Ian Fraser, talking naturally

After quite a hiatus, I am back live in my office, and will be for some time, so my usual weekly postings (not pre-prepared as has been the case recently) recommence now.

It is an interesting phenomenon in the natural world that in some animal species the sexes are externally identical, in others they differ relatively subtly, though consistently, and in still others they look so different that they could be (and in some cases have been) described as separate species. Our own species of course is a case in point - on average (which of course means there are always exceptions) males are larger than females, and there are obvious physical differences.

Today though I'm going to limit myself to birds, because this is a very large topic - in fact I'm not going to even attempt to complete it today. In species which do differ physically between sexes - ie are dimorphic - it is usually the males which are larger and more colourful. Not always however.

Australian Painted Snipe Rostratula australia, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra.
The female, on the right, is larger and more brightly coloured.
(Though I'm not entirely certain that the other bird isn't an immature - it is a feature of such species that the less
colourful sex often has very similar plumage to young birds of both sexes.)
This is a rare and seldom-seen species whose appearance here in 2011 generated considerable interest.

Brown Falcon pair Falco berigora, Sturt NP, New South Wales.
The obviously larger bird on the right is the female; this is consistently true for most diurnal birds
of prey - falcons and hawks/eagles, even though the two groups are not at all closely related,
as well as many owls.
In this case the purpose seems to be to divide up the territory so that the two birds are hunting
different-sized prey from each other, utilising the resource more efficiently.
The colour differences here are simply part of a wide variation in this species, and are not sex-linked.

It is a useful rule of thumb that monogamous species tend to be monomorphic - both are contributing significantly to the ultimate breeding success so neither is more expendable. On the other hand a large proportion of polygamous species tend to be dimorphic, with the dominant sex being larger and more brightly coloured; as noted above this is usually the male. It is glib but nonetheless at least partly true that the more brightly coloured a male is relative to the female, the more socially useless he is likely to be!

Perhaps more helpfully, his conspicuous plumage's role is likely to be primarily for attracting a mate (or several mates) - "I can afford to be so easily seen because I'm strong and smart enough to survive, and isn't that what you want in the father of your chicks?". However, in the broader scheme, the same message helps in intimidating rival males and maintaining the territory. It may even be that by being colourful and loud he is attracting the attention of predators who are thus less likely to notice his more subtly-coloured mate sitting quietly on the nest.

We can say that strong colour dimorphism is commonest among species that nest in the open. As ever in nature, it's all a trade-off - be inconspicuous to predators and you're unlikely to appeal to a desirable female. Be too obvious and you'll end up as lunch before you're a father. An extreme example of this is the peacock's ridiculous tail - the longer and heavier it is, the more females are impressed. Simultaneously the more likely he is to be unable to escape the attentions of tiger, leopard or dhole.

However, I'm going to start by introducing some milder, but nonetheless obvious, examples of dimorphism, where the female is similarly coloured to the male, but generally paler and less intense. Where this becomes a different colour as opposed to a variation on the same shade is of course subjective, and some of these examples could as readily have appeared in next week's offering of more dramatic examples of dimorphism.

Spotted Pardalote Pardalotus punctatus, female above, male below.
(She belongs to the yellow-rumped mallee race, xanthopygus;
I was a bird bander in a past life.)
She is only subtly more different, with buffy spots rather than his strikingly white ones,
and without his yellow throat.

Tasmanian Scrubwren Sericornis humilis, Freycinet NP, female above, male below.
Like most other scrubwrens, she's a washed-out version of him.

Zebra Finches Taeniopygia guttata, Kata Tjuta NP, Northern Territory.
She, in the centre, lacks his chestnut cheeks and flanks.

Australian Darters Anhinga novaehollandiae, Canberra, female above, male below.
His plumage is richer in colour, especially the chestnut throat and dark breast.

Cockatiels Nymphicus hollandicus, Sturt NP, far north-west New South Wales.
This exquisite arid land cockatoo is the world's smallest.
Again, males are a more intense version of the grey, white and yellow theme.

Cactus Finches Geospiza scandens, Santa Cruz, Galápagos, female above, male below.
He has much more melanin in his feathers, but it's essentially the same pigment.

White-breasted Woodswallows Artamus superciliosus, Canberra, female above, male below.
Again the difference is evident, but is in intensity of shades.

Red-winged Parrots Aprosmictus erythropterus, near Georgetown, north Queensland.
His glorious hues are reflected in muted form in her.

Ducks are particularly notable in dimorphism (though by no means all of them of course), and several will feature in next week's post of extreme dimorphism. Here are a few more subtle ones.

Australian Wood Ducks Chenonetta jubata, Canberra, male right, female left.

Green Pygmy-geese Nettapus pulchellus, Fogg Dam, near Darwin, female left.
These are not really geese at all, but in the mainstream line of duck.

Chiloé Wigeons Anas sibilatrix, Puerto Natales, southern Chile, male right.
Despite the name, this pretty duck is widespread across southern South America.

Some species are subtly dimorphic in a more specific way - they have very similar plumage except for just one feature. This may even be as discreet as eye colour!

Black-necked Storks Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus, Croydon, North Queensland.
He has black eyes, she yellow.

Galahs Eolophus roseicapilla, Nambung NP, Western Australia.
In this case she has red eyes, while his are black.

Magpie-larks Grallina cyanoleuca, Canberra, female above, male below.
In this case the only difference is in the face colour - black for him, white for her.
(Immatures have a black forehead and white throat and sort it out later!)

Magnificent Frigatebirds Fregata magnificens, Galápagos, male left.
She has a white throat, where he of course has the red throat pouch.
(In this case he is flying higher than her, he is not smaller.)

Olive-backed Sunbird pair Cinnyris jugularis, Cairns, Queensland.
It may initially seem that they are very different, but nearly all the difference is in his iridescent throat.

Nankeen Kestrel Falco cenchroides;female, Fraser Island, above, male, near Canberra, below.
Here the distinction is in crown and tail, chestnut for her, grey for him.

And that will do us for today. Next week, as I've flagged, I'll conclude this series (for now at least) with examples of more extreme dimorphism, where the sexes are entirely different.

(By then I hope to have been able to process my photos from my last two Australian trips, to the western deserts and the tropics, so I can share some of those lands with you.)

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Continuing from last week, which seems to have generated some interest I'm happy to say. I won't reiterate last week's introduction, but will move on to introduce some very dimorphic couples indeed, birds which in at least some cases you'd have to know belonged to the same species. These are not just a question of more and less intense versions of the same colour patterns, but quite different ones. However, having said that, I readily acknowledge that such observations are of necessity subjective, and where one type of dimorphism blends into the other is a very fuzzy line indeed.

Where they are truly distinctive however, and the name is descriptive, as so many names are, it means the bird is named only for the male - keep your eye open for this blatant discrimination as you browse!

Mostly in dimorphic species the male is brightly coloured while his mate is not, but this isn't always the case even in species where the male is the dominant partner in terms of courtship and display (we saw a couple of examples last week where the female was dominant, brighter or bigger). I recently had the pleasure of the company of a pair of birds which demonstrated this impressively, at a beautiful campsite at Gunlom Falls in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory.

Shining Flycatcher Myiagra alecto pair, male above, female below, Kakadu NP.
He is the same glorious blue-black below as above.
This monarch flycatcher is generally found near tropical waters, including mangroves and monsoon forests.

Another Australian example is that of the widespread, but in most places not especially common, big duck, the Australian Shelduck Tadorna tadornoides; it is not readily possible to state which of the sexes is more brightly coloured - they're just very different!

Australian Shelduck pair, Bethungra Reservoir, New South Wales, male right, female left.
A very poor old pic, my apologies; a slightly better photo of the male below, at Esperance, Western Australia.

A related group of birds, the South American 'geese', also have very different male and female plumage, but both are also equally striking.

Above Kelp Geese Chloephaga hybrida, Chiloé Island, Chile and
below Upland Geese C. picta, far southern Chile.
In both cases the males are white and the females are coloured.

Other such South American examples can be found among the marvellous hummingbirds.

Green Thorntail pair Discosura conversii, Mindo Valley, north-west of Quito, Eucador; male on the left.

In most of the cases which follow however it's pretty straight-forward - the males have relatively striking colouration and the females are essentially brown, which is an excellent colour to be if you don't want to be noticed while sitting vulnerably on a nest.

Superb Fairy-wrens Malurus cyaneus, male (Canberra) above,
female (Eurobodalla Botanic Gardens, Batemans Bay) below.
One of south-east Australia's best-known and best-loved birds.
Males moult in winter and follow the females into brown obscurity.

Many of the Australian 'robins' (which are no more robins than our wrens are wrens!) follow a similar approach.

Flame Robin Petroica phoenicea pair, taking a break from attacking the invaders in the mirror,
Namadgi NP near Canberra.

Hooded Robins Melanodryas cucullata, central Australia, above and below.
I seem to be incapable of taking a decent picture of this species, but I'll keep trying!

The whistlers form another familiar Australian group which shows strong dimorphism.

Rufous Whistler male (Tinbinbilla Nature Reserve near Canberra)
and female (Mt Scoria Conservation Park, Queensland)

Other monarch flycatchers in addition to the Shining Flycatcher featured above show dimorphism, even though the females aren't as strikingly coloured.

Leaden Flycatcher Myiagra rubecula male (Mareeba Wetlands, Queensland) and
female, Namadgi National Park near Canberra, below.

Trillers are a group of small cuckoo-shrikes (family Campephagidae) which show strong dimorphism, unlike the larger members of the family.

White-winged Triller Lalage tricolor pair, Longreach Waterhole near Elliott, Northern Territory.
This was part of a large flock moving south to breed - he is still moulting into his full breeding plumage.

Satin Bowerbirds Ptilonorhynchus violaceus, male, National Botanic Gardens Canberra, and
females, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra.
The day when bowerbirds get their own posting here is surely approaching!

Mistletoebird Dicaeum hirundinaceum, male (Milang, South Australia) and
female (Fraser Island, Queensland).
The only Australian Flowerpecker (Family Dicaeidae), whose ancestors arrived relatively recently
here from Asia, but which is now the major vector (spreader) of Australian mistletoes.

Orange Chats Epthianura aurifrons, Bourke, New South Wales.
Now recognised as being well within the honeyeater family, some of the Australian chats nonetheless exhibit a strong
dimorphism that other honeyeaters lack.

Another group which varies considerably between species with regard to the differences between males and females are the parrots, most of which show no such traits. Some do however.

Superb Parrots Polytelis swainsonii, Canberra, above and below.
A threatened species which flies south from northern New South Wales to breed in woodlands
north of Canberra, but in recent years has taken to feeding in Canberra suburbs, probably prompted by drought.

Red-rumped Parrot Psephotus haematonotus pair, Canberra.
An exquisite little ground-feeding parrot, common in suburban parks.

Red-winged Parrot pair Aprosmictus erythropterus; a glorious parrot found across much of the
tropics and eastern inland Australia, as well as southern New Guinea.

As noted above and last week, ducks are well-represented in lists of dimorphic birds. Here are a couple more strong contenders.

Above Chestnut Teals Anas castanea, south coast New South Wales, and
below, Cinnamon Teals Anas cyanoptera, Arica, northern Chile.

And now that we've returned to South America, let's stay there to finish off today's exploration, beginning with one of the continent's truly iconic birds.

Andean Cocks-of-the-Rock Rupicola peruvianus, males above at a display lek,
female, below, eastern slopes of the southern Peruvian Andes.

Austral Negritoes Lessonia rufa, southern Chile, above and below.
These active little ground-feeders are members of the old South American family of tyrant-flycatchers.

Thick-billed Euphonias Euphonia laniirostris, Aguas Calientes, below Machu Picchu, Peru, above and below.
Euphonias are members of the huge and colourful tanager family; this species is
found across much of north-western South America.

Great-tailed Grackles Quiscalus mexicanus, Puerto Jeli, Ecuador.
These bold urban scavengers are North American blackbirds, whose ancestors arrived in
South America relatively recently, as South America crashed into North America.

Finally, trogons are one of the more spectacular bird families, comprising some 40 species across the world's tropical and sub-tropical zones - except for Australia. Many are notably dimorphic.

Masked Trogons Trogon personatus, Andean cloud forests north-west of Quito, Peru.

Well, if nothing else I hope you've enjoyed meeting some pretty impressive birds, with a special characteristic.

Next time I'll look at a place, probably featuring somewhere from my recent travels in Australia.

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I recently was made an offer that, as they say, I couldn't refuse, though no coercion was involved! I was invited to join an expedition, as a volunteer, to the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, to participate in bird surveys as part of a wider biological survey organised by a philanthropic organisation called Desert Discovery. There were 11 of us, in six vehicles, doing the birds; other semi-autonomous groups were covering plants and mammals/reptiles - we bumped into them from time to time. My survey partner and I drove west from Alice Springs and we all met up in the community of Kiwirrkurra - most of the area is on Aboriginal land, requiring a permit to enter.

Australian deserts don't always look like our expectations, and the Great Sandy isn't a Sahara or Atacama look-alike - in fact it is quite vegetated in large tracts, especially when we saw it, which was after a heavy rain event. However large areas of it are dominated by parallel low red sand dunes, and most of the ground surface is sand, unlike some other Australian deserts which are stony.

Looking out from a dune to others fading into the distance.

It is not always easy to say where one Australian desert starts and the next stops, as most of them are contiguous, but the boundaries are pretty much agreed upon (though some would extend the south-eastern boundary of the Great Sandy well into the Northern Territory, compared with what I've indicated below).

Approximate boundaries of the Great Sandy Desert, enclosing an area of some 280,000 square kilometres,
3.5% of the Australian land mass, an area somewhat larger than Great Britain.
To the north-east is the Tanami, to the south the Little Sandy and
the Gibson Deserts; below them again is the Great Victoria Desert.

The generally accepted definition of desert is an area receiving less than 250mm a year (though in arid Australia 'average' doesn't mean much when it might be determined by a string of years of almost no rain, followed by one very wet one). By this criterion 18% of Australia is desert, but 70% of the continent falls into the category of 'semi-arid', land receiving less than 500mm a year.

The drive across the Gary Junction Road (accessed either by the Tanami Road or Larapinta Drive) and Kintore Road to the West Australian border from Alice Springs is on a good unsealed road through beautiful desert country featuring regular ancient ranges.

Amunurunga Range, from the Gary Junction Road.

