriseus, Namadgi National Park near Canberra.
To get to the next patch of desirable grass, the animal swings its back legs forward together, while balancing
on its forelegs and tail.
(Curiously, when swimming, a kangaroo suddenly learns how to move its hind legs independently of each other, the only time it does so.)

Now you've probably been distracted because I've suddenly switched to talking about a wallaby! Let's get that one out of the way. In vernacular, we tend to use 'kangaroo' for the larger members of the family Macropodidae (which has some 60 members), and 'wallaby' for smaller ones, but it's not taxonomically meaningful. It's even less so for today's purpose, as I'm going to be talking about only the members of one genus, Macropus (ie 'big foot'). I use 'kangaroo' loosely to refer any member of the family, but better still is the word macropod, which I'll use from now on.

It was only by accident - literally - that we use the word kangaroo, that being the name for Eastern Grey Kangaroo in the Guugu Yimithirr language of north Queensland. It came to our attention very early on in the history of British involvement with eastern Australia, when James Cook's Endeavour struck a reef in 1770 near where Cooktown now stands, necessitating an extended stay, during which naturalist Joseph Banks learnt the word for the animal his greyhounds caught. I like to muse that had Cook sailed on by, as he'd intended, we'd almost certainly be calling them something like Patagarang or Badagarang, that being the word in the language of the people who lived in the area where the first settlement intruded on them, in 1788 where Sydney now stands. 'Wallaby' also comes from the language of the Sydney people (often referred to as Dharug, though that seems open to considerable doubt), apparently being the word for what we call Black-tailed or Swamp Wallaby Wallabia bicolor.

And to head off another oft-asked question, 'Wallaroo' is not a kangaroo-wallaby hybrid, but any of three species of mostly stocky muscular hill kangaroos. This is yet another Sydney language word. This term is used for M. robustus along the Great Dividing Range along the east coast, while the word Euro (from the Adnyamadhanha language of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia) is used throughout the inland for the same species.

As marsupials, embryos develop externally, but in the pouch (ie the marsupium). In the case of the big kangaroos time in the pouch varies with species from 200 to 300 days.

Agile Wallaby Macropus agilis with joey, Cape Hillsborough NP, tropical Queensland.
This one is starting to explore the world, but retreats to safety when it feels the need.

Eastern Grey Kangaroo, Canberra. The joey dives in head-first, then reorganises itself while inside.

More seasonal climate species, such as the Eastern and Western Grey Kangaroos M. fuliginosus, breed seasonally, but the extended pouch life means that the female is usually caring for a pouch young and a still dependent joey 'at foot', who follows her around and feeds from her. Arid land species, such as Red Kangaroos and Euros, tend to breed continuously. In either case the female produces quite different types of milk from the two teats (protected in the pouch), with one of them elongated to assist the youngster leaning in from outside to feed. Furthermore Red Kangaroo females will at any one time be not only caring for a pouch young and dependent joey, but will also be carrying a blastocyst (an embryo 'frozen' in development at only a few cells, some 0.25mm in diameter). This is released to grow when either the mother loses the pouch young, or it leaves the pouch as it grows.

There is of course a lot more to say, but you've probably had enough for now. Let's finish with a partial gallery of Macropus, though I fear I can only offer you about half of the thirteeen species.


Big male Eastern Kangaroo, Canberra. Like most of the big kangaroos (though not many smaller macropods), Eastern Greys have benefited greatly from agriculture, which supplies pastures and water points. They are expanding well out of their traditional range into the semi-arid zone, utilising farm dams.

Western Grey Kangaroos:
female, Cape Le Grande NP, Western Australia (above);
big male, Silverton, far western New South Wales, below.

Western Greys are really brown. They evolved in Western Australia when the south-west
was isolated from the east by arid conditions, and later spread east. It was only recognised
as a separate species from the Eastern Grey in recent decades.

Red Kangaroos M. rufus; Western Australia (above), south-west Queensland (below).
This beautiful animal is found throughout the arid inland.
Theoretically males are red and females blue-grey, but a substantial proportion of animals (varying
between populations) has the 'other' colour, or a blend.

Wallaroo, Nangar NP, New South Wales.
Wallaroos (mostly from the Great Dividing Range) are blue-grey, while Euros (from the drier inland)
are reddish grey, despite being the same species.
Note the shaggy coat and big ears.

Euros, Broken Hill, far western New South Wales (above)
and Idalia NP, south-western Queensland, (below).
Both habitats are typical, in rocky ranges.

Kangaroo cave painting, Nourlangie Rock, Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory.
In this sandstone habitat, the painting probably represents a Euro.

Antilopine Wallaroos (or Kangaroos) M. antilopinus, Kakadu NP.
This is the kangaroo of the tropical savannahs.


Agile Wallaby, Kakadu National Park. Also a tropical macropod, though one that goes into the brushes more than the Antilopine does.

Red-necked Wallabies, Namadgi NP, near Canberra, above and below.

The origin of the species name, rufogriseus, 'red and grey', is obvious.

In Tasmania (here Ben Lomond NP) the same species is known as Bennett's Wallaby.

Tammar (or Dama) Wallaby M. eugenii, Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
This engaging little animal is still common here, but scarce on the adjacent mainland
and in south-western Western Australia.

I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction to a genus that many of us here take for granted; in the not-too-distant future I'll talk about some of the other small macropods in other genera.

MEANTIME, BACK ON WEDNESDAY

A nasty early cold snap has hit Canberra, and we're thinking wistfully of the tropics. It's also been a wet cold snap, so I'm thinking most specifically of rain in the tropics, and it's only a few weeks since we were in the magnificent Kakadu National Park, in Arnhem Land in the 'Top End' of the Northern Territory. We got very wet there, but it was warm!

Kakadu National Park is indicated by the red arrow, a little east of Darwin
(we live way down in the south-east corner of the continent).
The Tropic of Capricorn is marked, running pretty much across the middle of the map.

January is definitely not tourist season in the Top End; while it's not especially hot - daytime maximum temperatures temperatures rarely vary beyond 32 to 34 degrees centigrade - humidity is usually close to 100% and it's standard for afternoon storms to roll in. But for a naturalist it's rich, the storms are magnificent, and of course there aren't many tourists...

Kakadu is one of the world's great parks, and at 20,000 square kilometres it's the largest national park in Australia (though some reserves in other categories are larger). Its significance has been recognised in its World Heritage Listing; it is one of only four places in Australia listed both for outstanding cultural and natural values. The Bininj Mungguy people and their ancestors have lived here for at least 50,000 years, making them the oldest living culture in the world.

Burrunggui (more generally known, though incorrectly, as Nourlangie Rock) in woodlands, Kakadu NP.
This site was and is of huge importance to Bininj Mungguy people and contains many significant art sites.

Habitats include vast savannah woodlands, monsoon forest, sandstone escarpment country, coastal habitats and rivers and associated wetlands. Kakadu supports a quarter of Australia's land mammal species and freshwater fish species and more than a third of its bird species.

Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon Petrophassa rufipennis Burrunggui.
This beautiful sandstone specialist is pretty much restricted to Kakadu.

However a focus for us, in a too-brief visit, was the Cooinda (or Yellow Waters) Billabongs wetland complex, famous for its guided boat tours run by traditional owners (or often by biologist guides trained by them). We actually went out twice ('second time half price' or something, but we didn't need much persuasion), in the early morning and late afternoon.

This was Gudjewg, the Monsoon Season, which roughly corresponds to January - March. (The Bininj Mungguy traditionally recognise six seasons, based on what nature is doing, and these have been pretty much adopted by whitefellas there too, where European-based concepts of seasons don't mean much!) From our point of view the upside of this was that the boats could leave the river channels and travel across the flood plains; the downside is that with water across the whole vast landscape, birds have scattered with it, and perhaps counter-intuitively the Wet isn't a great time for seeing waterbirds. (Much better near the end of the dry when they are concentrating on diminishing waterholes.)

However we can and will come back for the birds; the experience of gliding through flooded channels and over the plains was mesmerising (though it's not easy to tell where one stops and the other starts). Perhaps the pictures can tell their stories for a while now.

Home Billabong at dawn.

Channel, Cooinda.

Yellow Waters Billabong, where the channel opens out.

Yellow Waters Billabong.

Floodplain reflections, above and below;
in the photo above can be seen some infrastructure associated with a walking track used in The Dry.

While birds, and even crocodiles, which tend to lie under the overhanging vegetation when the water's high, aren't very evident, there are still interesting plants to enjoy - as well there might be, with over 2000 species known from the park.

River Pandanus Pandanus aquaticus, a species always found along streamlines.

Paperbarks Melaleuca spp., growing on the flood plain.

Water Lily Nymphaea violacea, found across northern Australia and in New Guinea.
This is a very important plant to local people, who eat roots, stems and seed heads, either raw or cooked.

Lotus Lily Nelumbo nucifera; also an important plant, for food and medicine, to the Bininj Mungguy.
Unlike the Water Lily however, this one is also found throughout much of Asia.

Native Bamboo Bambusa arnhemica; a Top End endemic and one of only three bamboos native to Australia.

Livistona benthamii, a palm found in the Top End, Queensland and New Guinea,
where it is always associated with waterways and flooding.

Freshwater Mangrove Barringtonia acutangula Family Lecythidaceae.
Found in seasonally flooded wetlands across northern Australia and into Asia.

Previous comments notwithstanding, there are always some birds to be seen.

The world's eight jacana species are always a delight;
the Comb-crested Jacana Irediparra gallinacea is Austalia's only species,
though it is also found in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Here is a view of the remarkably extended toes which are the key feature of the group
and which enable to them to famously walk on lily pads.

Eastern Great Egret Ardea modesta, in full magnificent breeding flush.

The sky was criss-crossed with skeins of Glossy Ibis Plegadis falcinellus (above and below)
more than I'd ever seen before in one place. I have no idea where they were going to or from though.

White-bellied Sea Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster, found from India to Australia.
Always magnificent, this one was set off beautifully by the darkening storm clouds behind it.

By now, with sheet lightning blazing and thunder rumbling ever more loudly, it was
time to head for home; a small metal boat on water isn't the best place in such conditions.

Immediately after this photo was taken, it was definitely time to pack the camera away;
the boat had a canopy but the now torrential rain was coming in at 45 degrees.
Until then the front seats had seemed a very good place to be...

It was a great excursion nonetheless, and we'll remember it with both fondness and awe.

Tropics in the Wet? Yes please!

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

This is the latest in an irregular series on some of my favourite trees, of which there is no shortage. The most recent instalment was here, from where you can follow back if you wish.

Sound doesn't usually feature heavily in talking about plants, but casuarinas are different. The inside of a grove of casuarinas whispers; it's like standing surrounded by aeolian harps.

Belah Casuarina pauper, Gawler Ranges NP, South Australia.
Belah forms woodlands across dry inland Australia; it used to be known as C. cristata,but the species has been split into two, with cristata found from central Queensland
to central western New South Wales.

The reason for the whispering lies in the foliage, which superficially resembles pine needles; indeed people often mistake them for pines. These 'needles' however are branchlets; look closely and you'll see that each branchlet (or cladode technically, for branches which perform a plant's photosynthetic function) is ringed with tiny teeth. These teeth are the remnants of the leaves, presumably reduced to contain water loss in their often arid environment.

Belah cladodes and leaflets, White Dam Conservation Park, South Australia.
If you enlarge the photo the rings of leaflets are quite obvious.

Australia though is only relatively recently a dry continent, so where did drought-resistant casuarinas come from? I think the answer to that lies in their distribution; while Australia is their stronghold, with some 70 of the roughly 100 species, they are found throughout the western Pacific. Seashores are one of the most ferociously droughted habitats, irrespective of rainfall - plants must effectively compete with soil salt for water. (This is a bit crude, but it'll do for our current requirements.) A plant like a casuarina which evolved on the shore would be pre-adapted to living in the dry inland as the country dried out.

Belah and Bluebush Maireana sedifolia, White Dam Conservation Park, South Australia.
I think this one is interesting because bluebush is a member of the huge saltbush family Chenopodiaceae,
which I suspect also evolved in coastal environments, where some species are still found.

Some species of course have never left the shores. Horsetail Casuarina (or Sheoak - we'll come back to that name in a while) Casuarina equisitefolia is found on beaches from south-east Asia to north-eastern Australia.

Horsetail Casuarina (and male Great Frigatebird!), Lady Elliot Island, Queensland.


Swamp Oak Casuarina glauca, Cullendulla Nature Reserve, New South Wales. Here it forms an interface with the mangroves on the right; while the mangroves are flooded with seawater twice daily, the casuarinas are only inundated at very high tides. They cope with it perfectly well though. This one has become a serious invasive weed in the Florida Everglades.

We can get a hint from the previous picture (the Horsetail Casuarina) too as to why the great Linnaeus used the name Casuarina when he based the genus on this species; he thought the foliage resembled the hairy-looking plumage of the Cassowary! Personally I think he worked too many late nights...

In the late 1980s the late and highly respected Lawrie Johnson of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, split the hitherto single genus Casuarina into four; two of those genera are relatively small and barely represented in Australia (by one very restricted tropical Queensland species) but Allocasuarina, distinguished most obviously by larger and knobbier fruits, now represents more than half of what were previously Casuarina. Not everyone is happy with this change, but most authorities go along with it. I use 'casuarina' in lower case as a group name for the family.

I mentioned that casuarinas are quite pine-like at first glance, but they are legitimate flowering plants. As they are wind-pollinated however the flowers are fairly inconspicuous. Moreover most species have separate male and female plants (that is, they are dioecious); the rest have separate male and female flowers on the one plants (monoecious).

Scrub Sheoak Allocasuaria distyla female flowers and cones, Morton NP, New South Wales.


Black Sheoak A. littoralis male flowers Nowra, New South Wales.

The name sheoak is of vexed origin. It is widely supposed to be an indication that the timber was regarded by early British settlers here as of inferior quality to that of European oak, but I'm not at all convinced. I believe it is one of the many names of indigenous origin which later became anglicised as the origin was forgotten, and a new back-filling origin created. I have several bases for this belief, all of them of course circumstantial (as is the traditional explanation). For one thing the wood was actually valued quite highly. The Sydney Gazette of 1803 reported that "This wood is allowed to rank in Europe with the mahogany of Jamaica." That wood was very highly prized for furniture in particular. I point too to the occasionally encountered form shiock, and the existence of the name buloke for some inland species (notably C. luehmanii) - surely too much of a coincidence? Moreover the term he-oak is also found, though there is no suggestion the timber of these species is superior. And I find convincing the evidence of Richard Howitt, who in his book Impressions of Australia Felix in 1845 wrote quite explicitly "Shiac is the native name - vulgarised to she-oak".

I don't doubt that some readers will be quite sure I'm wrong - and they may be right, though I think we can agree that we'll never be entirely certain.

To wrap up, here are some more casuarinas, which I hope you can enjoy as much as I do.

Desert Oak Allocasuarina decaisneana at sunset, Uluru, central Australia.
More on this wonderful species here.

Allocasuarina huegliana Boyagin Rock, Western Australia.

Drooping Sheoak Allocasuarina verticillata, above and below.
Above, Rosedale, New South Wales.
Below, Freycinet NP, Tasmania.

River Oaks Casuarina cunninghamiana, Deua NP, New South Wales.
This species always grows along near-coastal stream lines, forming riverine forests.

Thanks for bearing with me; I hope you can enjoy a casuarina soon.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

Unlike the pink situation with animals, I am almost overwhelmed with choice for pink flowers to share with you. I was going to prune severely and just offer one posting but further thought suggested that we can afford to indulge ourselves and wallow in their beauty for three whole postings!

A couple of years ago a rather silly (though science-based) argument was waged on line based on the premise that pink isn't really a colour (because it's not on the light spectrum, ie in the rainbow). This seems like an argument for someone with too much spare time - ie not me! - but I have a reason in this context for wondering just what pink is. You see, most of the flowers I'll be showcasing in this and forthcoming postings are insect pollinated. As a non-artist if I wanted to create pink from basic paints I'd just combine red with white. However insects don't see well at the red end of the spectrum - their strength is at the blue-violet end, and well beyond into what we poor limited creatures have to vaguely lump as 'ultra-violet'. So what's going on with all these pink flowers? I think the answer lies in other definitions of pink - magenta for instance (which is sometimes used interchangably with pink) is defined as being between red and blue, or violet-red. Presumably the insects (many of which have much better colour resolution than we do) are responding to the violet part of the reflected light; why the red element is so often included is a question worth exploring, but it's beyond me I'm afraid.

We do know that most of them are due to a class of pigments called anthocyanins.

Meantime, let's just enjoy a pink parade.

Pigface Carpobrotus rossii Family Aizoaceae, Lincoln NP, South Australia.
Here the pink 'petals' are in fact sterile stamens, or staminodes.

Gomphrena canescens Family Amaranthaceae, Litchfield NP, south-west of Darwin.
The floor of this tropical woodland was carpeted with pink.

Poison Morning Glory Ipomoea muelleri, Family Convolvulaceae, south-west Queensland.
There are some 40 Australian members of this huge genus which includes sweet potatoes.

River Rose Bauera rubioides Family Cunoniaceae (or Baueraceae), Bundanoon, New South Wales.
A common and lovely shrub along streamlines in sandstone country.

Blueberry Ash Elaeocarpus reticulatus Family Elaeocarpaceae, Meroo NP, New South Wales, a tree of rainforests and wet gullies in moist eucalypt forests of the east coast of Australia.
An ancient Gondwanan family, with members also in Madagascar and South America.

Coopernookia barbata Family Goodeniaceae, Bundanoon, New South Wales.
The odd genus name comes from the small town of Coopernook in northern New South Wales.
Until 1968 it was included in the large genus Goodenia.

Sturt's Desert Rose Gossypium sturtianum Family Malvaceae, Alice Springs, central Australia.
This beautiful member of the cotton family is the floral emblem of the Northern Territory.

Eremophila miniata Family Myoporaceae (or more recently, often included in Scrophulariaceae),
Norseman, Western Australia.
The Eremophilas ('desert lovers') include some of my very favourite flowers and it was not easy choosing just one!
This species comes in both white and pink.