Permits are needed for this drive from communities on both sides of the border, but they are readily available to travellers passing through.

Indigenous Protected Areas are a category of national reserve (itself unusual, as most Australian reserves are
under state legislation), wherein traditional owners agree to manage their land to restore
and retain conservation and cultural values.

Our goal however, having reached Kiwirrkurra, was to head north deep into the desert on the track to Balgo, not even marked on the standard topographic maps; for this we needed special permission, obtained because of the long consultation process with the Kiwirrkurra and Ngurrupa traditional owners, who believed that the information we would obtain could be of benefit to them too.

A fairly typical section of the Kiwirrkurra - Balgo track. Four-wheel drive mandatory!

The traditional owners still manage the land in traditional ways - evidence of small 'hunting fires', to drive small prey out of cover, and to promote green pick after rain, was widespread.

Small 'hunting burns' along the track;
freshly burnt above, and an older burn below with mature spinifex
in the background and regenerating growth in the foreground.

In places we found evidence of the old ways being practised until quite recently.

A magnificent big grindstone (above) and
a tool factory scatter (below).
And yes, they are still where we found them!

Spinifex, Triodia spp., is a stiff spiny grass which can form hummocks metres across; eventually the centre dies, leaving characteristic rings. 20-25% of the entire continent is dominated by spinifex (perhaps better known as Porcupine Grass, to distinguish it from a not closely related coastal grass, Spinifex spl!). This dominance is not readily appreciated by most Australians who don't often venture far from the coast.

Here are some typical spinifex-dominated scenes from the Great Sandy.

Mature - ie long-unburnt - spinifex rings.

Flowering spinifex and Desert Paperbark Melaleuca glomerata.

Spinifex stretching across the plain.

Flowering spinifex catching the light on a red dune.

Spinifex at sunset.

Spinifex-dominated desert panorama.

To the northern end of where we went the rains had not fallen, and the spinifex was notably pale, unlike the blooming green of the watered plants we've been looking at.

Droughted pale spinifex, without the distinct green tinge of the plants a little further south.

Another nearly 25% of Australia is dominated by Mulga (Acacia aneura) woodland, a remarkably hardy desert-evolved tree. Mulga is certainly present in the Great Sandy but is not as dominant as elsewhere; it forms woodlands in the south of the area and grows in areas like dunes along the edge of salt lakes where there might be a little more water deep down.

The first three shots are of mulga camp sites in the south, not far from Kiwirrkurra.

My camp in the mulga, Elizabeth Hills.

Sunrise on the mulga (above)
and sunset through it (below).

Mulga on salt pan lunette (a crescent-shaped wind-blown dune).

Mulgas aren't the only trees present however; in addition to the paperbarks pictured above, there are Desert Oaks and various eucalypts in different places.

Stunted Ghost Gums (Eucalyptus aparrerinja) above,
and a dense woodland of them from the top of a dune below.
More on this superb desert gum here.

Desert Bloodwood (one of several related species known by that name) Eucalyptus chippendalei
growing, typically, on a sand dune. I will introduce other species when I talk about plants next time.

Immature Desert OakAlloasuarina decaisneana, above Lake Makay.

Salt lakes are a characteristic of Australian deserts, and Lake Mackay, on the Western Australian-Northern Territory border is a large one. Indeed it is the largest in either WA or the NT, and the fourth-largest in Australia, which I'm sure very few Australians could tell you (including me until very recently!). Irregularly shaped, it covers 3500 square kilometres and stretches, at its widest points, for 100km both north-south and east-west.

A small section of Lake Mackay.

Clouds over Lake Mackay.

Samphires on the fringe of Lake Mackay.

A smaller clay pan scattered with ironstone.

And perhaps that's enough for today, but I intend to follow this posting up with a couple more on the plants and the animals of the Great Sandy. I hope this can inspire you to see more of the beautiful and powerful deserts which lie at the heart of this county.

But I'll leave you with a couple of images which have especially stayed with me.

Morning clouds.

Sunset clouds.

Morning rainbow.

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I'm going to either assume you've read last week's post which told you why I was recently in this remote and wonderful part of Australia (plus a bit about the desert itself), or invite you to have a look here. For obvious reasons of heat and water conservation, plus safety, a lot of desert activity happens at night; we may not see much of that, but in the morning the evidence is there! I saw some of most richly-tracked sandhills that I have ever seen.

Such stories, if I only knew how to read them; the women who accompanied us
for the first couple of days, traditional owners, could certainly have done so,
but they were no longer with us by this time.

Even I can see where a small snake has passed across this one from top left to bottom right.

For this reason - plus the fact that we there to survey birds! - it was the birds that were most conspicuous. And on our very first afternoon of surveying we hit a veritable jackpot. There are three species of emuwren (not named for some strange symbiosis but because their filmy tail resembles an emu's plume in their lack of interlocking barbules), and while I've managed to see them all I've never managed to lay camera on or anywhere near them. That has now changed, I'm delighted to be able to say!

Male Rufous-crowned Emuwren Stipiturus ruficeps; worth waiting for!
This tiny scrap of a bird - at 6 grams probably the smallest Australian bird - is found across
a vast swathe of the central and western deserts where it inhabits impenetrable citadels of old growth spinifex.
Their wispy high-pitched calls are now of too high a frequency for me to hear, sadly.

Some other species were a lot commoner - there weren't many surveys that we did that didn't turn up either woodswallows (Black-faced or Masked drifting overhead), or the ubiquitous Singing Honeyeater.

Black-faced Woodswallow Artamus cinereus.
A member of the family of Australian magpies, currawongs and buthcerbirds, widely found across the arid inland.

Singing Honeyeater Gavicalis (or Lichenostomus) virescens.Its cheery 'prrip' could scarcely be called 'singing',
but it's heard everywhere across most ofthe continent except for the humid north-east and south-east coasts.
Many a 20-minute site survey on the trip was saved from being a blank by the reliable Singer!

Where there were flowers - and after the rains there were a lot in some places, as you'll see when I conclude this series by looking at plants next week - there were other honeyeaters too, notably another pan-Australian species (absent only from the south and south-east), the Brown Honeyeater Lichmera indistincta. Both common and species names might seem a little harsh, but they do have a point I'm afraid...

Brown Honeyeater feeding on Grevillea wickhamii.

Another group of honeyeaters are known as chats (not at all related to various Old World groups containing the name), though they were long regarded as a separate family. Crimson Chats in particular are widespread nomads, and we often encountered small flocks moving through. Others though had stopped to breed!

Male Crimson Chat Epthianura tricolor with grasshopper, destined for hungry mouths in a nest.

The Grey-headed Honeyeater Gavicalis (or Lichenostomus) keartlandi is another desert specialist of the west and centre.

Grey-headed Honeyeater coming in for a drink at Murrawa Bore.

Other species also came in to drink here, from an old bathtub kindly provided for the purpose, filled with water pumped from a subterranean aquifer. Prominent among these were the ever-delightful Zebra Finches Taeniopygia guttata, another supreme desert survivor, but one which, as a seed-eater, must drink daily, so is always on the move.

Zebra Finches gathering to ensure the coast is clear at Murrawa Bore...

... before dropping down to suck up a quick drink.
Zebbies suck by using the rapidly moving tongue as a pump.

Little Button-quails Turnix velox were encountered quite regularly too, but usually in the form of a small bird exploding from near our feet and disappearing rapidly into the distance. It was a lot easier to find their characteristic feeding scrapes, or 'platelets'.


Little Button-quail platelet.

Sometimes though you can get lucky.

This little chap pottered round camp early one morning, but wasn't keen to be approached.

Raptors drifted over sometimes, but not often.

Little Eagle Hieraaetus morphnoides carefully checking us out.


Spotted Harrier Circus assimilis, one of the loveliest Australian birds of prey.

And some birds we only saw the tracks of!

Bustard tracks, both in sand and ironstone pebbles, were regularly seen,
but never the big birds.

Other tracks were much less welcome - in particular Feral Cats tracks were seen almost every time we walked. Feral Camels too were everywhere.

Camel tracks above, and droppings below.

The culprits. All of the world's wild Dromedaries are in Australia - over a million of them, despite culling efforts,
a number that is estimated to double every decade. This is a very large grazing animal in a land subject to drought
as a part of life; they do immense damage.

The most exciting animal however was one we didn't see. Bilbies Macrotis lagotis are astonishingly beautiful desert bandicoots (though they were once widespread in better-watered habitats, and it may well be that they are now just hanging on in what is marginal habitat for them), greatly reduced in numbers and range. The western deserts are their stronghold however, and one day we came across a colony of their burrows.

Bilby burrow above, and tracks below.
I found it both thrilling and moving to be within metres of a special animal that I don't
ever expect to see in the wild.

Just in case you don't know what they look like.
Photo courtesy Alice Springs Desert Park, per ABC.

The lack of daytime reptiles seemed puzzling, though I feared that the ubiquitous cats had a lot to do with that. One lizard species only was common - the Central Military Drago Ctenophorus isolepis was so lightning fast across the sand and into the spinifex sanctuary that I doubt even a cat could catch them very often.

Central Military Dragon male (above)
and female (below).

And of course there were invertebrates, though again many of them were nocturnal, based on the tracks. For instance ant nests were abundant, but we rarely saw the occupants.

Ant nests, above and below.

The exceptions, as everywhere, were the Meat Ants Iridomyrmex purpureus (or more probably a related species) whose presence throughout the day is a major reason that the others forage at night.

Meat Ants.

Termites too were hugely abundant, as they are throughout the arid lands of Australia, feeding on the spinifex and in turn feeding large numbers of larger animals.

Two types of mound, representing different termite species.

Termites eschew light and dryness, even to the extent of building covered corridors to move between spinifex clumps.

Understandably there were very few butterflies or dragonflies.

I think this one is a Lemon Migrant Catopsilia pomona.

And this one I think is a Wandering Glider Pantala flavescens.As ever I would welcome being corrected!

A truly magnificent grasshopper - again, can anyone help with this?

A pair of Robber Flies (family Asilidae) - I'm pretty sure - seeking to increase their population.

And they of course are not the only hunters to be found out there.

A small wasp hunting across the surface of a Desert Paperbark;
not doing well for identification today, am I?

A big colourful potter wasp, family Vespidae (the yellow notch in each eye gives it away),
sharing Murrawa Bore with the Zebra Finches, collecting water for its mud nest.

Golden Orbweb Spider Nephila edulis and lunch.
This magnificent big spider is found across much of Australia.

And finally a mystery that I would really love to resolve. In the inhospitable salt flats of Lake Mackay we found these partial circles of apparent balls of mud, surrounding, at some distance from them, tiny burrows in the salt.

One of the mystery rings, seemingly of excavated material.

A close-up of the central burrow - the salt crystals give an idea of its size.

If you can even make a suggestion as to the identity of the constructor I'd be very glad and grateful indeed!

Meantime I'll leave you to it, and finish this series next time with a post on some of the flowering plants we found.

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This was to be the last in this series based on my recent experiences in the remote and relatively little-known Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia (which began here) but I've realised that I've got quite a large number of plant photos - I was there in a rare good season, when a lot of plants were flowering after substantial rains. I could of course just make a limited selection, which is what I'd probably do normally, but because few of my readers will probably have an opportunity to go there, and most of the plants will thus be unfamiliar, I've decided to introduce them pretty comprehensively, in two postings. In deference to those with less interest in the topic I'll take a break from the series next week, and talk about something entirely different, before coming back to finish by talking about some desert shrubs in a fortnight.

(And before going on, if you read the last posting, on animals of the desert, you might be interested in looking at the unexpected solution to the mysterious mud pellets surrounding the burrows in the salt of Lake Mackay!)

In the first posting, while introducing the landscape, I featured some key trees that help define in it various places - Mulga, Desert Oak, Desert Paperbark, Ghost Gums and Desert Bloodwoods. I won't revisit them today, but there were other trees, mostly low-growing, which appeared from time to time. There were quite a few acacias, as there are pretty much anywhere in Australia, but most were shrubs which will have their moment next time, but in addition to the Mulga, a couple of acacia trees occurred fairly frequently, though generally growing alone.

Black Gidgee Acacia pruinocarpa is a striking desert tree, whose distribution is centred on
the Great Sandy Desert.

The distinctive large leathery foliage of Black Gidgee.

Wirewood A. coriacea (often referred to confusingly as Desert Oak) has thin leathery phyllodes, and grows across the tropical inland.

A small clump of Wirewood growing on a spinifex plain.

Wirewood foliage and flowers; central desert people eat the seeds whole, and as flour.

Whitewood Atalaya hemiglauca, family Sapindaceae, is another widespread and very attractive dry country tree.

Whitewood is an excellent shade tree in country where shade is in short supply;
I remember some good camps in its shelter.

Lolly Bush Clerodendrum floribundum Family Verbenaceae is a small tree found right
across northern Australia, in wetter as well as arid zones.
Despite the name and the attractive-looking fruit, they are not edible.

Desert Poplar Codonocarpus cotonifolius Family Gyrostemonaceae is more familiar
in southern arid lands, though there are also outliers to the west of the Great Sandy.

In addition to the Desert Bloodwood, which is often found on the dunes, there are a couple of mallee species of eucalypt (low-growing and multi-stemmed, so technically really shrubs) growing, often in some profusion, on the plains.

Eucalyptus (or Corymbia) deserticola - ie 'desert dwelling' - is found scattered
across the more northern deserts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The distinctive fruit and leaves of E. deserticola. Like some other eucalypts, it retains its
juvenile leaves, which are opposite and clasp around the stem.

Red-bud Mallee Eucalyptus pachyphylla (definitely more a shrub than tree!), another
specialist of the central deserts, at its western limits in the Great Sandy.
Below its large and conspicuous fruit; you can still see traces of the bright red
that characterises its buds and confers its common name.

I've introduced the Proteaceous genus Hakea before in an earlier blog; a couple of species thrive in the arid sandiness of the central deserts.

Fork-leaved Corkwood Hakea divaricata, above and below.
Another central desert specialist.

Corkwood Hakea lorea, above and below.
The corkiness of the bark (not really the wood) is evident above.

Time now to look down, at some of the flowering herbs (or ground-covering shrubs, I'm not going to be too pedantic about it).

A parakeelya Calandrinia stagnensis Family Portulacaceae.
I'm almost sure of the species, but less sure of the name origin. The '-ensis' suffix indicates a place,
but the type locality is listed as 'Ross's waterhole, Macumba River', in northern South Australia,
which leaves me baffled. If you have an insight to this one I'd be interested.

Blue Pincushion Brunonia australis, the only member of the family Brunoniaceae (though some would now
lump it into Goodeniaceae). This pretty herb has an amazing distribution, from the forests of the south-east
and south-west, through woodlands to the central and western deserts.

Desert Pepperflower Diplopeltis stuartii Family Sapindaceae, above and below.
Technically a shrub, but really...
Interesting for a couple of reasons. It is one of the few colourfully-flowered members of the
family, many of which (like the hop-bushes, Dodonea) are wind-pollinated.
It is also one of the few plants named for the doyen of desert explorers, John McDouall Stuart, who collected it.

There were a couple of species of Goodenia, only one of which I could name.

Goodenia centralis, as the name suggests, of the central (and western) deserts.

This Goodenia, above and below, I can't find in any of my books. Advice welcomed!

And while we're on mysteries, I might as well put this one up in the hope that someone might recognise it (and of course because it is intrinsically attractive).

It was growing near the shores of the salty Lake Mackay.

Likewise this one; I was thinking it could be a Stemodia but now I'm not at all sure.

A roadside mystery, above and below.

But it's probably best for my self-esteem to end with a couple that I am reasonably confident about!

Horse Mulla Mulla Ptilotus schwartzii Family Amaranthaceae.
Mulla mulla is the name of the group, which can form vast expanses of flowers at times, but
I can't shed any light on the significance of 'horse'.
Wilhelm Schwartz founded Hermansburg Mission, now Ntaria community, in central Australia.

A samphire, Tecticornia verrucosa. It is apparently a source of edible seeds prized by desert Aboriginal people.

And that will do for today, I think. When we return to the desert we'll look at some of the beautiful flowering shrubs but, as I mentioned earlier, we'll have a week's break first, to do something quite different.

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I've had it in the back of my mind for a while to feature some plants and animals which are endemic (ie found nowhere else), not just to Australia - that would be a bit too easy - but to just one Australian state or territory. Now seems like as good a time as any, so let's travel round the country and meet a few of these relatively restricted organisms.

Some jurisdictions were easy - the south-west of Western Australia and the island state of Tasmania have been isolated from the rest of Australia for some time, so endemism is widespread there. Others were a bit trickier, but I've got examples from every jurisdiction, including the tiny Australian Capital Territory where I live. The real embarrassment is only being able to provide one example from Victoria, the nearest state (other than New South Wales, which surrounds us here) to our home. In the last decade I've spent less time there than anywhere else in Australia - I really must remedy that!

If you're not familiar with the layout of Australia, here it is with the states and territories marked on it.

OK, this isn't intended to be very deep, so let's start, beginning in the heartland of Australian endemism, the south-west of Western Australia.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Quokkas Setonix brachyurus, Rottnest Island; they have no close relatives.
These small macropods (kangaroos and wallabies) were widespread on the south-west mainland,
but predation by foxes and cats has almost eliminated them from there.
On some islands, most famously the tourist destination of Rottnest, they thrive.
(The Dutch navigator Willem de Vlamingh named the island for them in 1696,
the name meaning "rats' nest"!)

There are 16 endemic WA bird species, mostly in the south-west. Some are members of east-west species pairs, obviously derived from a single population when the south-west was isolated by aridity.

Red-eared Firetail Stagnopleura oculata, Albany.
There are two firetail species across the country in the south-east,
with the Beautiful Firetail S. bella probably the most similar.

Other WA endemics have no close relatives and have presumably been separated for a long time.

Red-capped Parrot Purpureicephalus spurius, Albany.
A truly spectacular bird, the only one of its genus, which uses its long upper mandible to extract seeds
from the big capsules of Marri Eucalyptus (or Corymbia) calophylla.


Motorbike Frog Litoria moorei, Margaret River. Named for the truly amazing call, complete with gear changes!

As for endemic plants - well, the south-west alone has nearly 6,000 endemic species, so selection is pretty arbitrary! Here are three, selected more or less at random.

Purple Enamel Orchid Elythranthera brunonis, Two Peoples Bay. A spectacularly shiny orchid.

Red and Green Kangaroo Paw Anigozanthus manglesii, Perth.
This extraordinary plant is the state floral emblem.
Bird-pollinated, the anthers brush the bird's forehead as it probes the base for nectar.

West Australian Christmas Bush Nuytsia floribunda, Torndirrup NP.
A mistletoe growing as a tree, parasitising the roots of adjacent plants.
The genus name is for Dutchman Pieter Nuyts, who as a high official in the Dutch East India Company
accompanied one of the very first European explorations of the southern Australian coast in 1626.
He later became Dutch ambassador to Japan, and governor of Formosa (now Taiwan).

We'll continue around the country clockwise, so next stop...

The NORTHERN TERRITORY

Many species extend their range across much of northern Australia, so endemics aren't quite so easy to find here, but there certainly are some. Some are associated with the great sandstone escarpments of Kakadu National Park, east of Darwin on the map above.


Chestnut-quilled Rock Pigeon Petrophassa rufipennis, Burrunggui (formerly known erroneously as Nourlangie Rock). Pretty much endemic to Kakadu National Park!

There are other NT endemics however, not tied to the sandstone.

Hooded Parrot Psephotus dissimilis, Pine Creek.
This woodland parrot is restricted to woodlands of the Top End.

Among endemic NT plants is Australia's only native bamboo species.


Bambusa arnhemica, Kakadu National Park.

And the Territory's endemics are not limited to the tropics either. The desert ranges to the south also harbour some plants found nowhere else.

MacDonnell Ranges Cycad Macrozamia macdonnellii, Palm Valley, central Australia.
Isolated in the MacDonnell Ranges and their outliers by the drying of the continent, this species
is listed as threatened under national legislation.

Continuing east, we get to the biologically rich state of....

QUEENSLAND

Here the focus of endemism is on the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, centred on Cairns in the tropical north. The rainforests in particular here support many endemic species.

Spotted Catbird Ailuroedus maculosus, Atherton Tablelands.
This is a 'recent' endemic, in that until recently it was regarded as part of a species that extended to New Guinea.
It has now been split off as a species in its own right, with the New Guinea species now known as
Black-eared Catbird A. melanotis.
(However this species is also found in far north Queensland, so Australia now
finds itself the proud possessor of three catbird species!)

Wet Tropics endemics can also be readily found among mammals, reptiles and plants.

Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo Dendrolagus lumholtzi, Atherton Tableland -
it is in fact endemic to this high rich volcanic soil tableland.
(Awful photo, sorry! It's the only one I've got.)


Cooktown Ring-tailed Gecko Cyrtodactylus tuberculatus, near Cooktown. Like the catbird above, this gecko was once regarded as part of a species that extended into New Guinea, but herpetologists now recognise five Australian members of the genus, none of them found in New Guinea. This one apparently lost its ringed tail, and the one that replaced it is unadorned.

Bull Kauri Agathis microstachya, Atherton Tableland, to which it, like the tree kangaroos,
is pretty well limited. This conifer is a member of the old Gondwanan family Araucariaceae.

Queensland is a big state however, and the Wet Tropics don't have a total monopoly on endemics.

Yellow Honeyeater Stomiopera (until recently Lichenostomus) flava, Ingham.
(It is on an African Tulip Tree, not endemic, not even native to Australia!)
This honeyeater is found across far north Queensland in woodlands and along watercourses.

Leichhardt's Yellow Jacket Eucalyptus (or Corymbia) leichhardtii, west of Charters Towers.
This drier woodland tree of north and central Queensland commemorates the Prussian scientist-explorer
Ludwig Leichhardt who became something of a national hero for his exploring feats in Queensland
and the Northern Territory before vanishing in a somewhat rash attempt to find a route from
south-east Queensland to Perth, in 1848

South now, to...

NEW SOUTH WALES

This state (NSW from now on) doesn't have isolated extremities like WA and Queensland do, so endemics aren't so prevalent, especially among animals. There is just one NSW bird endemic, the Rock Warbler (or Origma) Origma solitaria.

Rock Warbler, Morton National Park. This bird, the only one of its genus, is a resident of the
Sydney Sandstone, based on the Blue Mountains.

There are certainly endemic plants in NSW, including its magnificent state emblem.

New South Wales Waratah Telopea speciosissima, Budderoo NP.
A truly superb member of the family Proteaceae, the head comprising dozens of red flowers surrounded
by red bracts to make them even more appealing to pollinating birds.
Still a common part of near-coastal heathlands, though illegal cutting of the flowers near
population centres has been damaging.

Buttercup Doubletail Diuris aequalis, near Bungendore.
This lovely donkey orchid (for the flower shape, like a donkey's face) is limited to inland south-east NSW;
it is listed as threatened under both state and national legislation.

AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY

Before we leave NSW, we must pause in the Australian Capital Territory, which you can see as a tiny jurisdiction around Canberra, labelled ACT, in the far south-east of NSW on the map above. It's biologically part of the NSW southern highlands, but we do have a couple of plants not found across the nearby border. Here's one.

Canberra Spider Orchid Caladenia actensis, Canberra Nature Park;
'actensis' means 'from ACT' ie Australian Capital Territory! It is known from only a couple of populations
on Mounts Majura and Ainslie on the edge of Canberra, covering no more than half a hectare.
It is listed nationally as Critically Endangered.

South now to ...

VICTORIA

This is a small state with no endemic bird species, though it has some other endemic animals. I've not spent much meaningful time there since I had a digital camera (!) so with apologies to my Victorian friends, I present this miserly proffering.

Grampians Bossiaea B. rosmarinifolia, Grampians (Gariwerd) NP.
This range in western Australia boasts one of the best wildflower displays in south-eastern Australia;
this species is one of several limited to the range.

With more confidence I now cross the Bass Strait, to where endemics are rife, including 12 birds.

TASMANIA

Tasmanian Scrubwren Sericornis humilis, Freycinet NP.
Tasmania hasn't been isolated for as long as south-western Australia has, and nearly all the Tasmanian
endemics are closely related to a mainland species. In this case, the mainland 'cousin species' is the familiar
White-browed Scrubwren.

Spotted Skink Niveoscincus ocellatus, Binalong Bay.
This is a rock-preferring endemic skink of northern and eastern Tasmania.

Tasmanian Pademelons Thylogale billardierii, NarawntapuNP.
(I freely admit that I'm cheating somewhat here, as they used to occur on the mainland until
the early 20th century so are not strictly endemic to Tasmania, though they're found nowhere else now.
They are very photogenic though...)

There are plenty of endemic Tasmanian plants to choose from, and I'm opted for just a couple.

Pandani Richea pandanifolia, Mount Field NP.
This is a heath (family Ericaceae, though not everyone here agrees with lumping the Australian heaths,
until recently Epacridaceae, into this largely Old World family), and purportedly the world's
largest heath plant. It can grow to over ten metres tall.

Pencil Pines Arthrotaxis cupressoides, family Cupressaceae, Dove Lake, Cradle Mountain NP.
There are several endemic Tasmanian conifers, associated with rainforests and heathlands.

Which finally leads us back to the mainland, and west again, to my former home state of...

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Here too there is just one endemic bird species, which I finally saw recently (and which may have been, even if subconsciously, the trigger for this posting); virtually all South Australia's land borders are in deserts which continue across the continent, and their inhabitants follow the arid lands far afield.

Chestnut-breasted Whiteface Aphelocephala pectoralis, south of Coober Pedy;
a very small rusty-coloured bird in a very large rusty-coloured landscape.
It's taken me decades to take this poor photograph, so I hope you can be forgiving of it.

Endemic plants are found in South Australia too, often on the peninsulas that project into the Southern Ocean; the dry lands to the north of these peninsulas isolate organisms in their moister southern sectors.

Limestone Mintbush Prostanthera calycina, High Cliffs, is endemic to Eyre Peninsula
where it is mostly found growing on limestone. It is listed nationally as Vulnerable to extinction..

Winter Spider Orchid Caladenia (or Arachnorchis) brumalis, Wanilla Conservation Park, Eyre Peninsula.
This species too is associated with limestone (there's a lot of it in that part of the world!), and is listed
under state and national legislation as threatened. It is found on all three of the major peninsulas.

So that completes our odyssey - many kilometres, not so many species out of all the ones I could have chosen. If you've seen all these you've seen quite a bit of the country; if not yet, then hopefully it can provide another small reason for planning your next trip!

Next time, as promised, I'll complete the series on the Great Sandy Desert by introducing some of the many flowering shrubs that were on show recently.

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This may be of little interest to anybody, but I find constantly that people are visiting older postings, so I skim through them a couple of times a year and update as required. Mostly this means replacing pictures with better ones, or adding to postings as more pics become available.

Here, in a posting on tree kingfishers, I've added photos of Collared and Stork-billed Kingfishers, and a better one of Blue-winged Kookaburra. Links to images (without captions) here and here and here.

Here, in a posting on fishing kingfishers, I've added a photo of Blue-eared Kingfisher. Link to image (without caption) here.

Here, in a posting on camouflage, I've added a photo of a superbly camouflaged Common Gliding Dragon. Link to image (without caption) here.

Here, in a posting on Australian robins, I've added a photo of a Buff-sided Robin. Link to image (without caption) here.

Here, in a posting on soaring birds, I've added photo of a Little Eagle, and replaced photos of Australian Pelicans and Black-necked Stork with better ones. Links to images (without captions) here and here and here.

Here, in a posting on fruit doves (etc), I've added a photo of a Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove. Link to image (without caption) here.

Here, in a posting on the (then) honeyeater genus Lichenostomus, I have had to do some rewriting following major taxonomic changes. I have explained and commented, and inserted the new genus names as appropriate for anyone interested. Moreover I have added a photo of Yellow-tinted Honeyeater, and replaced the one of Singing Honeyeater. Links to images (without captions) here and here.

As promised, herewith the last instalment in a series of postings on my recent serendipitous visit to the remote and beautiful Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. It started here; you can work forward from there if you feel so inclined.

I am ending with some of the flowering shrubs - and there were a surprising number, after the relatively recent rains. Inevitably there were a few I don't know, and probably a couple (hopefully no more!) that I've misinterpreted. As ever any help and suggestions will be very warmly welcomed and acknowledged.

Rather than attempt a commentary - I think I've said most of that in earlier posts on the desert - this post is really going to comprise a series (a fairly long series, I should warn) of annotated photos. Many of the plants are too unfamiliar to have been allocated common names.