Pale Pink Boronia Boronia floribunda Family Rutacaeae, Bundanoon, New South Wales.
There are many richer pink boronias to choose from but I love the delicacy of this one.
See here for an account of the young Italian for whom it was named.


Eyebright Euphrasia caudata Family Scrophulariaceae, Kosciuszko NP, New South Wales The eyebrights, named because a concoction was believed to relieve eye inflammation in Europe, have curious round-the-world distributions at similar latitudes in both hemispheres. They are partially parasitic on the roots of other plants, so are nearly impossible to cultivate.

Black-eyed Susan Tetratheca thymifolia Family Tremandraceae, Bundanoon, New South Wales.
Named confusingly because the 'other' black-eyed susans from elsewhere in the world are all yellow, as far as I know;
maybe the name just arose spontaneously here?


Collaea sp. Family Fabaceae, Machu Picchu, Peru. One of a genus of somewhere between 9 and 17 pea species from across South America.

Passiflora trifolia Family Passifloraceae, Sacsayhuaman, Peru.

And with this lovely passionfruit from the Sacred Valley, we'll close this chapter of our tribute to pink flowers.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY
Note that by the time you read this I'll be in Patagonia (this is 'one I prepared earlier');
this means that I won't be able to respond to any comments you care to make until I get back.

Ecuador's natural values are well-known and for very good reasons; tropical lowland rainforest, Andean cloud forests, alpine páramo above the tree line, and of course the ever magnetic and fabulous Galápagos. But dry deciduous forests, where no rain falls for half the year? Well they certainly exist and support their own suites of plants and animals, but there is a reason you may not be familiar with them - most of them have gone, converted to crops, stock pasture and cities. They grow along the southern near-Pacific coastal strip, and in a land where most of the surface area is mountainous or Amazon rainforest, the flat fertile coastal plains have inevitably attracted intensive agriculture. The rich volcanic soils washed down from the Andes now support crops of bananas, sugar cane, rice, cocoa and cattle. Tiny Ecuador is the world's leading banana producer and exporter, and the eighth largest exporter of cocoa. And, in the last decade the insidious palm oil industry has begun taking up land in the northern sector of the coastal strip. The remnants of the dry forests now represent barely 5% of what they once were.

But despite all this, all is not lost.

Cerro Blanco Reserve, on the outskirts of Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city.
It is a 2500 hectare private reserve, owned by a large cement company and staffed and
researched by volunteers, many of whom are students.
The big deciduous trees are Bottle-trunk Ceibas Ceiba trichistandra.

South of Guayaquil, by the highway to Machala, is the much bigger Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve of 35,000 hectares. The majority is dry forest, but not all; manglares means mangroves in Spanish and the reserve protects 8000 hectares of mangroves, another highly threatened habitat in Ecuador. (Here the burgeoning prawn farming industry is the chief culprit.)

Mangroves and dry forest, Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve.

There are other small scattered reserves too, such as the wonderful Jocotoco Foundation's Yunguilla Reserve near Cuenca; this 370 hectare reserve was purchased to protect the last known population of the Critically Endangered Pale-headed Brush Finch Atlapetes pallidiceps. Although I've been fortunate enough to have fleeting views of this very rare bird, I'm afraid I can't offer you a photo!

Looking across Yunguilla Reserve.
Due to Jocotoco's efforts, the finch has been downgraded (or upgraded surely!) from Critically Endangered
to Endangered; nonetheless there are still only 250 birds left, all of them here.

What lives in the these forests? Well, rather a lot of species still, despite their decline. Here are some of them. I apologise for some of these photos, but most of the species are scarce and I felt it worth introducing them anyway.


Male Northern Violaceous (or Gartered) Trogon Trogon caligatus Cerro Blanco.Trogons are a delight, especially to those of us who don't normally see them. They form a tropical Family (and indeed Order) found especially in South America but also across Africa and Asia.

Saffron Finch Sicalis flaveola Cerro Blanco Reserve. It is now regarded as a tanager;
it is widespread, but is too beautiful not to include here.

Laughing Falcon Herpetotheres cachinnans Cerro Blanco Reserve.
A species not restricted to these dry forests; a snake and lizard specialist.

Tropical Gnatcatcher Polioptila plumbea, Cerro Blanco Reserve.
One of the numerous tyrant-flycatchers, an ancient South American
passerine grouping.

Pacific (or Peruvian) Pygmy Owl Glaucidium peruanum, Cerro Blanco Reserve.
This tiny owl, often found by following mobbing small birds, is a dry forest specialist, though it has
also adapted to urban living as the forests are cleared.

Streak-headed Woodcreeper Lepidocolaptes souleyetii, Cerro Blanco Reserve.
The woodcreepers are trunk and branch probers, funariids or oven birds, the 'other' big group
of South American sub-oscines, ancient passerines. Most woodcreepers are wet forest birds,
bu this one specialises in dry forests.

White-tailed Jay Cyanocorax mystacalis, Cerro Blanco Reserve.
A scarce species apparently declining further through habitat clearance.

Grey-cheeked Parakeet Brotogeris pyrrhoptera, Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve.|
Loss of the dry forest has led to this subtly-hued little parrot being listed as Endangered.
This reserve and Cerro Blanco are two of only four reserves that protect them, including one in Peru.

White-necked Puffbird Notharchus hyperrhynchus Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve.|
Again, most puffbirds live in wetter forests; this one is described as 'rare to uncommon' in Ecuador.

Mantled Howler Monkey Alouatta palliata, Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve.|
While common in South America, this species is not at all common further south, and this reserve
is a stronghold for them in Ecuador.

Tegu, Family Teiidae, Cerro Blanco Reserve.

Unidentified skink, Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve.|
I love that tail!

Cracker Butterflies Hamadryas sp., Cerro Blanco Reserve, above and below.
Their camouflage is superb.
The name comes from the sound of a displaying male's wings!

Colonial spider web, Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve.|

To my shame I have no idea what these lovely flowers are at Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve,
but I find them too interesting to omit. I'd appreciate any assistance you can give.

I was intrigued too by this epiphytic cactus in the same reserve;
the concept was entirely new to me, but maybe I just don't get out enough...

You probably wouldn't got to Ecuador specifically for the dry forests, but when you do go it would be a great shame to miss them.

BACK NEXT THURSDAY

I'm away for May, accompanying a natural history tour to tropical Queensland.
I don't have time to set up full postings for the time I'll be away, but in the hope
of keeping you, my valued readers, while I'm absent, I'm going to post a few brief
perspectives - snapshots perhaps - of some wildlife I've come across in cities.
Ioften leave my camera behind when I go out in towns, so I can think of many possible subjects
for this series that I can't offer you.In particular I can't offer a posting on an Australian city!
(My home town of Canberra doesn't count, as it's known as the Bush Capital, and it'd be too easy...)

No-one visiting Ecuador is likely to spend much time in Guayaquil for its own sake. It is the country's largest city, crowded and industrial, and home to at least four million people. Moreover it burnt extensively in 1895, so lacks the feeling of age that Quito and Cuenca carry. Nonetheless its location 60km from the coast on the Guayas River, the largest west coast South American river, ensures that there is wildlife, especially birds, to be seen. The riverfront esplanade development known as the Malecon 2000 is a must for anyone visiting Guayaquil. The next four photos were taken along the Malecon.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Nyctanassa violacea.These handsome herons roost in trees above the Malecon and feed unconcernedly below the walkways.

Pacific Parrotlet Forpus coelestis.This little delight was photographed from a restaurant table on the Malecon.

Saffron Finch Sicalis flaveola; despite the name it seems that it's actually a tanager!
I couldn't resist this outrageous clash of colours.


Tropical Kingbird Tyrannus melancholicus.One of the most familiar birds throughout Ecuador (and well beyond) but there's something special about seeing it backed by city buildings.

But even away from the river, there is wildlife alongside and above the chaotic streets.

These Red-Masked Parakeets Psittacara erythrogenys were investigating and squabbling over this
pipe over the street, presumably considering it a potential nest hollow.
Shamefully this parrot's numbers are in decline due to the demands of the pet trade.

But one of the most startling aspects of Guayaquil is the presence of a large population of Green Iguanas Iguana iguana in Seminario Park, surrounded by busy streets. They are quite unfazed by people, lounging in the trees and coming down to dine on lettuce provided.

On weekends locals crowd in to see them, and the whole thing is quite surreal!

And that's all for this time. I hope you've found it better than nothing! And when in Guayaquil, it really is worth taking a few hours to stroll the Malecon, have lunch there - and of course visit the iguanas.

BACK ON THURSDAY

I'm away for May, accompanying a natural history tour to tropical Queensland.
I don't have time to set up full postings for the time I'll be away, but in the hope
of keeping you, my valued readers, while I'm absent, I'm going to post a few brief
perspectives - snapshots perhaps - of some wildlife I've come across in cities.
Ioften leave my camera behind when I go out in towns, so I can think of many possible subjects
for this series that I can't offer you.In particular I can't offer a posting on an Australian city!
(My home town of Canberra doesn't count, as it's known as the Bush Capital, and it'd be too easy...)