There were a lot of acacias; I'll start with just some of them.

Acacia acradenia, an uncommon wattle scattered across the northern deserts.

Grey-whorled Wattle Acacia adoxa, a lovely little wattle from the north-west of Australia,
finding its south-eastern limits in the Great Sandy Desert. It was named as recently as 1972 by eminent
Australian Acacia botanist Leslie Pedley who was somewhat dismissive of it - adoxa means
ignoble or disreputable! Seems a little harsh.

Acacia chippendalei, scattered in the northern central deserts.
Named for George Chippendale, a great authority on Northern Territory flora
and author of the eucalypt volume of the Flora of Australia.
He was also a gentle and delightful man who I am grateful for having known.

Waxy Wattle Acacia dictyophleba, an attractive species widespread in the northern deserts.

Hill's Tabletop Wattle Acacia hilliana, a low-growing species again found across the northern deserts.
Not so many plants are named for an entomologist, but Gerald Hill was obviously something of a broader
naturalist as well, as he had the perspicacity to collect the type specimen.

Acacia stipuligera in late evening light.

I think this one is Sandhill Wattle Acacia ligulata, which I know from further south.
Any thoughts?

A couple of heavily-flowering shrubs from the family Myrtaceae periodically brightened up the desert all along our route.

Desert Heath Myrtle Aluta (formerly Thrytomene) maisonnevei is restricted to the
depths of the western deserts.

A starflower Calytrix sp., above and below. It was a star of the flowering shrubs, shining in the desert distances.

A couple of pea shrubs were also conspicuous.

The remarkable Upside-down Plant Leptosema chambersi, not least for being a bird-pollinated plant
with the flowers at ground level, much more characteristic of a mammal-pollinated one.
It was named by Ferdinand von Mueller for pastoralist James Chambers who financed John McDouall Stuart's
expedition which collected the type specimen.

Every one of the numerous Upside-down Plants we saw was surrounded by bird footprints, but sadly
we never managed to see the birds, which I assume were either (or both) honeyeaters or woodswallows.

Green Birdflower Crotolaria cunninghamii, above and below.
This remarkable pea nearly always grows on red sand dunes.
It was named to commemorate the great early 19th century botanist and explorer Allan Cunningham.

Poison Sage Isotropis atropurpurea is a rather more conventional pea, scattered in apparently discrete
populations across the western deserts. Related species are toxic by virtue of having sodium fluoracetate
('1080' when it appears in commercial pest poisons) in their foliage, but it seems that this species
has another, hitherto so far unidentified, chemical.

A closely-related family is Caesalpinaceae - in fact the current botanical taxonomic approach of lumping everything with relatedness into the same genus or family would include them, and the acacias, into one vast family with the peas, but it's hard to see how this helps us understand the more nuanced relationships.

Senna (formerly Cassia) artemisioides ssp. helmsii.This is a near-ubiquitous genus in the arid lands; the bewildering range of apparently quite dissimilar
subspecies is notorious.

Butterfly Bush Petalostylis cassioides, in the same family but much less abundant.

One of my favourite plant groups, not least because of their fondness for the deep deserts (as well as semi-arid habitats) is the eremophilas or emu-bushes; I've made a couple of recent errors in identifying these so I'm a bit nervous about offering names for them, but I'm sure I'll hear if I'm wrong! I won't talk too much about the group, there's quite a bit of information in the link above.

Wilcox Bush Eremophila forrestii.

Crimson Turkey Bush Eremophila latrobei, found right across inland Australia.

Wills' Desert Fuchsia Eremophila willsii, mostly a plant of the more southern deserts.
Named for William Wills, second in command of the infamously doomed Burke and Wills expedition;
not the place here for a broad discussion, but they died primarily because of their failure to respect or try to
understand the local inhabitants who were offering them essential survival advice.

Last time I introduced a couple of ground-hugging species of Goodenia, but there were a couple of larger species of Goodeniaceae present too.

Spiny Fanflower Scaevola spinescens, common across inland Australia.

Scaevola basedowii, for the noted anthropologist Herbert Basedow who collected it at the evidently
misnamed Mount Unapproachable in outback South Australia in 1926.

A most attractive member of the family which I take to be a Vellea, but I can't do better than that.
I would guess that the curious stem-clasping leaves help to prevent pollen-thieving ants from accessing the flowers.

One of the most dramatic of desert flowers, the large and prolifically flowering Desert Grevillea G. eriostachya, was just coming into flower as we were leaving. I was sorry about this, not least because it is an irresistible magnet to nectar-seeking birds.

Not many plants grow on the clay pans, but the seaheaths Frankenia (family Frankeniaceae) are exceptions.

Frankenia cinerea, above and below.

The family Lamiaceae, native mintbushes and many European-derived garden herbs, often have quite conspicuous flowers, but one widespread shrub we found in the desert does not - it is nonetheless attractive for that.

Dicrastylis exsuccosa, above and below.
This is not a familiar genus, including to me, but it contains over 30 species, mostly
from inland Western Australia.

I'll conclude with a few more species which were the only ones of their genera we saw. Two of them are superficially quite similar.

Common Firebush Keraudrenia integrifolia Family Sterculiaceae.
Named for its vigorous regeneration following fire.

Halgania solanacea, Family Boraginaceae; its species name reflects its similarity to yet another desert
genus, Solanum, better known as also being the tomato genus.

And while we're on the subject, here's one named for its perceived similarity to Solanum leaves!

Hibiscus solanifolius, a plant of very limited distribution.

And finally, the quiz - to which I don't know the answers! Or at least I didn't until Bevan Buirchell has again kindly come to the rescue with genera; armed with that I feel moderately confident in suggesting the species as below. Again my grateful thanks for your generosity and expertise Beavan.

Streptoglossa decurrens or odora; these two dryland daisy species are very hard to distinguish.

Indigofera monophylla, a desert member of a widespread Australian pea shrub species.

And that's it for our exploration of this remote and little-known part of the world (though I think that after the Desert Discovery expedition of which I was a very small part we know it a bit better now). I don't imagine I'll ever get back there - access for an individual is not easy, and there's a lot more of the world to see. But I am very glad and feel very privileged to have been there.

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Last year we visited fabulous Kakadu National Park, in the far north of Australia, in the unfashionable wet season, and I wrote about it here. Recently we went back again, this time at the end of the dry, after peak visitor numbers had started to drop off, to enjoy the world-class park with more time on our hands and to see it in a very different mood. This was Gurrung, in the six-season reckoning of the Bininj Mungguy people who are the traditional owners of Kakadu. Gurrung is the hot dry season, and it lived up to its billing.

In particular I want to offer today a contrast with the focus of the last post, the sublime guided boat tours on Cooinda (or Yellow Waters) Billabongs wetland complex. Last time we were there the waters had spread across the flood plain so the boat wasn't restricted to the channels, but the plethora of water also meant that the birds had scattered across the landscape and weren't very evident. This time it was very different, though totally unseasonal winter rain meant that the flood plains were still wet, though not inundated.

We chose the dawn tour as offering the best light and wildlife. I'll start with a short series of photos of the arrival of day as we set out; it was very beautiful indeed.

Paperbarks reflected in the water.

Egrets still roosting in the paperbark to the right of the previous picture.

Still cool enough in the pre-dawn for a mist.

The sun colouring the sky from below.

And finally appearing!

A lone darter against the sunrise.

A pair of White-bellied Sea-eagles Haliaeetus leucogaster stained golden by the sunrise.

This time the birdlife was abundant and evident, beginning with flights of birds heading out for a day of feeding.

Magpie Geese Anseranas semipalmata in early dawn light.

Magpie Geese flying over egrets (probably three species) who are already at their work stations.

Magpie Geese again - I am very fond of these abundant and somewhat strange primitive waterfowl,
neither ducks nor geese but forming a family of their own.

Royal Spoonbills Platalea regia.

Little Corellas Cacatua sanguinea - by now the sun was well and truly up.

I might as well continue with the birds now I've begun on them; they were after all one of the highlights.

Male Australian Darter Anhinga novaehollandiae, drying his wings.
Darters hunt by skulking along the bottom and ambushing fish; this requires heavy bones and waterlogged
feathers to reduce buoyancy, so they need to dry off afterwards.
I love that rufous wash on his throat.

Kingfishers are always a highlight, and a couple of species were regulars.

Forest Kingfisher Todiramphus macleayii pair.
Despite being by water on this occasion, Forest Kingfishers are woodland birds and rarely catch fish.

Azure Kingfishers Ceyx azureus on the other hand catch fish as a key part of their lifestyle.

In addition to the egrets, other herons were present, including a couple of less conspicuous ones.

Nankeen Night Heron Nycticorax caledonicus immature.

Black Bittern Ixobrychus flavicollis, an uncommon sighting, being both shy and secretive, hiding in reed beds.

Both Australian whistling-ducks were present, including large flocks of Plumed Whistling-Ducks Dendrocygna eytoni.

Plumed Whistling-Ducks, above and below.

Wandering Whistling-Ducks D. arcuata lack the plumes but are more richly coloured.
They were present in much smaller numbers.

Green Pygmy-geese Nettapus pulchellus; not really geese at all, but part of the main line of ducks,
apparently old Gondwanans. This species is also found in New Guinea.
(The other Australian species, Cotton Pygmy-goose, extends into south-east Asia, and there is an African species.)

Pheasant Coucal Centropus phasianinus. This female watched us drift by.
Curiously this is the only Australian cuckoo which is not a brood parasite,
compared with world figures which show that only 40% of cuckoo species are parasites.
I hope this isn't a reflection of the national psyche...

A highlight for me however is always renewing acquaintance with the delightful Comb-crested Jacana Irediparra gallinacea, widely known also as Lily Trotter for its lifestyle - common to all eight members of the family - of walking on floating lily pads, courtesy of its enormously long toes which disperse its weight.

It had been a good breeding season; the bird above is a juvenile, with the comb not yet
fully developed - it will later be bright red and more extensive.
(I do like a nice bird reflection too, and this morning offered me quite a few!)

This jacana chick is already showing an aptitude for lily-trotting;
its remarkable toes seem to have reached full size before it has!

Of other animals, a disturbing number were ferals. This will always be a problem in a park of this size - at 20,000 square kilometres it is vast - but resources for feral animal and weed control have been cut back and control is barely happening. While we didn't see any this time, I am told that feral Water Buffalo numbers are rebounding after having been brought to low levels.

Feral Cattle (and Cattle Egrets).

Feral Pig (still with Cattle Egrets, not Pig Egrets...)

Feral Horses (ditto re egrets).

I don't want to end on this sour note however and there were other animals about.

Agile Wallabies Macropus agilis (and obligatory Cattle Egret) grooming on the flood plain.
This is the commonest wallaby all across northern Australia.

I think these damselflies are Blue Slims Aciagrion fragile, but I have no expertise in the field
and there are several similar species. Any suggestions?

But the animal that most tourists probably come to see is none of the above. Estuarine Crocodiles Crocodylus porosus are abundant in the park, and are readily seen at this time of year due to the lower water levels. The crocophiles on the cruise were well catered for!

One might have hoped this lot might have had more of an impact on the ferals!

Crocodile in Azolla sp., a floating fern.

I didn't take many plant pictures this time - they hadn't changed since last time and I was busy on the wildlife. However it would be remiss to fail to mention water lilies (other than simply as platforms for jacanas) in the context of such a trip.

Lotus Lilies Nelumbo nucifera, above and below.
This species also grows across tropical Asia, where it is of great cultural significance.
Inter alia it is the national flower of India.

Kakadu is truly one of the world's great parks, and deserves at least several days of your time. Make sure you get out onto beautiful Cooinda while you're there too!

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It's been quite a few posts - a record number in fact - since IF Talking Naturally has ventured overseas. While I have no qualms about featuring my home country disproportionately, it's time to raise my horizons a little, and return to one of my favourite countries (of which I have quite a few).

Dawn on Antisana Volcano from the deck of Wildsumaco Lodge.

Ecuador, as has often been remarked both here and elsewhere, is an extraordinary destination for a naturalist; probably nowhere in the world is such biological wealth crammed into such a small area. It's fair to say that the focus of most visitors is on the cloud forests of the north-west slopes of the Andes (especially the wonderful Mindo Valley), on the Amazon basin, and of course on the near-mythical Galápagos. However the eastern slopes of the Andes offer equal riches, and being isolated from the western cloud forests by the treeless snowy high peaks and ridges of the range, have many species unique to the area. Ecuador has a good record of protecting its natural treasures, but it is not a rich country and clearing continues. As elsewhere in South America, private conservation trusts and philanthropic companies have been set up to help fill the gap between existing public reserves and the need for more. One such is the small group of people from Sweden and the US who have bought an area of mid-level forest (1500 metres above sea level) on the slopes of Sumaco Volcano for preservation. They have built a research station and to help pay for it, and to widen understanding of the area's values and needs, have recently built a lovely lodge on a ridge that had previously been cleared.

I don't often feature private establishments here, but when I've done so it's because I believe they deserve it for what they're doing for the world, and because I believe that you would benefit from knowing about them.

The arrow indicates the approximate position of Wildsumaco Lodge on the eastern slopes of the Andes.

More detailed map of the lodge's location; this one is taken from Wildsumaco's web page;
in the circumstance I'm assuming they won't mind too much!

It's fair to say that you could spend your entire time at Wildsumaco on the magnificent deck looking out across the cloud forest to the Andes, and in particular to mighty Volcán Antisana some 60 kilometres away to the north-west, back towards Quito. At 5,700 metres above sea level, it is the fourth highest peak in Ecuador.

There are not many better reasons for getting up early than discovering what the view to Antisana's like today -
and every day is different. Sometimes the clouds entirely wreath it, other times they are draped
diaphonously over it, as in the photo at the top of the posting, and just sometimes they stay off it completely,
at least for a while.

As the sun rises higher, it's time to pay attention to what's going on closer to hand, and there is a lot of deck to patrol to keep an eye on things.

As can be seen from these photos there is a lot of animal-attracting vegetation close to hand, as well as some of the most productive hummingbird feeders in Ecuador. Here is some of the wildlife I was privileged to see from this most wonderful balcony.

Many-spotted Hummingbird Taphrospilus hypostictus. This one is an eastern slopes specialist, found in a disjunct narrow band south from northern Ecuador.

Rufous-vented Whitetip Urosticte ruficrissa, likewise restricted to the eastern slopes, from Colombia to Peru.

Sparkling Violetear Colibri coruscans,a much more widespread Andean species, but always very welcome!

Brown Violetear Colibri delphinae; a seemingly relatively dull-coloured violetear,
until the sun catches its iridescent patches. Sadly no sun in this pic...
It is found on both slopes of the Andes, and across northern South America and the Caribbean.
Before the widespread advent of feeders, it wasn't often seen by visitors.

I try to avoid using pics of hummers on feeders where possible, but sometimes they're the only ones I can get and the birds are far too lovely to exclude on that basis!

Golden-tailed Sapphire Chrysuronia oenone is very much a case in point;
a very widespread hummer, but what a bird!

Black-throated Brilliant Heliodoxa schreibersii, here at about its uppermost limits.
Unlike most of the hummingbirds seen at Wildsumaco, this one is found down in the Amazonian lowlands.

While the hummingbirds will always be star turns they are far from the only breathtaking visitors to be seen from the Wildsumaco deck. A troop of Rio Napo, or Graell's, Tamarins Saguinus graellsi comes in to accept bananas offered via a pulley system in a tree at eye level to the deck.

Rio Napo Tamarin has been split off from the already restricted-range Black-naped Tamarin,
though as is so often the way this is not universally accepted.

Other delights come for naturally occurring treats,especially the finger-shaped fruit of Cecropia trees.

Black-mandibled (or Yellow-throated) Toucan Ramphastos ambiguus.Another magnificent bird, up to 60cm long, restricted to the eastern Andean slopes.

Many-banded Aracari Pteroglossus pluricinctus is primarily a lowland species,
found here well above its normally expected altitude.
Aracari is the name used for the toucans of this genus, which are smaller than the previous species.

Golden-collared (or Red-billed) Toucanet Selenidera reinwardtii, female above, male below.
This species is much smaller again than the aracari.
Much the same comments can be made about the distribution of this species.
Perhaps it is simply that, before the construction of Wildsumaco,
few observers came to these forests to record their presence.

It is in a cloud forest however, and sometimes the curtain is drawn across the Wildsumaco views.

You can see from the white verandah post that this is - or would be - much the same view
as the one shown earlier in this post.

At this time it can be appropriate to withdraw into the comforts of the large room which backs the deck; this is not a great hardship.

Dining room above (not in the cloud!) and bar below.

There are also some lovely quilts (not tapestries - thanks Susan!) on the walls.

Andean Cock-of-the-Rock

Inca Jays.

And this one, to my shame, has me baffled (though I'm sure it's just me).
I'm pretty sure it's a crake (Grey-breasted perhaps?) but any suggestions gratefully received.
I'm very far from an expert on Ecuador's vast array of bird species!

And as at any rainforest lodge, the morning produces a wonderful array of insects drawn to the lights overnight (at least until the birds find them!). Here is an array of delightful moths and a katydid, none of which I'm even going to attempt to identify - they're worth admiring for their own sakes though.

And at that point my time has elapsed for today, so I'll have to finish this with a shorter posting, of the area beyond the lodge, next time. I'll come back next week and do that slightly earlier than I otherwise would have. I hope I've caught your attention sufficiently for you to have marked down Wildsumaco as "must visit" for your next Ecuador trip. It deserves it.

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In my last posting I ran out of time before finishing my introduction to Wilsumaco, the truly superb new conservation-oriented lodge on the eastern Andean slopes of northern Ecuador. I waxed enthusiastic on the immediate surrounds of the lodge itself, but didn't manage to leave its immediate vicinity! That can now be rectified in a fairly brief posting.

We came to Wildsumaco from the west - not from Quito itself, but from the much closer (and higher) San Isidro Lodge, which is also worthy of its own post in the not too distant future. This is the direction from which most visitors are likely to arrive, but you could also come from the east, leaving Coca after a stay in the Amazon basin. Before we even reached the lodge we stopped at a set of feeders off the road at the edge of the forest, where we saw some species that we didn't later see from the lodge verandah. Inevitably some of these photos were taken on the feeders - sorry about that!

Violet-headed Hummingbird Klais guimeti, another eastern slopes specialist in the Andes,
but curiously also found at lower elevations in central America and Venezuela.

Gould's Jewelfront Heliodoxa aurescens; like some of the species mentioned in the previous post,
this is primarily a lowland bird which has only recently been recorded at this altitude (1500 metres above sea level)
at Wildsumaco, presumably because people weren't looking here prior to the lodge's existence.

Green Hermit Phaethornis guy, another species which doesn't find its way to the Pacific side of the Andes,
though its range extends from central America to Peru.
I find the hermits especially hard to photograph, as they don't seem to land where they're photographable!

One hazard of watching feeders is that it can hard to remember to look up or down as well, and one should!

The seemingly weightless Swallow-tailed Kite Elanoides forficatus must be one of the loveliest birds of prey.
It is a widespread resident in the northern half of South America; a population in the south-east of the US
migrates south to join the southern birds after breeding.

This magnificent caterpillar was doubtless destined to become an equally magnificent butterfly or moth
- there are plenty around - but I can't begin to suggest what that might be.

The extensive lodge driveway and the road past the gate provide excellent birding opportunities too, but another highlight was accompanying guide Byron down into the forest to look for trickier options. The forest itself is of course beautiful.

Creek above, and cloud forest below, along the forest track.

Bromeliad flower. Bromeliads are a feature of the Andean cloud forests, with more than 4500 species
in Ecuador alone, at densities which can exceed 100,000 plants per hectare.

Some glowing leaves.

Like other lodges, Wildsumaco has begun habituating wild antpittas, infamously difficult birds to see normally, and Byron was an expert in calling them up.

Byron calling up Plain-backed Antpitta Grallaria haplonota, which has a breathy fluting series of notes.

Plain-backed Antpitta - not much light or time, so apologies for the poor photo.
It's the only one I've ever seen though!

He also conjured up Ochre-breasted Antpitta, which I had previously seen in Peru at Paz de las Aves - I never mind seeing a bird, especially one this elusive, more than once however!

Ochre-breasted Antpitta Grallaricula flavirostris, Wildsumaco.

Other prized birds are much less easy to photograph, so bear with me if you will - I worked hard for these miserable shots, believe it or not!

White-crowned Manakin Dixiphia pipra. In my defence, this is a tiny bird, hard to approach in the dim
light of the forest understorey, and jet black.
The males form small loose leks, just in earshot of each other, where they display to attract females' attention.

Blackish Antbird Cercomacroides nigrescens; like any antbirds this one is shy and cryptic in the dense
understorey. If this photo is memorable for anything (and OK, it's really not!),
it's for being the only antbird I've ever managed to lay lens on!

So, a brief introduction to a special, exciting, and utterly enjoyable place. I hope you can find your way there some day.

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National days have a very eclectic mix of raisons d'être, with some having apparently fairly nebulous significance. I'm afraid one may see Scotland's National Day, Saint Andrew's Day on 30 November, as being in this category. I feel that I can make the observation as one whose father was born there - my grandfather, a World War One soldier, prisoner of war and survivor, was an electrician in the coal mines, and brought his family out to Adelaide in 1928.

The connection to Scotland of Andrew, one of the apostles is, at best, vague. It is claimed that a couple of relics associated with him found their way to Scotland, but the two surviving manuscripts, as I understand it, are now in Paris and London. It is said that in 832AD King Óengus mac Fergusa of the Picts (in what is now Scotland) won a battle against the southern Angles after doing a prayer deal with Saint Andrew in which he undertook to make St A the patron saint of Scotland (though Scotland didn't strictly exist at the time), if St A gave him victory. St A kept his side of the bargain, and it's not at all clear what King Óengus did in return. It was only in 2006 that the Scottish parliament officially declared 30 November a bank holiday - but a sort of voluntary one, in that banks only close, and give their employees a holiday, if they feel like it. Moreover, far from having a monopoly on him, Scotland must share Andrew's patron saint favours with Barbados, Greece, Romania, Russia and the Ukraine, as well as assorted towns and regions.

All of which is not very relevant to our main purpose today, which is to celebrate the various Scots whose names are commemorated in the names of Australian plants!

Some of them I've acknowledged before in their own right, so I won't retell their stories here but will refer you to the original posting if you're interested. Perhaps the greatest of them was the remarkable botanist Robert Brown, who sailed with Matthew Flinders on the Investigator, a major scientific expedition beginning in 1801.


Purple Enamel Orchid Elythranthera brunonis, Two Peoples Bay, Western Australia. 'Brunonis' is Latin for brown, and appears for Robert in quite a few Australian names. It was named by the Austrian botanist Stephan Endlicher in 1839 as Glossodia brunonis, and the current genus was erected for it by great Western Australian botanist Alex George in 1963.

Charles Fraser, horticulturalist and botanist, was appointed Colonial Botanist of New South Wales by Governor Lachlan Macquarie.

Kapok flowers, Cochlospermum fraseri, family Bixaceae, Timber Creek, Northern Territory.
A common tree of the central and western Australian tropics, it was named to honour Fraser
by French botanist Jules Planchon.

Another Scottish Charles, Charles Moore, was also appointed New South Wales Colonial Botanist, in 1848.

Macrozamia moorei near Springsure, central Queensland, where it has a very small range.
It was named by the towering figure of late 19th century Australian botany, Ferdinand von Mueller to honour
Moore, who had a strong interest in cycads, in 1881 while Moore was still alive to appreciate the compliment.

And sadly, not all Scots have been universally admired; one such as was the self-aggrandising pioneer of the Murray River steam paddleboat trade, Francis Cadell, who von Mueller also honoured, in this case with a whole genus.

Ooline Cadellia pentastylis, Family Surianaceae, Tregole National Park,
inland south-east Queensland near Morven.
This is another species of limited distribution, the only one of its genus.

But now it's time to meet some Scots whose names appear on Australian plants and who I haven't previously introduced here.

Peter Good was a young man of whom we know sadly little, other than that he was born in Scotland, and worked as a gardener for Earl Wemyss. He was selected by Kew to go to India to bring back a plant collection assembled by the botanist Christopher Smith. On his return he was appointed a foreman at Kew, from where Robert Brown appointed him as assistant on the Investigator expedition. One of his major roles was keeping living plant collections on board, to avoid the problems of getting dried specimens through the tropics. Like many others he contracted dysentery in Timor but continued collecting until he died and was buried with naval honours in Sydney.

Goodia lotifolia, Tallaganda National Park, east of Canberra.
The genus was named for Peter Good by controversial English botanist Richard Salisbury.
(Some of the story of his controversy can be found here.)

A much more highly ranked Scot was John Clements Wickham who served under Lieutenant Phillip Parker King during the first of the British South American Marine Surveys, and was then Second-in-Command of the Beagle during Darwin’s famous voyage. He was responsible for maintaining order in the cramped on-board spaces, and Darwin (known on board as ‘the flycatcher’) and his specimens were a cause of much angst to Wickham, who referred to them as a ‘damn beastly bedvilment’. In fact he told Darwin that ‘if I were skipper I would have you and all your damn mess out of the place’. Darwin on the other hand wrote to his father that Wickham was ‘a glorious fellow’ and it was Wickham who named a bay Port Darwin; later the city took its name from it. In the late 1830s Wickham was back, now in command of the Beagle, charting the Bass Strait Islands and those still uncharted sections of the north-western coasts. His health was ruined, and he left the navy to work as police magistrate at Moreton Bay. When Queensland gained independence in 1860 he retired to the south of France. A more lasting reward was the naming of a widespread and beautiful tropical grevillea for him, by Swiss botanist Carl Meissner.

Grevillea wickhamii (and Grey-headed Honeyeater Ptilotula keartlandi), Kings Canyon, central Australia.

Across the country, Scot James Drummond was appointed to the (honorary!) position of Government Naturalist for the Swan River Colony in its earliest days. He was somewhat desperate, having been made redundant from his post as curator of Cork Botanic Gardens when the British Government withdrew funding, and was led to believe that if a public gardens was to be opened, he could expect a paid job. It didn't end any more happily than you might expect, but he did acquire some land grants and was able to sell plant specimens. Governor Stirling did appoint him as paid Superintendent of the Government Garden, but then the Colonial Office abolished the position of Government Naturalist! He spent most of the rest of his days tending his garden and vines, and collecting for British botanist and entrepreneur James Mangles.

Drummondita hassellii, family Rutaceae,Merredin, WA.
James' brother Thomas was a nurseryman who collected in North America.
This genus commemorates them both – the I is a latinised form of J for James, and the T for Thomas!
The responsible party for this creativity was Irish botanist William Harvey.

Cephalipterum drummondii, Mount Magnet, inland WA.
This one was specifically named for James Drummond.

Thomas Mitchell was born in Stirlingshire in 1792 and joined the British army, fighting in the Spanish Peninsula wars, attaining the rank of major and becoming a surveyor and draughtsman. In 1827 he arrived in Sydney to become Deputy Surveyor-General to John Oxley; when Oxley died the next year he got the top job, which he held until he died in 1855. His explorations were vital to the growing understanding of the colony. In 1831 he explored in north-western NSW, and reported that all the rivers flowed into the Darling. On other expeditions he followed the Darling from Bourke; the Lachlan to the Murrumbidgee; through western Queensland to try to find the route to Port Essington – he always had a profound belief in a river he called the Kindur, which he was sure would take him all the way to the northern sea; and the famous 'Australia Felix' journey in western Victoria. He wrote astutely and even sympathetically of Aboriginal culture, but his expeditions were involved in several fatal skirmishes. He collected natural history specimens as he went; on the western Victorian trip he took 100 sheep for food, and the shepherd was also the plant collector, which seems to be an unfortunate combination. Mitchell died after contracting pneumonia while surveying the road down the Clyde Mountain.

Native Orange Capparis mitchellii, Lake Broadwater, south-east Queensland.
Named for Mitchell by English botanist John Linley.

Our final Scot, Patrick Murray, Baron of Livingston, not only never visited Australia but could not have done so - he died well before the first English-speaker set foot on the continent. He had a famous garden, and after his early death in 1671 his huge plant collection was transferred to Edinburgh where it formed the nucleus of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. Much later his countryman Robert Brown named the genus palm genus Livistona for him (or at least for his title, though it's unclear what happened to the 'ng'!).

Livistona rigida, Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park, north-west Queensland.

Which is about all I've got for you today. I'm very grateful to Scotland for, in small part at least, making me what I am. And I'm grateful for the many significant contributions that Scots have made to Australia, not least botanically. If you're a Scot, have a happy national day - even if you find it's not a holiday for you...