The capital of Argentina is a dense teeming city of over three million people. One striking aspect of it to visitors used to cities of houses is that the entire city seemingly comprises apartment buildings; it really is densely populated. We recently had the opportunity to spend a couple of days there and despite constantly crowded streets we found little parks where there was wildlife - especially birds - living in the roar of traffic.


Rufous Hornero Furnarius rufus. This handsome and engaging ovenbird is common in the parks, and has learnt to benefit from human developments in eastern South America. It has been designated as Argentina's national bird!


Rufous-bellied Thrushes Turdus rufiventris are also quite common. I'm guessing the somewhat scruffy character below is a young bird, but I'm woefully ignorant of the whole of eastern South America (so far anyway).

Picazuro Pigeon Patagioenas picazuro. Despite its resemblance to Feral Pigeons
(also common in BA, as everywhere) this belongs to a separate - though closely related - genus,
to which many familiar South American pigeons belong.
My assumption is that the common name (and the scientific, presumably derived from it) refers to a blue bill.

Guira Cuckoo Guira guira.This was a bird I was particularly keen to see, having seen photos and read about it, but we were surprised
to find one in a particularly small and unsalubrious park. Our surprise was partly due to the fact that
there was just one - this non-parasitic cuckoo is noted for being very sociable, feeding in sometimes
large groups on the ground.

We also watched a pair of American Kestrels preparing to roost on an aerial across the road from our hotel window, but it was too dark for successful photos by then.

Buenos Aires is a beautiful city - though everyone we spoke to immediately warned us to be very careful of thieves - and the architecture, museums, people, food and drink are all highly worthy of exploration. But keep on eye out for the wildlife too.

BACK ON THURSDAY

Continuing an old tradition (well OK, 12 months old...), I'm going to celebrate the last day of 2014 by selecting just one photo taken in each month of the year. I never make any claims of artistry or anything beyond basic competence for my photos; these are chosen because they bring back particular memories (and to be honest in a couple of instances because I didn't take many photos in that month!). In general too I've tried to select photos I've not otherwise featured this year.

At a personal level it's been a good year - I'm at an age where I need to make sure that every year's a good one - and these photos reflect that. More broadly it's been a bad year to be Australian, having to take responsibility for a government which despises (and/or doesn't understand) science, has dumped on its head our self-image as a compassionate welcoming country to those in need, and which is insisting that the poorest members of society take brutal economic cuts so that big business need take no responsibility at all. This is not the time or place for a rant beyond that; just bear in mind that we're not all like that...

JANUARY

Yellow-billed Spoonbill Platalea flavipes, Jerrabomberra Wetlands Nature Reserve, Canberra.
Taken on a morning visit to one of my favourite local sites, where this beautiful bird had finished feeding for the
time being and was carefully cleaning and aligning each feather in turn.
Another favourite pic from January can be seen here, in the form of a lovely cicada.

FEBRUARY


Lowland Copperhead Austrelaps superbus, Bruny Island, Tasmania. Our trip to Tasmania (just us!) was one of the year's highlights and I could have chosen any of dozens of pics, but the detail of this, especially its air-tasting tongue, appeals to me, as does the memory of this attractive, venomous but generally very amiable snake crossing a country road.

MARCH

Well OK, this is one month when I seem not to have taken many pics! (Perhaps I was busy working to make up for the holiday.) However this unusual aggregation of Meat Ants Iridomyrmex purpureus on a morning walk (a training session for volunteer guides) at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve did catch my attention.
I still can't really explain it, unless a nest had been flooded or otherwise destroyed.

APRIL

Rosy Rozites Cortinarius roseolilacinus, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Good memories of another walk at Tidbinbilla,
this one an evening stroll when fungi were abundant following good late summer rains. I could have offered a dozen
different fungi here from that walk but I love the colour (and the associated species name) of this, the soil still sitting on the surface from where it forced its way upward, and the tantalising nibble taken from the edge. My bet would be on a wallaby, but I can't be sure; whatever it was, it was clearly not inspired to finish the cap off!

MAY

Sunset on the domes of Kata Tjuta, central Australia, through flowering spinifex Triodia sp.
I am spoilt for choice of pics from May, as we took a tour to central Australia and these deserts inspire me
as few other environments can. I could have offered you many animal and plant photos, and
lots of other scenery, but I love watching the sun rise and set over these magnificent domes,
and spinifex hummocks are a key part of arid Australia.

JUNE

Australasian Bittern Botaurus poiciloptilus, McKellar Wetlands, Canberra.
This one was easy to choose (though I like some taken in the snowy Brindabellas too), as I can claim
it as the first photo taken in the ACT ever published of this very cryptic and threatened species.
('Published' in this case, on the Canberra Ornithologists' Group email discussion group line.)
The last sighting here was 70 years ago, so no living birder had ever seen one here.

JULY

Eastern Yellow Robin Eopsaltria australis, Deua National Park, New South Wales.
A common bird in this part of the world, but a wholly engaging one; this one was very much a part
of our now-annual getaway to a lovely little cabin (no electricity or phone available) on the edge of this
big wild park in the mountains between here and the coast. This stance is typical of this robin,
as it 'perch and pounce' hunts. It was quite uninterested in us sitting outside just a couple of metres away.

AUGUST

Platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.
The only half-decent picture I've ever managed of the marvellous monotreme;
the Sanctuary wetlands at Tidbinbilla are the local hotspot for them.

SEPTEMBER

Hoverfly, Family Syrphidae, at Grasstree, Xanthorrhoea glauca, Goobang NP, New South Wales.
One of my personal highlights of the year was being invited to be the after-dinner speaker at the
Fifth Annual Malleefowl Forum in Dubbo, 400k from here (no, the audience comprised people
who are studying the wonderful birds, not the Malleefowl themselves!). En route we drove through Goobang NP,
an important reserve in the Hervey Range. The Xanthorrhoeas were flowering profusely, huge
spikes two or three metres high, and pollinators were excited, especially the abundant hoverflies.
I've actually got a better pic of the fly perched on the flower, but I like the fact that
this one is doing what it does best - hovering.

OCTOBER

Anaconda Eunectes murinus, Napo Lodge, Yasuní NP, Ecuador.
A difficult month for which to select just one photo, as I spent it accompanying a group
of naturalists through Ecuador. However I'd never seen this superb animal in half a dozen visits
to Amazonia and this was a real thrill; it was estimated by the locals as 3-4 metres long
and was admired from a canoe as it rested on floating vegetation. Note the head in the centre.

NOVEMBER

Speckled Warbler Chthonicola sagittatus, Narrabundah Hill, Canberra.
This month provided the opposite problem for me, in that I hardly took any photos
in the four weeks I was home between South American trips. It's fair to say that this little chap
probably wouldn't have got a guernsey in other circumstances, but I'm glad it did. We went for a walk on our
local hill and were very pleased to see a pair of this pretty little threatened woodland species
(albeit it in exotic pines); eventually one paused for just long enough to enable me to get one snap in.
Currently it is regarded as the only member of its genus.

DECEMBER

Marine Otter Lontra felina (and lunch), Puñihuil, Isla de Chiloé, Chile.
Patagonia offers amazing scenic photography opportunities, but in the end I settled on this
fortuitous shot of a rare species from a small boat off the Puñihuil Islands.
Marine Otters are found along the southern west coast of South America and just around the corner
into Argentina. They are essentially a fresh-water otter which has evolved to a marine lifestyle;
they are not at all the same as the big Sea Otters of western North America.

So, that's one view of my year; I hope yours was as happy and naturally enriched. I thank you for taking the trouble to read some of my musings over the year; on Boxing Day I was astonished to note that 100,000 people have visited these pages over the past couple of years. I realise that this is a modest number by blogging standards, but I am humbled and amazed by it.

May your 2015 open brightly and happily, and I hope to share some of it with you.

BACK ON TUESDAY TO START ANOTHER YEAR!

Douala, the largest city in Cameroon with over three million inhabitants, is a complete shock to anyone unfamiliar with cities in the less-developed world. My first diary entry when I was there included these observations: "What an amazing, appalling place – and I’m on the edge of the commercial sector! Vast, throbbing, noisy, frantic, hustling chaos. Footpaths are just bumps at the sides of the roads, useful for parking. The roads are dominated by thousands of seriously clapped-out old yellow Toyota taxis and motos – not a helmet in sight of course and commonly three on board. ... surreal lunacy."

This was the view from my hotel window; early morning, so still fairly quiet.

Typical traffic on the way out of town, above and below.
Note the state of the roads - normal throughout the country.

Birding by a very polluted little wetland on the way out of town.
It's different.

You won't be surprised to hear that this offering is pretty short on wildlife, though there is probably more than I saw and certainly more than I photographed - there are trees, but I wasn't inclined to take my camera or binoculars with me very often on the crowded streets, and it was raining a fair bit of the time.

One of the most dramatic wildlife spectacles comes in the evening when the Straw-coloured Fruit Bats Eidolon helvum appear. I had excellent views from my hotel window.

They seemed to be coming mostly from the direction of the Wouri River estuary, presumably
roosting in the mangroves.

However there were even some roosting in the few trees in the hotel grounds.

Just two of the numerous bats flying past my window.
They occur across sub-Saharan Africa, but seem to be declining.