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The Brindabella Mountains form the western boundary of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT hereafter). They also form the northern end of the Australian Alps system; the 104,000 hectares of Namadgi National Park connect with Kosciuszko National Park to the west and south in New South Wales and thence to the Alpine National Park in Victoria further south. They are managed cooperatively by the relevant states and territory, with the federal government providing coordination to form one of the world's great national park systems, protecting some 16,500 square kilometres of montane, subalpine and alpine forests and heaths. They are also one of the best reasons to live here in Canberra, accessed by a sealed road just 50km from the city centre. The road continues as a good gravel road along the spine of the range, south for another 20km until it reaches a locked gate just past the short road up to the summit of Mount Ginini, which is the highest point of the ACT and provides the best drive-in view in the territory.

Looking south from the summit of Mount Ginini along the spine of the Brindabellas to Mount Gingera.
The dead Snow Gums in this and subsequent photos date from the devastating fires of January 2003,
which continued into the suburbs, destroying more than 500 homes.

The Australian Alps national parks (courtesy of Wikpedia) with Namadgi National Park at the northern end.
Mount Ginini is just to the north of Mount Bimberi, which is marked.

On Sunday we drove up there to check the progress of the flowering. I've been taking people up there every December for over 30 years, and it is noticeable that the flowering has been getting steadily earlier during that time, to the point where peak flowering is probably now some two weeks ahead of where it was 30 years ago. Of course there are fluctuations in this from year to year and this year spring has been wet and cool so the timing this season is back to where it was in the past. One excellent indicator of this is the common understorey shrub, the pea Leafy Bossiaea Bossiaea foliosa, which appears in the foreground of the photo above (and more below); for the past decade or so it has finished flowering by December, which was very rarely the case in the past.

But first, a couple more 'scene-setters'; it is prevented from being a 360 degree view by the presence of an air navigation facility which blocks the vista to the north.

Looking west to the Bogong Peaks in northern Kosciuszko (not to be confused with Mount Bogong in Victoria).

The view south-east (to the left of Mt Gingera in the earlier photo) to the mountains in the rugged
southern wilderness of the ACT.

On the other side of Gingera, to the south-west, lies the Tangtangera Plain and Reservoir in Kosciuszko NP.
On a clearer day than this one you can readily see the Main Range, including Mt Kosciuszko itself,
some 115km away.

The single highlight of the day was undoubtedly the bossiaea though, so here's some more of it!

Leafy Bossiaea dominated beneath the Snow Gums.

The flowers are no more than 7mm long and the leaves are tiny.

Big patches of yellow on Mount Gingera stained by the bossiaea.

There were however plenty of other flowers to enjoy; here's a selection, starting with a couple more peas. I think for the most part they can speak for themselves.

Gorseleaf Bitterpea Daviesia ulicifolia.

Common Shaggy-pea Oxylobium ellipticum; this is another that can be quite dominant, and
like the bitterpea above, but unlike most of the other flowers shown here, it is also found at lower altitudes.

Purple Eyebright Euphrasia collina.These delightful plants are hemiparasites on the roots of other herbs, and as a result are almost impossible to cultivate.

Daisies are always prominent in the high country.

Spoon-leaf Daisy Brachyscombe spathulata.

These Alpine Sunrays Leucochrysum alpinum were just starting to open.
Until recently they were regarded as a subspecies of the widespread Hoary Sunray L. albicans.

Showy Copperwire Daisy Podolepis jaceoides.
This handsome daisy can form extensive meadows of gold.

A couple of lilies.

Tasman Flax Lily Dianella tasmanica

Rock Lilies Bulbine glauca, above and below, were just coming into flower.

Just one orchid, but it's a favourite of mine.

Alpine Caladenia Caladenia alpina.

buttercup Ranunculus lappaceus.

Candles Stackhousia monogyna; another found at lower altitudes too.

Prickly Starwort Stellaria pungens.
I've had a special affection for this little herb, which is common enough but scattered in the high country woodlands,
since the summer following the 2003 fires, when an unsuspected vast seedbank in the soil gave rise to
uncountable millions of starworts covering the ground along the full length of the road.

Mountain Pepper Tasmannia xerophila; its family Winteraceae is an ancient Gondwanan
and one of the oldest of living flowering plant families. It has separate male and female plants,
like many primitive families; this one is female.

Black-eyed Susan Tetratheca bauerifolia.
A delightful little herb whose down-pointing flowers can be challenging to photograph.

Showy Violet Viola betonicifolia.
This little beauty has a remarkable distribution from Tasmania to New Guinea and beyond into Asia,
and from sea level to the Snow Gums.

Of course there were many animals, but not many vertebrates; one however greeted us as soon as we pulled up.

Male Flame Robin Petroica phoenicea, with an unidentified snack.

Surprisingly for a warm day we saw few reptiles, but one substantial one skittered across the road in front of us; it didn't stop to socialise, but here's one of the same species I prepared (a couple of years) earlier, in much the same place.

Blotched Bluetongue Tiliqua nigrolutea, one of a group of aberrant big skinks.

The other animals were mostly here for the flowers too, especially the abundant butterflies. Local butterfly guru (gura?) Suzi Bond had given us a heads-up on the huge numbers of Rayed Blues Candalides heathi zipping everywhere, but they refused to sit still for posterity. Neither did the lovely Macleay's Swallowtails Graphium macleayanus, but they are too delightful not to share, so here's another photo from a previous visit to Mount Ginini.

Macleay's Swallowtail on Pimelea ligustrina.
The hardy caterpillars browse on the fiery leaves of the Mountain Pepper.

One butterfly which had no objection to being photographed was the common Australian Painted Lady Vanessa kershawi.

The bossiaeas attracted many insects, including this pretty little Concealer Moth Orthiastis hyperocha, family Oecophoridae (thanks Suzi and Ted!).

Concealer Moth on Leafy Bossiaea.

These lovely green scarab beetles Diphucephala sp. are often found in large numbers on the bossiaeas.

The Alpine Sunrays were a flower of choice for many insects, including these flies.

Hoverfly, family Syrphidae.
My France-based friend Susan, who is far more erudite than I in such matters, thinks
it's likely to be Melangyna (Austrosyrphus) viridiceps. (See her comments below for more detail.)

I'm afraid I can't help you with this fly, but I'd love to hear from you with any suggestions.

Another, very bristly, fly, which despite my initial doubts apparently really is a Bristle Fly, Family Tachinidae,
and quite likely subfamily Dexiinae based on the long legs (thanks again Susan).
On reflection I think my doubts were based solely on the fact that that seemed too easy,
and that if thought that, it was almost bound to be wrong!

A wasp (again unidentified, my invertebrate ignorance is embarrassing!) on the eyebright,
which is an excellent insect attractor.

I hope this has been enough to convince you that a visit to the mountains is a very good idea at this time of year (if you're in the Southern Hemisphere at least); if you're in my part of the world Mount Ginini would be an excellent choice, but don't leave it too long...

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It's been quite some time now since I introduced the wonderful South American monkeys, and I've been intending ever since to balance things by talking about the 'other' monkeys, the ones that stayed behind in Africa and Asia. Now's the time - but first I'd better correct that last sentence!

We know that the South American monkeys left Africa (doubtless unwillingly, and quite likely on more than one occasion) some 35 million years ago, and rafted to South America, and it's logical to suppose that these pioneers were typical of the monkeys we now associate with Africa. However life is rarely that simple. When the raft set out across the Atlantic it would have carried with it small, possibly lemur-like animals. The ancestors of the Old World monkeys and the apes (the catarrhines, for the record) only differentiated from the 'lemur-likes' and bushbabies in Africa around 28-29 million years ago; the split of monkeys from apes occurred about 25 million years ago. This all means that, despite our insistence that apes are not monkeys, the apes and Old World Monkeys form a coherent group, being considerably more closely related to each other than either is to the New World Monkeys. (Sorry, but that's been messing with my head while I've been putting this together, and I might as well share it with you!)

So, what characterises the family Cercopithecidae (ie the Old World Monkeys, or OWM from now on)? The obvious difference between them and the other catarrhines - ie the apes - is the presence of a tail. The most obvious distinction between them and the New World Monkeys (which comprise five families) is that the OWMs have narrow nostrils, close together and often down-pointing, and leathery buttock pads for sitting on; they do not have prehensile (grasping) tails.

Olive Baboon Papio anubis, Murchison Falls NP, Uganda. The narrow nose with down-facing nostrils and
non-grasping tail are evident; the buttock pads are just visible, but see below for a better view.

And no, neither she nor I had anything to do with the bottles! Lake Mburo NP, Uganda.

There are some 160 species in the family, found across much of Africa and south and south-east Asia. (Though this is based on recent taxonomic understandings - older texts cite significantly lower numbers.) They are fundamentally divided, quite evenly, into two sub-families, which many would raise to full family status. The division is pretty well characterised by diet; the cheek-pouched monkeys (Cercopithecinae) have a wide diet, but are mostly fruit-eaters, while the leaf monkeys (Colubinae), obviously enough, mostly eat foliage. Both sub-families are represented in Asia and Africa. In turn both are further divided into two tribes, but before you give up in despair, I think I'll just introduce you to some members of the groups, with sub-headings to help us out!

Cheek-pouch Monkeys; baboons, macaques and mangabeys (Papionini)

The two tribes separated about 10 million years ago. This group dominates in sub-Saharan Africa, though is well-represented in Asia by the prominent macaques. Most of the members are solidly-built ground-dwellers, some with short tails.

Chacma Baboon Papio ursinus, Augrabie Falls NP, South Africa.
Aside from the related Drill and Mandrill, this is the largest of all monkeys, weighing up to 40kg.
It is a formidable animal, made more so by living in big ground-foraging groups.
Baboons live across much of Africa; this species is found in the far south, while the Olive Baboon,
featured above, is found across central Africa.

Long-tailed Macaques Macaca fascicularis, Pulau Tiga, Sabah, above and below.
This species is found across south-east Asia and Indonesia, where it can become a close associate with humans.
This can lead to aggressive demands for food. The group comprises females, with a strict hierarchy,
and young animals.

Cheeky youngsters.
Males must leave the group at puberty.

Southern Pig-tailed Macaque Macaca nemestrina, Gomantong, Sabah.
There are 23 species of macaques, including several with short tails.
This species has both male and female hierarchies within the group.

Grey-cheeked Mangabey Lophocebus albigena, Kibale NP, Uganda.
This is a forest monkey from central Africa. There are several males in the group, but none are dominant.
Interestingly, young males are forced to leave the group and join another,
but females live their lives in the group they were born to.

Cheek-pouch Monkeys; guenons (Cercopithecini)

This tribe comprises mostly tree-dwelling, lightly built cheek-pouch monkeys.

Red-tailed Monkeys Cercopithecus ascanius, Mabira Forest, Uganda.
A monkey of the tropical forests of central Africa, where it lives in groups of up 30,
with a dominant male, females and youngsters.

L'Hoest's Monkey Cercopithecus lhoesti, Bwindi Impenetrable NP, Uganda,
a beautiful tree-dwelling monkey of mountain forests in the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.
The female-dominated group contains only one male.

Vervet Monkey Chlorocebus pygerythrus, Entebbe NP, Uganda.
A common and familiar monkey of eastern and southern Africa, which often
comes into conflict with humans by raiding crops.

Patas Monkey Erythrocebus patas, Waza NP, northern Cameroon.
This is an unusually terrestrial monkey for its tribe, living in open, often semi-arid, habitats.
It usually lives in large groups but this female had an injured front leg and was on her own with the baby.
They are reputedly the fastest across the ground of all monkeys.

Northern (or Guinea) Talapoin Miopithecus ogouensis, Sanaga River, Cameroon,
a small riverine forest monkey found from Cameroon south through Equatorial Guinea.
The two talapoin species are the smallest of the Old World Monkeys, weighing little more than a kilogram.
They live in parties of up to 100.

Leaf Monkeys; African colobines (Colobini)

The leaf monkeys have complex chambered stomachs with bacterial colonies for the digestion of leaves. The greatest diversity of leaf monkeys is found in Asia, but 23 species are found across Africa. These comprise the colobus monkeys, striking monkeys which may be the most beautiful of all. Unlike their Asian counterparts they are strictly tree-dwellers and impressive aerialists.

Guereza Colobus (or Mantled Guereza) Colobus guereza, Queen Elizabeth NP, Uganda.
This stunning monkey is found across central Africa from Nigeria to Ethiopia and Tanzania.
As here, they prefer riverside forests, and secondary to primary forest.
They will supplement their leaf diet with fruit on occasion.

Leaf Monkey; Asian colobines (Presybitini)

There are over 50 species of Asian leaf-eating monkeys, including some rare and little-known species, and one of the best-known and most unusual monkeys. We'll start with a couple of less familiar, but very beautiful, members of the tribe.

Maroon Leaf Monkey Presbytis rubicunda, Gomantong, Sabah.
A gloriously-coloured medium-sized monkey from the lowland rainforests of Borneo.

Silvered Leaf Monkey (or Lutung) Trachypithecus cristatus, Labuk Bay, Sabah.
This is a larger monkey than the previous species and uses a different habitat, found along rivers and
in mangroves and eating more and tougher leaves than other species.
They are strongly arboreal, but at Labuk Bay they have been habituated to come to feeding tables,
along with Proboscis Monkeys.

Silvered Leaf Monkeys, Bako NP, Sarawak.
Babies are born bright orange, and fade to adult colour over five months.
As well as Borneo they are found in Sumatra and a small part of peninsular Malaysia.

I'll end with a truly charismatic monkey, the amazing Proboscis Monkey Nasalis larvatus of Borneo, a big leaf-eating mangrove specialist with a huge leaf-digesting gut and the eponymous male nose, which acts as a resonating chamber for his honking display calls.

Male, Labuk Bay, Sabah.
Endemic to Borneo, it is also the only member of its genus.
A male like this can weigh up to 30kg, making it one of the largest Asian monkeys.
They are regular and competent swimmers.

Youngsters playing, Labuk Bay.

Eating mangrove leaves, Bako NP, Sarawak.

This really is a very colourful monkey!

Labuk Bay. Adult males are more cautious, but young animals are good aerialists.

So, a brief introduction to the Old World Monkeys; I hope you've met some and learnt something that you didn't know. As ever though, there's no substitute for seeing them for yourself! Thanks for reading.