In the grounds of the nearby chaotic service station I was astonished to see large colourful lizards zipping about under cars on the oil-slicked asphalt.

Male Common or Rainbow Agama Agama agama in full breeding splendour.
This one was actually in the hotel grounds; as I mentioned I wasn't keen on taking the camera into the streets.

We also ventured into an industrial area near the river for some more birds, though my most abiding memory is of a swelling chorus of song which materialised as a troop of army recruits being exercised through the streets. A couple of Grey Parrots winging overhead assured me I really was in west Africa!

Reichenbach's Sunbird Anabathmis reichenbachii near the Wouri River;
it is found across central-west Africa.
And yes I agree - it would have been a much more desirable photo if it had a beak!

And on that somewhat uninspiring note I'll end here. You certainly won't be going to Douala for the wildlife; indeed you probably won't be going there at all unless en route to somewhere else. Which is in itself a reason to introduce it here, albeit so briefly.

BACK ON THURSDAY

Puerto Maldonado is not a particularly attractive city, though it is in the Amazon basin of south-east Peru and on the confluence of the Madre de Dios and Tambopata Rivers. But it is a sprawling, dusty (or muddy), aggressively growing frontier town. In the last twenty years it has grown from less than 30,000 people to over 100,000 and it's still expanding rapidly, faster than infrastructure can keep up. It was a logging town but all the readily accessible timber in the immediate vicinity has been cut and last I heard there was only one mill still operating. On the other hand there are reputedly 30,000 small-scale gold miners based there, using mercury to extract the metal, to the great detriment of themselves and the environment. Insidiously too the gas industry has been sniffing around in recent years, as elsewhere in Amazonia, and the government is sympathetic, irrespective of the fact that much the land under exploration is world-class national park, and land supporting indigenous people who don't want to have contact with 'civilisation'. The controversial big bridge across the river at Pto Maldonado, and the associated new Intercontinental Highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, smashing through formerly pristine primary rainforest, are both further causes for concern and facilitators of further growth of the city.

Puerto Maldonado streetscape; this is near the city centre where things are more established,
and in the relative quiet of early morning.

The reason that so many outsiders pour through the airport and waterfront every year however is that Pto Maldonado is the gateway for many tourists to the rivers, parks and lodges of southern Peruvian Amazon basin. And despite all the real problems spelt out above it is still surrounded by rainforest remnants at least, and wildlife is not at all uncommon in the city.

Even the central plaza supports various species, especially before the traffic really gets going.

Curious Ruddy Pigeon Patagioenas subvinace, town centre.

Tropical Pewee Contopus cinereus.Like the Ruddy Pigeon this little monarch flycatcher is widespread but it is always good to see
native birds in the middle of busy cities. It too is at home in the central plaza.

Streaked Flycatcher Myiodynastes maculatus ornamenting a Puerto Maldonado roof line.
Like the pewee it is a member of the huge monarch flycatcher assemblage, a group of the ancient sub-oscine
passerines which elsewhere in the world comprise only a few species, but which dominate in South America.

Palm Tanager Thraupis palmarum.Common and widespread but welcome as a reminder of what was here before the city.

The most remarkable example of wildlife I saw in Puerto Maldonado however was in a tree in the hotel grounds near the river - it was very much a case of 'welcome to Amazonia'!

Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth Bradypus variegatus with the city visible behind.
The species is known to adapt to disturbed habitat, but I never expected to see one somewhere this disturbed.
And the fact that she has a baby (visible on her belly) is a good indicator that she's not alone here!

A closer view of the same animal. This really was a thrill.

So, as with the other cities so far featured in this series, you probably wouldn't even go to Puerto Maldonado as a visitor other than as a means to being somewhere else; but if you do, it's definitely worth keeping your eyes open...

BACK ON THURSDAY

Lima, the capital of Peru, is a vast throbbing intimidating metropolis on the Pacific. Its growing population of nearly 10 million lives constantly under the influence of the cold Humboldt Current, with almost no rainfall (less than 50mm, mostly in the form of winter morning misty drizzle) and a persistent fog hanging over the metropolis, especially near the sea. In July the city sees on average less than an hour of sunshine a day. The outskirts in many places comprise seriously squalid slums of poor rural Peruvians hoping for work.

Typical fog, courtesy of the Humboldt Current, over the Lima coast.

No, I'm afraid I wouldn't want to live there, but there are always some birds to be seen too.


Eared Dove Zenaida auriculata, Lima. This is an abundant bird throughout much of South America, and is quite happy in cities including Lima. Bizarrely to someone from this part of the world, the unfortunate dove supports a major 'sporting' shooting industry in Argentina.

West Peruvian Dove Zenaida meloda, Lima.
Another common urban bird in Lima, also found throughout the Peruvian coastal strip,
overlapping into adjacent Ecuador and Chile.

By the sea to the south of the city is an extensive bleak area of industrial spoil and sometimes polluted swamp land which can be surprisingly rich in birds.

Grey-headed Gulls Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus, Lima coastal marshland.
This pretty little gull has a curious distribution, in both Africa and South America.

The seaside suburb of Miraflores is definitely one of the richer, pleasanter and greener areas of Lima, and some less expected urban birds can be found in its parks.

Amazilia Hummingbird Amazilia amazilia, Miraflores park.
This little bird has proved a ready adapter to urban living.
I loved the fact that it was preening in a Callistemon sp., an Australian bottlebrush. This genus of bushes
is common in Australia where it is also widely planted; it has evolved to bird pollination and I'd
be surprised if hummingbirds didn't also avail themselves of it.

Long-tailed Mockingbird Mimus longicaudatus, Miraflores seaside park.
This is a coastal species from Peru and Ecuador and Miraflores is a noted site for it.
My readers in the Americas will doubtless be amused to hear that this was the
first mockingbird I ever saw.

Unlike some of the other cities featured in this mini-series, Lima has many attractions for tourists, though wildlife isn't usually touted among them. That's no reason not to keep your eyes open while you're there though.

BACK NEXT THURSDAY, LIVE!

This is another in the sporadic series on colour in nature. You can find the most recent one here and trace it back therefrom. However for this particular installment you might also like to cast a glance at the first posting on blue in nature; the reason for this is that iridescent colours - where parts of an animal appear to shine, and even to change colour with a slight change of viewing angle - are formed in somewhat similar ways to blue (and combinations of blue, such as give yellow and purple). The colours have nothing to do with pigments, but are down to structures in the feather or skin of the animal, which reflect certain wavelengths.

However while non-iridescent blue for instance is always the same blue from any angle, iridescent structures give varying colours and rely on layers of cells that have different light-reflecting or refracting properties. We see the different colours by looking at different angles, and seeing light coming from the different surfaces. Moreover subtle aspects of these adjacent layers can cause effects to be reinforced or neutralised. Iridescence relies crucially on a reflecting base layer of melanin, or the light just keeps going through.

An oil layer on water produces similar effects, with light reflecting back from the bottom surface and the top one, creating a rainbow effect as light wavelengths suppress or reinforce each other. (The word is based on Greek iris, a rainbow.)

For a more thorough analysis of the basis of the phenomenon in nature, this is a very comprehensive review.

Iridescent speculum in the wing of the Australian Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosus.The photos above and below were of the same bird, taken just seconds apart.

It seems that iridescence can be used by species to convey information about the individual which includes sex, age, fitness as a mate, fitness to defend territory against an intruder and even species identification for very similar species. It may also play a role in camouflage (breaking up outlines, or in underwater situations), scare or confuse predators, for instance by making it hard to judge the exact distance to the prey, or by alternately flashing and hiding wing patterns in flight. Blues, purples, greens and bronze dominate iridescent colours.

But for the rest of today, let's just enjoy some examples of iridescence in bird feathers - leaving aside for now just one very important family which employs iridescence so comprehensively that they warrant their own posting next time. Let's continue with ducks, which are significant employers of the technique, on heads and backs as well as in wing speculums.

Feral Mallard Anas platyrhynchos, Canberra.

Chiloé Wigeons Anas sibilatrix, Puerto Natales, Chile.
The male is on the right.

Male Muscovy Duck Cairina moschata, Manu NP, Peru.
Even in the dull rainforest light which is my excuse for a poor photo, the iridescent back gleams.

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata, Taronga Park Zoo, Sydney.

The most widespread ibis in the world is the iridescent Glossy Ibis Plegadis falcinellus, but it is not the only iridescent ibis.

Glossy Ibis, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra.

Hadada Ibis Bostrychia hagedash, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.
A very familiar African bird, named for its compellingly loud call.

Austral Parakeet Enicognathus ferrugineus, Cuevo del Milodon, southern Chile.
The lightly iridescent head of this parrot is found further south than any other parrot's,
to very tip of South America.

Pigeons also feature impressive iridescence, mostly in the wings in Australia at least.

Common Bronzewing Phaps chalcoptera, Canberra.A very common bird, including in urban situations, across most of Australia.

Crested Pigeon Ocyphaps lophotes, displaying in central Australia.
Another very common and familiar bird which probably thereby often fails to receive the admiration it deserves
(though this one wasn't interested in human admirers!).

Spinifex Pigeon Geophaps plumifera, central Australia.
The similarity of the display of these two species is striking.

Squatter Pigeon Geophaps scripta, Mareeba, Queensland.

Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris, Canberra.
An unwelcome exotic here, but the green to purple iridescence of the breast is still striking.

Greater Blue-eared Glossy Starling Lamprotornis chalybaeus, one of the
many stunningly iridescent African starlings.

Ethiopian Swallows Hirundo aethiopica, Waza NP, northern Cameroon.
Many swallows show such iridescence.

The green iridescent sheen of the wing covers of the male Great Frigatebird Fregata minor is one feature that distinguishes it from similar species. Here on Genovesa, Galápagos.

Leaden Flycatcher male Myiagra rubecula, Canberra.
This familiar bird catching the light took me by surprise; in most lights it's a more sombre and well, leaden colour.

Malachite Kingfisher Alcedo cristata, Lake Mburo NP, Uganda.
Kingfishers also commonly display iridescence, but I especially love the highlights of this one.

Masked Flowerpiercer Diglossa cyanea, Yanacocha Reserver, Ecuador.
These lovely birds 'cheat' by stabbing the base of a flower to steal nectar without
offering pollination services.

Shining Bronze-Cuckoo Chrysococcyx lucidus, Canberra, one of the world's smallest cuckoos.
All bronze-cuckoos have the strikingly iridescent wings.

Superb Fairy-wren Malurus cyaneus, Canberra.
One of south-east Australia's most familiar and loved birds whose iridescence
is often not recognised - until the sun catches them and 'flash'!

I hope this has brightened up your day a little, as preparing it has mine.

I'm off again for a couple of weeks, but will then be back for a while with hopefully lots of natural history blogging material.

MEANTIME I'LL LEAVE SOMETHING MORE FOR YOU ON IRIDESCENCE, FEATURING THE AMAZING HUMMINGBIRDS, ON SATURDAY 13 JUNE.

Last time I revelled (as I hope you did) in some birds that flaunt iridescent colours - colours that flash with light, and even change with the angle of viewing. I won't repeat the details of how it works here, but now I want to dedicate this entire post to just one family of birds, the fabulous hummingbirds, a South American group which has spread into North America in relatively recent times. Hummers seem to specialise in iridescence, with rich layers of cells that reinforce reflected and refracted light to magnificent effect.

It's probably a cheek for someone from this side of the Pacific (and with a non-spectacular camera) to be featuring hummers, but I am such a fan that I can't help myself. Hopefully some of these will give you pleasure too. I think these little gems can speak for themselves throughout this post for the most part.

Amethyst-throated Sunangel Heliangelus amethysticollis, Inca Track near Machu Picchu, Peru.

Andean Emerald Agyrtria franciae, Alandbi Lodge north-west of Quito, Ecuador.
Common in the northern Andes, but always exquisite.

Blue-mantled Thornbill Chalcostigma stanleyi, El Cajas NP, southern Ecuador.
A mostly high-altitude bird which shines all over!

Buff-tailed Coronet Boissonneaua flavescens, Bellavista Lodge, north-west of Quito.
A relatively unassuming hummer - until it catches the light.

Collared Inca Coeligena torquata:male (Alanbi Lodge) above and
female (Bellavista) below.

Golden-tailed Sapphire Chrysuronia oenone, Wild Sumaco Lodge, north-eastern Andes, Ecuador.
Some of these birds really have big names to live up to, but they seem to manage with ease...

Green Violetear Colibri thalassinus near Cusco, Peruvian Andes.
A widespread beauty.

Green-crowned Brilliant Heliodoxa jacula, Mirador Rio Blanco, north-west of Quito, Ecuador.
A relatively big hummer, and brilliant indeed.

Green-crowned Woodnymph Thalurania colombica, Alanbi Lodge.
Surely one of the most stunning in the glittering constellation of hummers.

Long-tailed Sylph Aglaiocercus kingii, San Isidro Lodge, Ecuador (above)
and Violet-tailed Sylph A. coelestis, Sachatamia Lodge, north-west of Quito.
This stunning species pair evolved on opposite sides of the Andes, east and west respectively, from a common ancestor; this phenomenon is one reason that the northern Andean countries
are so fabulously rich in natural diversity.

Purple-bibbed Whitetip Urosticte benjamini, Alanbir Lodge, is limited to the northern Andes.

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird Amazilia tzacatl, also at Alanbi.
A very common hummingbird from Mexico to southern Ecuador, but who could ever tire of them?


Velvet-purple Coronet Boissonneaua jardini, Sachatamia Lodge, north-west of Quito, above and below. This is one of the most iridescent of all hummers - a big claim, and not really borne out by these photos taken on a dull wet day. But compare the wing edges and thighs in the two photos to see how the iridescence 'switches on and off'.

Violet-bellied Hummingbird Juliamyia julie, Umbrellabird Lodge, southern Ecuador.
There is no bad way to end a posting on either iridescence or hummers
and I reckon this bird emphasises that. Wow!

Thanks for staying with me through a fairly self-indulgent post and one without a lot of extra information - this cast doesn't need help though.

Next time I'll finish this mini-series by looking at iridescence in other animals, mostly invertebrates.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE (WHEN I'LL BE BACK AT MY DESK!)

This is the third and final in this series of iridescence in animals; the first two dealt with birds, but this time I want to look at other animals - mostly invertebrates but with a fish and a lizard thrown in. The principles are exactly the same as in feathers, with layers of cells underlain with melanin reflecting light from bottom and top surfaces such that they reinforce or cancel each other, giving gleaming colours like polished metal or glass.

Beetle carapaces seem particularly suitable for the task - or maybe it's just that there are so many beetles!

This scarab beetle, from along the Tamar River in Tasmania, has to be one of the most
beautiful animals I have ever seen; the glowing colours were spectacular.

Christmas Beetle (because they emerge in huge numbers to eat eucalyptus leaves in high summer),
Anoplognathus sp., Canberra. These are also scarabs.

Scarab on Acacia flowers, Leeuwin Naturaliste NP, south-west Western Australia.

Diphucephala sp. on Acacia dealbata, Tinderry NP, south-east of Canberra.

Wasp, Standley Chasm, central Australia.

Fly, Batang Ai NP, Sarawak.
It's OK, I'd given up on the tea by now anyway!

Unidentified bug - ie Hempiteran - Sceales Bay, western South Australia.
(My thanks to Susan - below - for correcting my previous blunder with this one!)

The iridescence need not be in the body though - many insects have iridescent wings, and butterflies of course feature heavily in the iridescent hit parade.

Pollanisus viridipulverulenta Yeldulknie CP, western South Australia.
Only a small moth, but it absolutely gleams.

One of the brightest lights in the Bornean rainforest, the blue flashing against the black background.
This, in Kinabalu NP in Sabah, is the Rajah Brooke Birdwing Trogonoptera brookiana, I feel sure, though that is usually described as having 'electric green' flashes on the wings.
It actually looks more like T. trojana, but that is endemic to the Philippines.

Butterflies and moths are not the only ones with iridescent wings however.

Scarlet Percher Diplacodes haematodes Standley Chasm, central Australia.

Carpenter Bee, Playa Espumilla, Santiago, Galápagos.
Not much iridescence here, but a few seconds later that changed with a change of position
- see below!

Finally, a couple of vertebrates, as promised. Some frogs have the characteristic, but I don't have photos of those. Many fish feature brilliantly flashing silver as they turn, perhaps to help confuse predators.

Barramundi Lates calcarifer, Territory Wildlife Park, south of Darwin.
Most Australians probably regard Barramundi as 'ours', but in fact it is a species found from northern
Australia through south-east Asia all the way to the Middle East.
(Annoyingly I didn't notice the reflection of the Emergency Exit sign at the time!)

Finally, one of the most handsome lizards I know.

This big lizard, in all his breeding finery, is a male Eastern Water Dragon Intellagama (formerly Physignathus) lesueuriiAustralian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra.

I hope this little series has given you some pleasure too. Perhaps something slightly less flashy next time...

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

I have just come back from a couple of very interesting (and enjoyable) weeks in northern Borneo, in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. It was an unexpected trip, in that I was asked to accompany a natural history tour for reasons that are of no great interest to anyone else in this context. My explorations beyond Australia (other than a time in Europe over 30 years ago) have hitherto been limited to South America and Africa, so this was a real opportunity for me to see a part of the world with a very different biological history.

Doubtless I'll be returning to Borneo in future postings here, but I've been asked to offer something of an overview while it's all still fresh in my mind, and so here it is. Firstly, in case you're not very familiar with the mighty island, here is where it is and how it's divided up.

My trip was limited to the 25% of the island which comprises the two Malaysian states of
Sabah (in the north-east) and Sarawak (in the north-west). The boundary between them is just to
the east of the tiny Sultanate of Brunei, which appears above as a rough W on the north coast.
The southern 75% of the island comprises Indonesian Kalimantan.
Map courtesy of Wikipedia.