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Not long ago we were in the beautifully situated, sometimes challenging, Alice Springs in the central deserts of Australia, heading home from a trip to the tropics. I know it fairly well, and Lou lived there for six years, but we still managed to find a new lovely little walk to do before we left. The historic Telegraph Station on the northern edge of town is a popular destination for visitors and locals, to visit the restored and interpreted buildings and surrounds, to picnic on the shady lawns by the Todd River or to walk in the rugged low hills of the Historical Reserve across the river looking for flowers and wildlife.

Telegraph Station buildings.

Grassy picnic area sloping to the Todd River on the left, shaded by beautiful River Red Gums.

Built in 1872 it was the site of the first European settlement in central Australia, and one of twelve such stations along the route of the revolutionary Overland Telegraph Line linking Darwin and Port Augusta (and ultimately Adelaide and even Perth) across 3,000kms of desert. From Darwin it linked to an underwater cable to Java and thus the world. It was a triumph of nineteenth century engineering, but that's a story for someone else to tell, and many have done so.

Perhaps most visitors aren't aware of the substantial reserve that includes the station itself; I have read a surprising range of figures for the size of it, ranging from 400 to 2000 hectares! However 445ha seems to be the most convincing figure. Our walk, the Spencers Hill Walk (though it's nice and flat) is a 1.5km stroll each way between the station and the northern edge of the old suburb of East Side (you can find maps for it easily enough). It passes through open woodland between the low red sandstone hills and the Todd River. Actually, let's lay to rest any misconceptions about the Todd at this point! Here's what it usually looks like.

The Todd River at the Telegraph Station.

However that's not always true, and when I was there a couple of months previously it had a substantial amount of (non-flowing) water in it. That was the first time I'd seen it thus, and there was still some left for our visit.

Also at the Telegraph Station. It is said that if you see the Todd with water, you'll come back.
Well, I came back several times before I got the sign that I would do so!

Anyway, the walk - and I confess that this is a busy week, so the rest will be mostly pictures, but I think that's all we need. We started from East Side; here are some scene-setters.

Daisies; it had been an unusually wet season (as per the water in the Todd) and the
understorey flowers were abundant.

Typical rocky hill in the low range which the route passes along.

Ghost Gum Eucalyptus (or Corimbia) aparrerinja.

This glorious tree is one of my favourites, and I've talked about it (including the intriguing name) in some detail before - here, if you're interested. Nonetheless I can't stop taking pictures of it, and here's another.

A particularly magnificent old Ghost Gum along the walk.

The ghost gums dominate, but they certainly don't have it all to themselves.

Cork Tree Hakea lorea; a common central desert tree.

Southern Ironwood Wattle Acacia estrophiolata.A lovely pendulous wattle, with extremely hard timber, in common with other slow-growing desert acacias.

Dead Finish Acacia tetragonophylla.The common name is supposedly a reference to its hardiness - when it dies of drought, there's nothing else left.

Sadly not all is pristine, and not just because of the proximity to town. Buffel Grass Cenchrus ciliaris is one of the great tragedies of central and northern Australia. It grows naturally from east Africa to south Asia, and is believed to have been brought here as stuffing for camel saddles. However there was nothing accidental about its subsequent choking spread across millions of hectares; graziers loved its hardiness and brought in seed. They are still planting it across vast areas, despite its smothering growth and high flammability. It grows in sandy creek beds - once they were fire breaks, but now they act as wicks. The intensity of the fires threatens the River Red Gums.

Wall to wall Buffel Grass along sections of the walk, under River Red Gums.
The only depressing aspect of the walk.

It was late morning when we walked, so not a lot of animals, but we witnessed some drama - or at least a tense stand-off - for some time. We first saw some delightful little Black-footed Rock-Wallabies Petrogale lateralis sitting upright and very alert on the rocks - but not concerned about us.

Female Black-footed Rock-Wallaby with pouch young.

This species is found scattered in arid ranges across central and western Australia.
For more on the fascinating rock-wallabies, see here.

A Euro Macropus robustus, a big tough hill kangaroo, also came from total relaxation to alertness as we approached - but again his unease was not directed at us. He watched us approach but didn't bother to get up, until something in the other direction got his attention.

Judging by the ear, this bloke had seen a scrap or two!

The problem wasn't long in making an appearance.

Dingoes Canis lupus dingo are common in the reserve, and are unfazed by people - several domestic
dogs have been killed by them there while accompanied by their owners.
This one initially focussed on us, but I had the feeling it was more to do with we might have that was
appealling to it than because it was worried about us.
More on them here.

In fact there was a pair, who initially appeared on each side of the Euro, but he wasn't going to back down - he was probably safer up where he was.

The rock-wallabies vanished, presumably into crevices, but with the advantage of awareness they could almost certainly have fled successfully across the rocks. We watched for a while but it seemed to be stalemate and we continued to the telegraph station. When we returned, Euro and Dingoes had moved on, and the rock-wallabies had warily reappeared.

I love a good natural drama, but was glad that this one didn't get any more dramatic than that!

A couple of familiar birds were present, including an old favourite.

Yellow-throated Miner Manorina flavigula on the Telegraph Station lawns, where it
is used to scrounging crumbs.

A flock of Zebra Finches Taeniopygia guttata, always a welcome addition to the day (hence their appearance
here in a very poor photo!), was searching for grass seeds.

The bird star however was a stunning male Splendid Fairy-wren Malurus splendens, a parade of blues. The species is found over much of the inland and the south-west, where they replace the south-eastern Superb Fairy-wren as the common and familiar bush and garden wren.

Impressive as he is, this is only the start of his glory, as he moults into breeding plumage.
Soon his wings, underparts and tail will all be different shades of blues.

Well, that's probably all you've got time for at this time of year, so I'll leave it there, but next time in Alice Springs, make sure you leave a couple of hours for the Spencers Hill walk - who knows what you might see!

I'll be back once more this year, for the now traditional last day of the year photo summary of the year - I hope to see you then.

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As is my wont, I am going to celebrate my minuscule part in the great drama of 2016 by choosing just one photo from each month of the year - not for their non-existent photographic excellence, but because they remind me of some highlights, large and small, from my year.

JANUARY

Orchard Butterfly Papilio aegeus, inserting its proboscis into the wet soil to take up water and perhaps nutrients.
We were at Rosedale on the New South Wales south coast where we retreat for a couple of weekends a year to relax.
This is a common big butterfly from the entire east coast of Australia and New Guinea, which visits our yard in
inland Canberra fairly regularly. They evolved to feed their larvae on native shrubs of the family Rutaceae,
which pre-adapts them to citrus trees, hence the alternative name of Citrus Butterfly.
I am intrigued by the fact that butterflies' proboscises evolved long before the rise of flowering plants,
presumably for purposes such as this; when flowers came along, butterflies were pre-prepared!

FEBRUARY

Bull Ant (or Bulldog Ant, or Inch Ant according to my father), Myrmecia sp.
Another insect, and another from the NSW south coast, this time at Currarong where we went to
help celebrate a friend's birthday.
This is a genus of nearly 100 large, primitive Australian ants, with extremely painful stings.
I like this photo because of the reminder that the jaws are pretty impressive too, especially if you're of its
size range. (I also liked the fact that I manged to take the pic without being stung!)

MARCH

Diamond Python Morelia spilota, a subspecies of the more widespread Carpet Python.
It is found further south than any other python in the world, in southern NSW and (marginally) in Victoria.
This lovely animal, which had recently shed its skin (the eye scales have still not dropped) was relaxing in a pond the back yard of friends in the Kangaroo Valley, north-east of Canberra.

APRIL

Australian Pelican Pelecanus conspicillauts, bathing at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve near Canberra.
To be honest I didn't have a lot of April photos to choose from, but I like the evening light and
the splashy enthusiasm of the bird at its ablutions

MAY

Young Bornean Orangutan Pongo pygmaeus, Gomantong Caves, Sabah.
It's not very hard to see orangutans in Malaysian Borneo, with rehabilitation centres such as at Sepilok
featuring rescued animals in the process of being returned to the wild.
It is always exciting to see them in the wild even in such situations, but this youngster and its more
circumspect mother were an unexpected bonus, entirely wild and unhabituated animals on the forest
walk into the famous caves.

JULY

Spinifex (Triodia sp.) at sunset, Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia.
I had the good fortune to be invited to assist in a biological survey of this remote and little-known
part of Australia. It was a memorable experience indeed - and as I seem not to have taken any photos
in June (!), I'm going to indulge in a second one from here.

Male Rufous-crowned Emuwren Stipiturus ruficeps, Great Sandy Desert.
I had only seen this tiny bird (reputedly Australia's smallest) once before, and had never
succeeded in laying lens on any of the three species, so was quietly pleased with this stroke of luck.

AUGUST

In August we set out on a five week trip to tropical northern Australia, so I have a real wealth of options for the next two months!

Darwin Woollybutt Eucalyptus miniata, among the sandstone outcrops of the 'Southern Lost City'
in the relatively little known, but very large, Limmen National Park, in the eastern Top End
of the Northern Territory. We did a memorable walk through the stacks and across the plateau.

SEPTEMBER

Baobabs Adansonia gregorii Gregory National Park, western Top End.
I love these splendid old arthritic giants which only come this far east. This is the only baobab
outside of Africa. Deciduous, they lose their leaves in the dry winter months.

OCTOBER

Canberra Spider Orchid Caladenia (or Arachnorchis) actensis, Mount Majura, Canberra Nature Park.
This little spider orchid is listed as Critically Endangered at a national level, being found only in a small area
of the lower slopes of the suburban Mt Majura - Mt Ainslie forests.
I was honoured to have been directed to this newly-found population.

NOVEMBER

Hoverfly (family Syrphidae) on Yam Daisy or Murnong Microseris lanceolata, Aranda Ridge,
Canberra Nature Park. This was a remarkable season for the delightful hoverflies, which seemed to be
everywhere in Canberra and beyond. This picture is also a souvenir of a very pleasant morning flower walk
with good friends Jeanie and David.

DECEMBER

Leafy Bossiaea B. foliosa under Snow Gums, Mount Ginini, Namadgi National Park above Canberra.
I can't imagine not going into the mountains near Canberra at least once every December.
Over the past 30 years I've seen the flowering get steadily earlier until these bossiaeas (a pea) now flower
regularly in November, where they used to peak in the first or second week of December.
This year however spring was unusually cold and wet, and flowering was delayed to the tine that
it used to be; I'm sure that next year however things will be back to the new 'normal'.

And so, that was my year, or at least one version of it. Overall it wasn't a great year for the world, but we've probably been luckier than most, as we have mostly good memories of it. I hope it was OK for you too, and that next year brings us all some joy. Nature can be pretty instrumental in that.

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The family Myrtaceae is one of the most conspicuous families in Australia, and is also well-represented in South America, but is also found, albeit less profusely, throughout much of the rest of the world, including Europe where the Common Myrtle Myrtus communis gave its name to the family.

In Australia Eucalyptus, Callistemon and Leptospermum are the largest genera and the most familiar, but there are some 1500 species and 70 genera here, representing about half of the world's total for both. (I have seen some recent figures suggesting twice the number of species and less genera, but without exploring the basis of this I suspect it represents a current trend in botanical taxonomy towards massive 'lumping', the helpfulness of which in terms of understanding more subtle levels of relationships I've questioned before.)

However the year is just getting into gear and I'm not inclined to be too philosophical or disputatious today. Rather I'd like to introduce and celebrate some Myrtaceous genera which are only (or nearly only) found in Western Australia, famous for its amazingly rich flora and high level of endemics. Some of these beauties may be new to you if you're not familiar with WA, but in any case I hope you enjoy them. To avoid suggestions of favouritism I'm simply going to introduce the genera in alphabetical order; bear in mind that this is nowhere near the full number of such genera. (Bear in mind too that plant taxonomy is a rapidly changing field, and it may be that some of the plants that follow have in recent times been offered different names - you'll readily find them under the names I use here though, and I've tried, as ever, to keep up to date.)

Actinodium

This is a slightly contentious genus to begin with, because though there has traditionally only been one species recognised, there seems to be a growing opinion that a second one, still unnamed, has long been confused with it. The name refers to rays, for the flowers' superficial resemblance to daisies, also reflected in the common names.

Swamp Daisy Actinodium cunninghamii, Stirling Ranges NP.


Albany Daisy A. sp., also from the Stirling Ranges. I have based my identification on the larger paler flowers, but I'm happy to be corrected, as ever.

Balaustion

Another very small genus, comprising just one species (but see under Cheyniana below). Like the Actinodium, the flowers don't immediately remind an eastern-stater of the family members with which we're familiar.

Native Pomegranate B. pulcherrimum, east of Hyden.
The genus name cames from the Greek for a pomegranate flower.

Beaufortia

A larger genus, restricted to the south-west, of some 22 species closely related to the widespread Melaleuca, as well as some similar WA endemic genera. Needless to say there are some who would lump them all into Melaleuca, but this doesn't seem to have gathered much traction. Beaufortia was named by the great Scottish botanist Robert Brown to honour the Duchess of Beaufort, Mary Somerset; she is often described as a botanist, but is better thought of, I believe, as an assiduous horticulturist. She died in 1715, nearly 100 years before Brown's naming.

Pink Bottlebrush B. schauerii, Stirling Ranges NP.
'Bottlebrush' is commonly used for the genus, though it is better-known as the common name for Callistemon
elsewhere in Australia. Johannes Schauer was a German botanist with an interest in Australian plants;
as far as I can tell he named this for himself, which would be a most irregular thing to have done.

Sand or Kalbarri Bottlebrush B. aestiva, Kalbarri NP.
This northern sandplain species also comes in a red form.
(Scan of an old and somewhat faded slide - sorry.)

Calothamnus

Probably the largest WA endemic Myrtaceous genus, with some 40 species (but see Verticordia below), generally referred to as one-sided bottlebrushes, netbushes or clawflowers. The claws comprise long red stamens in four or five clusters, protruding from a short tube of sepals; the petals are tiny or absent. Often the flowers appear on one side of the stem. The somewhat unimaginative (though a propos) name simply means 'beautiful bush'.

Calothamnus blepharospermus, Kalbarri NP.
The flower characteristics described above are shown here, along with the typical cylindrical leaves.
blepharospermus means 'eyelash seed'...

Common Netbush Calothamnus quadrifidus, Christmas Rock, east of Perth.
This widespread species is especially known as One-sided Bottlebrush, for the obvious reason.