It is the third largest island in the world (other than continents, including Australia, only Greenland and New Guinea are larger). Crucially, in terms of understanding its biology, it lies immediately to the west of Wallace's Line, named for the great 19th century English biologist Alfred Russell Wallace who recognised the clear distinctions between the fauna of Asia and Australia-New Guinea. Put simply, to the west of the line we find primates and hornbills, which to the east are replaced by possums and cockatoos. The line corresponds to deep-water trenches which mean that the land masses on either side of them have never been connected during glacial periods of low sea level. Of course things are never that clear cut in the real world, and in Sulawesi immediately to the east (on the edge of the map above) there are elements of both faunas, but it's a very useful rule of thumb.

Thomas Huxley - the zoologist contemporary of Wallace, who coined the term Wallace's Line in 1868 - had it
running west of the Philippines, but now we recognise Ernst Mayr's version, which excludes
the Philippines from Wallacea. Wallacea is a region of somewhat mixed faunas between the largely 'pure'
Asian region and Australia.
Map courtesy of Wikipedia.

And to a visitor from Australia the 'exotic' nature of the fauna is very evident. (Reiterating, this is just an overview and I'll be revisiting these wonderful organisms in future postings.)

Rhinoceros Hornbill Buceros rhinoceros, Sepilok, Sabah.
A truly thrilling sight for a new-comer; apart from being so 'different' to our eyes, it
is quite enormous - up to 1.25 metres long.

Proboscis Monkey Nasalis larvatus, Labuk Bay, Sabah.
Another very special moment - this is one of the many Bornean endemics.

There are several major habitat types, with their own distinctive species, but the majority of the island is - or was - dominated by rainforest. I have to insert the proviso into that sentence because according to one apparently knowledgeable local we spoke to, 55% of the rainforest has disappeared in just the last 20 years, and most of the blame must be allocated to the pernicious palm oil industry. Any drive in Borneo will expose you to seemingly endless kilometres of the monoculture. It is not the only reason that the Sumatran Rhinoceros is now extinct in the wild in Borneo, but it is certainly a contributing one.

Rainforest, Sepilok, above and below.

Rainforest anywhere carries its challenges for birders - and I had to rely on my own resources for bird identification, and of course didn't know the calls - but for some reason Borneo seems to demand especially hard work to find birds. It seems that although the diversity is undoubtedly there (over 670 species recorded), overall numbers are strangely low. Various theories have been offered, but none of them seem very convincing; it really is quite odd.

It's not just rainforest either; it's strange to see no lapwings along roadsides, no kites or vultures overhead and no ducks. (They exist, but I saw one flying overhead in my entire time there.) Gardens,even near rainforests, are also surprisingly quiet.

In addition to the lowland forests shown above, there are montane forests on the mountain ranges too.

Lianas in montane forest, Kinabalu National Park Headquarters (1560 metres above sea level).

Chestnut-hooded Laughing-thrush Garrulax treacheri, a widespread and most attractive
bird of the montane forests.

Rajah Brooke Birdwing Trogonoptera brookiana, also at the Kinabalu NP HQ.
An incredibly dramatic inhabitant of the dark rainforest where the electric blue shines against the
black of its forewings.
(I am actually a little perplexed by this one; it is described as having 'electric green' flashes on the wings and this looks more like T. trojana, but that is endemic to the Philippines. Any pointers gratefully received!)

Higher up still are the misty cloud forests; the best-known - and some of the best - examples are to be found on Mount Kinabalu, but we were there only days after the tragic earthquake and landslides closed the upper mountain for months.

Mount Kinabalu above Kundasang; the scars on the slopes mark where landslides destroyed the forests.

Cloud forest on Gungung Alab, Crocker Range, Sabah.

Bamboos in the same cloud forest.

A diverse understorey including ferns, orchids and lycopods on Gungung Alab.

Scattered around the coast are low-nutrient peat swamp forests, which are low in wildlife diversity even by Bornean standards, but which have their own specialist species.

Klias Peat Forest, Sabah.

Among the specialties of these nutrient-poor soils are the wonderful pitcher plants, which supplement their nitrogen intake by trapping and digesting small animals (which can include smaller vertebrates).

Nepenthes bicalcarata, Klias Peat Forest.
These amazing plants warrant - and will receive - their own posting in due course, but briefly,
the pitcher forms from an extension of the leaf mid-rib beyond the end of the leaf.
The lid keeps the liquid within from being too diluted; it is both sweet to attract insects, and with surface
properties that prevent insects from climbing out.
Moreover the inside is coated with waxy material almost impossible to climb, and the rim can
have downward-pointing spikes around it. The liquid is not digestive; the victim simply drowns and decomposes.
Borneo is pretty much the world hot-spot for them.

Adjoining the peat forests are mangroves, almost all around the coast (originally at least).

Mangroves, Pulau Tiga, an island off the coast of Sabah.
Proboscis Monkeys, among many other species, are mangrove specialists.

For the traveller - including naturalists - infrastructure is generally good, with an excellent road system and good hotels and lodges. People are friendly and food is excellent. By western standards things are pretty cheap, at least away from the tourist honey-traps. For some strange reason, though Sabah and Sarawak are just two states of the same country, travelling between them involves all the rigmarole of international travel, including having passports stamped by immigration officials; allow time for this!

Well, I think that will do for an overview; more detail in weeks to come. But if the opportunity arises to go there, please seize it!

BACK ON TUESDAY

Well, when it's an Australian robin for a start. Nostalgia has a lot to answer for when it comes to Anglo-Australian bird names. Our settler forebears weren't biologists, but they were observant enough and they were certainly homesick; very few of them were here voluntarily in the early years, being either deported prisoners or their military guards. They needed names for what must have felt like an overwhelming wave of new plants and animals, and sadly they were very rarely interested in asking the existing residents who'd already had names for everything for thousands of years. Instead there was a lot of 'looks a bit like a...' naming, resulting in many Australian animals and plants being named for familiar European species that they only vaguely resembled, and usually were not at all related to.

A clear case in point concerned the red-breasted birds met with in the earliest days of the Sydney settlement. While the more scientifically-minded were inclined to refer to them as warblers (Scarlet-breasted Warbler was the name applied by the naturalist-painter John Lewin), the populace at large called them robins after the familiar but only very roughly similar rusty-breasted European Robin Erithacus rubecula.

Originally known in Britain as just Redbreast from the late 14th century (replacing the older name Ruddock),
this confiding little bird gained a first name, as sign of affection.
Robin Redbreast (Robin being a 'pet' form of Robert) appeared in the 16th century; in time the 'surname'
was dropped, leaving just Robin as the name.
It is generally recognised now as one of the big assemblage of Old World Flycatchers,
family Muscicapidae, though there are still those who regard it as a thrush.
Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Scarlet Robin male Petroica boodang, Canberra.
The resemblance with the 'true' robin of Europe is fleeting at best.
In North America a similar situation arose, though that robin is unequivocally a thrush, Turdus migratorius.

While we can agree readily that our robins are not at all related to their northern namesake, it is somewhat harder to say just what they are. At present the feeling is that they belong in their own family, Petroicidae, whose exact position is uncertain, though it apparently parted from the main line of passerines a very long time ago and perhaps separately from the other Old Australian passerines. All members of the family are active insect-hunters, many using the 'perch and pounce' strategy.

Scarlet Robins are atypical of the family in being sexually dimorphic - males and females are very different in appearance.

Scarlet Robin female, Canberra (close to my home in fact).
She shares her mate's white forehead spot (not visible in the male above)
but has only a red wash on her breast.

Scarlet Robins are birds of the woodlands and open forest, and are apparently declining in numbers as a result. In New South Wales they are listed as a Vulnerable Species. Locally most of the population remains around Canberra (not often in gardens) all year round, though some birds breed in the nearby mountain forests and come down for winter to join their colleagues.

Another local red robin sometimes causes identification difficulties for those new to the game, but they shouldn't be confused. Flame Robins Petroica phoenicea breed high in the mountains among the Snow Gums, often in sheltered situations low to the ground, including road cuttings.


Male Flame Robin, Namadgi National Park, above Canberra. His breast is orange rather than bright red, and whereas the Scarlet Robin has a broad black bib round his throat, the Flame Robin's breast flame licks right up to his beak.

Female Flame Robin, Namadgi NP (and in the mist! It's not your eyes or, on this occasion, my photo).
She always lacks the female Scarlet's reddish breast wash, and her wing bars are notably
more emphatically black and white.

One of the many pleasures of driving up into the Snow Gum woodlands high above Canberra in summer is the constant flash of Flame Robins flying off the road and onto surrounding branches.

A much less common red robin around here becomes considerably more abundant as we head north and west into the drier woodlands. The stunning and diminutive Red-capped Robin Petroica goodenovii is found right across southern Australia, including into the deepest deserts.

Red-capped Robin male, Back Yamma State Forest, south-central New South Wales.
Their typical call is a repeated 'brrrr-brrrr', remarkably like a traditional phone call,
which has been a cause of initial annoyance that my enjoyment of a remote place has been invaded by technology!
Another is a 'tic' sound like stones being tapped together sharply.

Female red-capped Robins (and I can't believe I don't have a photo) are also brown, but with a rusty forehead.

Fledgling Red-capped Robin, Mount Grenfell Historic Site, New South Wales.
The sharp insect-snapping bill is evident even in this youngster.

Of Australia's 22 robin species, only these three are actually red (more so than the European model in fact), which should have made it a bit awkward to call the rest 'robins', but it didn't take long for the original reason to be forgotten - people were using the name 'yellow robin' by 1810, just 22 years after colonisation. Moreover several of them aren't actually called robins, though that's a story for my next posting.

Two species of the wet forests of the south-east are pink, so nearly red. The Pink Robin P. rodinogaster lives in the tall wet eucalypt forests and temperate rainforests of Tasmania, Victoria and southern New South Wales; I can't offer you a picture of this lovely bird, but you'll find one easily enough on line. We don't generally see them here (though females have occasionally turned up at the National Botanic Gardens), but the similar Rose Robin P. rosea passes through Canberra twice a year on its migration between the wet gullies of the ranges, where they breed, and drier forests to the north, where they overwinter. However I had one - well I liked to think it was the same one - which spent quite a bit of time in consecutive winters in my yard; sadly that was in my pre-digital camera days...

Male Rose Robin, Turner.
This is a truly lovely bird, and moreover it builds one of the most beautiful nests I know.

Next time I'd like to introduce some of the not-red Australian robins, not all as colourful but definitely as beautiful as these red ones. Try and catch up to a robin while you're waiting...

BACK ON SUNDAY

I'm going to give way to a bit of hubris here, and assume that you've read my previous posting on Australia's red robins - in which case you'll be full bottle (as we say) on the background of the naming of this very Australian group of insect-eating birds. One thing that I find very curious is that apparently before the scientists cottoned on to the nature of probably the commonest and most familiar robin around Sydney, the lay public seems to have done so. The Eastern Yellow Robin Eopsaltria australis is found in near-coastal south-eastern and eastern Australia right up into the tropics. It is very comfortable around humans and will often approach visitors in the presumed hope that we will stir up insects for it.

Eastern Yellow Robin, Deua National Park, New South Wales.
This is its typical posture, perched sideways on a tree trunk from where it flies down onto prey.
The youngster below, at Nowra, New South Wales, was hardly fledged but still assumed the
correct yellow robin position.

George Shaw, British polymath who received and named specimens from First Fleet surgeon John White, called it Southern Motacilla (ie a pipit). John Latham, pre-eminent British ornithologist of the time, in 1801 called it Southern Flycatcher (much closer, though quite a lots of birds would answer to that description). John Lewin, a natural history artist working in the colony, in 1822 labelled his painting of it Yellow-breasted Thrush. However, when Sir Joseph Banks' somewhat abrasive plant collector George Caley left the colony in 1810 he reported that the colonists were already referring to it as yellow robin. I do wonder how and by whom that astute observation was made, and why it spread so widely well in advance of scientific recognition; that didn't finally come until John Gould's definitive work in 1848.

Even more curiously, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eminent and competent ornithologists were still doubting that it was a 'real' (Australian) robin. John Leach, a truly leading light of Australian ornithology of the time, placed it with whistlers (family Pachycephalidae) or shrikes. To this end the name shrike-robin was used until the authoritative Royal Australasian Ornithological Union's 1926 Checklist finally put the matter to rest, and declared this lovely little bird a true robin (again, in the Australian sense of the word).

The Eastern Yellow Robin's melodious - though admittedly somewhat persistent - piping is
often the first call heard, pre-dawn, when camping in eastern forests.

Across the nation, three thousand kilometres away in south-western Australia, we find two more members of this genus of robins. Presumably the ancestral yellow robin lived right across southern Australia in moister times; when the climate dried during a past glacial period, and the arid limestone of the Nullarbor Plain isolated the western population, over time it evolved into a robin with a white, instead of yellow, breast. The White-breasted Robin Eopsaltria georgiana lives mostly in tall wet forests, though in the drier northern part of its range it utilises dense coastal scrubs.

White-breasted Robin, Porongorup National Park.
Poor, distant photo, sorry.

The story of the south-western robins doesn't end there though. In a more recent period of softer climate another wave of yellow robins arrived from the east, and in turn they too became isolated. They too evolved into a separate species, the Western Yellow Robin Eopsaltria griseogularis. This retained its yellow breast, but it is separated from the throat by a grey band (hence the scientific name). Perhaps to avoid competition with the White-breasted Robin it tends to be found in drier woodland rather than wet dense vegetation.

A very wet Western Yellow Robin, Stirling Ranges National Park.

Right across the tropical north of Australia is found another yellow-bellied robin, though this one doesn't even carry 'robin' in its name. It behaves much more like a flycatcher, perching high in the open and chasing insects in the air rather than pouncing down on them. Given this, its name of Lemon-bellied Flycatcher is not surprising.

Lemon-bellied Flycatchers Microeca flavigaster, Darwin.
The sweet up-beat call is a familiar one in the north, and through New Guinea (where the name flyrobin is often used)
to Indonesia.

Throughout most of Australia however the genus Microeca is much better known for another 'non-robin' robin. The Jacky Winter Microeca fascinans is a fairly plain brown, but highly charismatic, robin, also an accomplished aerial insect hunter. The name is generally asserted to refer to its behaviour of cheerfully calling all year round. George Caley, mentioned previously, compared its behaviour to that of the European Robin in closely following anyone wielding a spade, to see that might pop up to its advantage. I can't help wondering however if the call, usually described as saying 'Peter Peter Peter (etc)', couldn't also have been rendered as 'Jacky Winter'?

Jacky Winter, Mathoura, New South Wales River Murray.
The white-edged black tail is diagnostic.

Then there is a range of unred robins in several genera, from Tasmania up to the tropics.

Probably the most widespread robin of all is the black and white Hooded Robin Melanodryas cucullata, a far cry indeed from the redbreast of Britain for which the group was bestowed its name. It is found right across Australia except for the deepest deserts; only the male is so handsomely pied, with females and youngsters being more muted in tone.

Hooded Robins, male (Mathoura) above,
female (Eulo Bore, south-west Queensland) below.

In Tasmania a common ancestor to the Melanodryas genus was isolated during one of the times Bass Strait was dry land, and evolved into the plain brown Dusky Robin Melanodryas vittata.

A somewhat mysterious species - solely because of its rather impenetrable habitat - is the Mangrove Robin Peneoenanthe pulverulenta, found wherever the mangroves survive across tropical northern Australia and into Indonesia. Many birders - including this one - wait quite a while to see their first one.

Mangrove Robin, Darwin.
The pensively melancholy double whistle carries through the mangroves and can be
infuriatingly difficult to track down.

Another tropical robin - or rather a pair of them - is represented by the very handsome genus Poecilodryas, with White-browed Robin P. superciliosa being found around the tropical Queensland coast as far west as the north-eastern Gulf of Carpentaria, and the recently separated Buff-sided Robin P. cerviniventris from the western end of the Gulf across the Northern Territory to northern Western Australia. Their territories are usually found in monsoonal vine forest and along vegetated stream lines.

White-browed Robin pair, Cromarty, south of Townsville.

I want to end with a couple of indifferent photos of two of my favourite Australian robins, from very different habitats at opposite ends of the continent. The Grey-headed Robin Heteromyias cinereifrons is a Queensland Wet Tropics endemic, occupying a limited area of mostly montane tropical rainforest from Cooktown south almost to Townsville. It is the only member of its genus in Australia, though there is another in New Guinea. Its measured piping is characteristic of these rich forests, where it spends most of its time on the ground.

Grey-headed Robin, Mount Hypipamee, Atherton Tableland.

Finally the Southern Scrub-robin Drymodes brunneopygia is a member of a very interesting species pair, which each took to very different habitats during times of climate change. The Northern Scrub-robin D. superciliaris lives in Australia only in rainforest at the northern end of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, though continues across the Torres Strait into New Guinea. The Southern Scrub-robin however lives thousands of kilometres to the south, in the semi-arid mallee shrubland, dominated by multi-stemmed eucalypts, triggered to the growth form by low soil nutrients.

The Southern Scrub-robin can be infuriatingly elusive in its dense habitat, then can suddenly appear at your feet before moving off again. It is mostly found on the ground, bounding on its long powerful legs.

Southern Scrub-robin, Coorong National Park, South Australia.
I always reckon that if I don't recognise a call in the mallee it's likely to be one of these,
which have a seemingly endless range of call variations.
Most typical however is a sweet carrying 'pseeeee'

So there it is, a brief introduction to a varied and lovely group of Australian birds, found virtually anywhere on the continent. And despite their name, they really are dinkum southerners. I love them.

BACK ON FRIDAY

Mount Field, a Tasmanian Treasure

Some Acacia Curiosities; wattle they think of next?

Tierra del Fuego; the national park at the end of the world

Considering Kangaroos

Kakadu in the Wet

Have you seen a Casuarina?

Thinking Pinkly #3 - flowers

Ecuador's Drier Side

City Wildlife Snapshots: Guayaquil

City Wildlife Snapshots: Buenos Aires

Farewell to 2014!

City Wildlife Snapshots: Douala

City Wildlife Snapshots: Puerto Maldonado

City Wildlife Snapshots: Lima

Living Rainbows; animal iridescence

Humming with Iridescence

Iridescence Without Feathers

Malaysian Borneo; first impressions

When is a Robin not one?

Unred Robins