Chamaelaucium

There are 14 species recognised of this endemic genus, by far the best known of which is Geraldton Wax G. uncinatum, which is widely cultivated on both sides of the Nullabor. They have open teatree-like flowers with waxy petals. The somewhat mysterious name (appended by French botanist René Desfontaines without explanation) apparently refers to the shape of the base of the flower as resembling a bishop's mitre!

Geraldton Wax, Badgingarra NR, with pollinating wasp.
These northern sandplains are their natural habitat.

Cheyniana

Another tricky one; the genus was only described in 2009, to incorporate just two species, one formerly placed in Balaustion (see above), the other being an unnamed species formerly described as a Baeckea. (I wouldn't want to be working on the WA Myrtaceae, though it would guarantee a life's work!)

Bush Pomegranate Cheyniana (formerly Balaustion) microphylla, Pindar.
This one is found in a small area of the northern sandplains and is threatened by clearing for agriculture.

Eremaea

A genus of 14 species closely related to Calothamnus. The name means 'solitary' (as in hermit, and ultimately from the word for desert), in apparent reference to the relative few clustered flowers at the tips of branches. They can be a quite prominent part of the heathlands.

E. beaufortioides, Moore River NP, north of Perth.
Orange is not a common colour in Australian plants.

Violet Eremaea V. violacea, Yandin Hill Lookout, north of Perth.
A lovely low sprawling shrub.

Hypocalymma

A genus of at least 23 species (plus some still unnamed) which have generally been known as myrtles since species were introduced to England in the 1840s, where their resemblance to the European myrtle was noted. Some are widely cultivated for their profuse flowers.

White Myrtle H. angustifolium, John Forrest NP, Darling Ranges.
One might reasonably think this an odd common name, but the flowers start white and darken with age.
This is one of those introduced early to English gardens.

X. xanthopetalum, Moore River NP, north of Perth.
Yellow is an unusual colour for this genus.

Verticordia

Technically I shouldn't be including this here, as in addition to the 100 or so WA species, two are also found in the Northern Territory. However it's too beautiful a plant to exclude on a technicality, it's one of my favourites, and how could I not include a genus whose name means 'heart turner'?! Featherflower is an oft-used common name. Anyway, let's enjoy some to end today's offering.

Scarlet Featherflower V. grandis, Gathercole Nature Reserve near Wongan Hills, above and below.
An especially large-flowered species, quite dramatic.

V. insignis, John Forrest NP. The name, perhaps counter-intuitively, means 'remarkable' or 'decorative'.

Woolly Featherflower V. monadelpha, Kalbarri NP.

V. chrysanthella, near Ravensthorpe.
Despite being widespread this species was only described (by the doyen of WA botanists, Alex George)
in 1991; prior to that it had been confused with the larger V. chrysantha.

And that's probably enough for one day. I hope you've enjoyed these glories as much as I have. But, as ever there's no substitute for going to see them for yourself...

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Malaysian Borneo, which I've talked about before in this blog, is very rich biologically, but its natural areas tend to be fragmented and thus are often relatively poor in larger wildlife. The south-east of Sabah is among the wildest areas, and here the forests of the Kinabatangan River are an important resource and are probably the most readily accessible for visitors.

The arrow indicates the approximate position of the lower Kinabatangan River.
South of there are wilder, more remote rainforest areas such as Danum and Maliau.
I am no expert on the language, but I understand the best approximation to the pronunciation is to
separate the syllables, with no emphasis on any of them - kin-a-bat-an-gan.

At 560km long from source to mouth, the Kinabatangan in Sabah is only a couple of kilometres short of being the longest river in Malaysia (which honour belongs to the Rajang in Sarawak). The rich floodplains at the lower end of the river support remarkable concentrations and diversity of wildlife, thought they are hemmed in by oil palm plantations. That industry does not generally comprehend the concept of ‘enough’ however and until the 1990s the modest ‘protected area’ of just 27,000 hectares was under constant threat of clearing and planting to oil palms. In 2006, following the killing of an elephant, the area was gazetted as Wildlife Sanctuary, which gives it greater security. Essentially however it remains a strip of lowland rainforest along the river, within which wildlife is trapped. Remarkably this area includes 1000 plant species, 250 bird species and fifty mammals, including Asian Elephants, Orangutans, Borneo Gibbons, Proboscis Monkeys, civets and otters.

We visited last year, and our group stayed at the Myne Resort. This is not an endorsement of Myne over any of the other riverside lodges - it's simply where we were booked into so I can't make meaningful comparison. However it was comfortable and with good wildlife opportunities in and around the grounds; in summary I'd recommend it, while noting that other lodges probably have similar advantages. The real focus of a stay along the river is time on the river itself - and I assume that all the lodges provide boat trips. That will be the subject of my next posting; there is enough to say about the wildlife of the lodge, its gardens and surrounding forests to warrant our full concentration today.

Myne River lodge from the river.

The cabin balcony looking out into the rainforest foliage is an excellent place to spend a hot afternoon
between excursions. The flowerpecker photo below was taken from ours.

Early morning view of the Kinabatangan River from the cabins - it's just there!

We arrived in the evening, and were very impressed by the wealth of geckoes on the walls inside and outside the lodge.

I suspect the geckoes themselves put the sign up - the board was certainly more beneficial to
them than to the insects! (And I'm so impressed that they knew where to put the apostrophe...)

Large Forest Gecko Gekko smithii. Despite its name, this beauty was actually inside the dining room.

Frilly Gecko Hemidactylus craspedotus.I lovethe camouflage of this beautiful animal; it seems to work as well on the lodge timber as on a tree.

The gardens and boat wharf are havens for many birds.

Orange-bellied Flowerpecker Dicaeum trigonostigma.This exquisite little bird spent some time in front of our balcony on a steamy lazy afternoon.
It is found from Java to the Philippines and to Bangladesh.

The Asian (and African) barbets are now recognised as comprising a different family from the American ones; all are fruit-eaters in the same Order as toucans. A couple of species were in the fruiting shrubs by the river early in the morning.

Male Red-throated Barbet Psilopogon mystacophanos. (The female lacks the red throat and has a blue forehead.)

Bornean Brown Barbet Caloramphus fuliginosus.I do love the insouciant scruffiness of this species, compared with colourfully immaculate
turn-out of most its relations!

I'm also very fond of the pretty little Velvet-fronted Nuthatches which are very busy foragers on tree trunks and branches - and stumps apparently.

This species is found throughout south-east Asia and Indonesia.

While watching the barbets by the river, this magnificent big fly came along; I'm afraid I have no idea of its identity, but it merits being admired from both ends!

Perhaps the star of the gardens however was this impressive owl, which fished along the river and roosted in the trees around the lodge by day.

Buffy Fish Owl Bubo (or Ketupa) ketupu. There is disagreement as to whether the four Asian
fish owls belong in their own genus (Ketupa) or with the eagle-owls (Bubo).
Either way they are not closely related to the four African fishing owls.
This big bird lives primarily on fish, also taking frogs and crabs.
Unlike fish eagles or ospreys they avoid getting their feathers wet while hunting.

The only small disappointment was being unable to sight the gibbons which called from the adjacent forest. We did however do a walk in the hot late morning (after a boat ride) and found some other life in the forest.

Looking down the slope in the forest.

Square-tailed Drongo-Cuckoo Surniculus lugubris, named for its apparent resemblance to drongoes.
There are three other members of the genus from south and south-east Asia, sometimes lumped as
Asian Drongo-Cuckoo, but that approach is losing favour.
They are brood parasites on a wide range of forest bird species.

Plain (or Least) Pygmy Squirrel Exilisciurus exilis. High in a huge tree, this is a tiny squirrel (apparently the world's smallest), with an entire length of
only 14cm and weighing less than 20 grams. It appears to live on bark and lichen.

Sun Skink Eutropis sp.
This genus of Asian skinks contains some 30 species.

Giant Leaf Hopper, family Cicadellidae (I think!).

A terrible photo of an exquisite animal; a plant hopper nymph,family Flatidae.

Finally we did a night walk, but it was truncated by tropical rain; here are a few things we saw before retreating.

A fascinating grasshopper - love the back legs!

Scutigeran, or Wood Centipede.
If you're of its size, you need to be quick to run away from those legs chasing you!

Malaysian Blue Flycatcher Cyornis turcosus roosting.
The blue is actually quite deep, but is distorted here by the light.

A lot of people visit Malaysian Borneo these days, and it is in many ways a superb destination. Moreover, the more of us who do so, the better the chance that the environment will be protected, especially from the scourge of oil palms. When we go to somewhere like Kinabatangan, we are saying that the place is worth money as it is...

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As promised last time, this will be a continuation of (and conclusion to) my introduction to the rich fauna of the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. What follows is a combination of two river excursions on the same day, one beginning at dawn, the other in the evening. My only disappointment is that we didn't see any elephants, though people do, not infrequently.

As you can see, the primary forest comes right to the banks of the river.

A delightful creek channel off the main river, into which we ventured.

However, as I suggested last time, this is somewhat misleading, as can be seen in some parts where the veil is particularly thin.

Oil Palms coming down to the river; this break in the generally complete forest corridor along the river
is shameful, but fortunately seems to be an aberration.

Overall though the width of the corridor is a little more than this suggests - as indicated by the view from a tower above the Myne Resort, and by the presence of big mammals (including those elusive elephants).

It was a very rewarding time on the river for wildlife, as well as the sense of being in the forest. The number and diversity of birds of prey was striking (more impressive than some of these pics, taken from a distance in a moving boat).

Grey-headed Fish Eagle Ichthyophaga ichthyaetus. This species is widespread through south and
south-east Asia, but nowhere common. My excellent Borneo field guide (Phillips) describes it
as 'scarce' there.

White-bellied Sea Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster; this magnificent bird also has a wide range,
from India through to Australia (it turns up here in Canberra from time to time), but is a much
commoner bird.

And from here I'm afraid the quality of raptor photos drops off somewhat...

Crested Serpent Eagle Spilornis cheela; another raptor found widely in south and south-east Asia,
though there are suggestions that more than one species is involved.
As its name suggests it specialises in snakes (especially tree snakes), hunting over the forest canopy or,
like this one, sitting and watching for movement.

Crested Goshawk Accipiter trivirgatus. A true goshawk, mostly of tropical forests,
hunting mammals, birds and reptiles by ambush from cover.

Wallace's Hawk-eagle Nisaetus nanus; crests seem to be de rigueur!
From the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo, there is limited information about this bird's ecology.
Its name commemorates the great 19th evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace.

White-fronted Falconets Microhierax latifrons. I hesitate to even share this distant photo, but it's an interesting
bird, endemic to Sabah. Moreover it's the world's smallest falcon; the falconets comprise a group of five tiny
south-east Asian falcons, and this is the smallest of those.
Unsurprisingly they are insect specialists, especially targetting dragonflies.

Kingfishers featured, as one would expect, including one which has become one of my world favourites.

Stork-billed Kingfisher Pelargopsis capensis. This is a very striking bird, being nearly 40cm long and beautifully
coloured, found from India to Indonesia and the Philippines, but mostly fairly scarce.
That big bill takes crabs, fish, reptiles, frogs, rodents and young birds.

(Sunlight on the lens!) Blue-eared Kingfisher Alcedo meninting; a beautiful bird
closely related to the widespread Eurasian Common Kingfisher A. atthis.

And this is Borneo, so Hornbills are a given!

Rhinoceros Hornbill Buceros rhinoceros. This extraordinary bird, which can be 120cm long, is surely among
the most striking in the world. Found in low numbers through the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo
and Java, it eats fruit and small animals.

Wrinkled Hornbill Aceros corrugatus, smaller than the previous species but still substantial, and with
a similar range. It relies on large areas of primary forest, and is thus declining throughout most of
its range.

The last bird photo I'm offering is purely on the basis of the subject, not the photo. Storm's Stork Ciconia stormi is close to being the rarest stork in the world; there are fewer than 350 mature birds left, with only 150 in Malaysia, mostly in Borneo. It relies on peat forest and riverine forests, which are being cleared throughout its range. I may not get the chance to take better photos of it.

Storm's Stork, above and below.

The river is also a refuge for Estuarine Crocodiles Crocodylus porosus, and we saw some impressive ones.

Estuarine Crocodiles, above and below.
This ocean-going species is found from India to northern Australia.

And of course there will always be monkeys.

Long-tailed Macaque Macaca fascicularis; successful and ubiquitous throughout its wide south-east Asian range.

Proboscis Monkeys Nasalis larvatus gathering in the evening in a tree with good views of approaching enemies,
preparing to spend the night. For a little more on both these species, see here.

And that pretty much ends our tour, as light is falling. I hope you get to the Kinabatangan River - and if you do, I even hope you get to see the elephants!

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Last week there was great excitement in our part of the world when a pair of Tawny Grassbirds Megalurus timoriensis turned up at Jerrabomberra Wetlands, our prime suburban wetland in a city which is now very well-provided with such habitats.

Tawny Grassbird, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra; a newcomer moving south.

This is a notable southern and inland extension of their range from that in the field guides, which is normally regarded as coming to just south of Sydney, some 200km from here and on the coast. Individuals of any species can pop up out of range, especially following unusual weather conditions, but I’m not sure that this is the case here. In the last couple of years (but never before that) there have been at least three reports from Melbourne, on the south coast of Victoria some 600km further south again from here; I would expect that this species, if it were expanding its range, would be more likely to follow the coast rather than move inland. Moreover it is unlikely that they only selected Melbourne and Canberra over all the possible non-urban sites in areas between – it is simply that these are places with lots of bird watchers and I am sure that the bird could, and will, be found in many other places where they used not to be. The Tawny Grassbird is a skulker in dense undergrowth, and I expect (with no expertise) that outside of breeding season it is fairly quiet.

No, I am surmising that this is a response to climate change, pushing or encouraging warmer climate birds further south (as is happening in reverse in the Northern Hemisphere).

Less than 20 years ago the Pacific Koel Eudynamys orientalis, a big dimorphic parasitic cuckoo which overwinters in Indonesia and New Guinea and breeds in northern and eastern Australia, was a very rare phenomenon indeed in Canberra, though the odd one would occasionally overshoot and lob up here for a while. Within the space of a few years it became a more and more common occurrence, until now it is a part of our urban soundscape (one is calling outside as I write). People have almost even given up writing to the paper to complain about its 24 hour a day strident serenade! They now breed here annually. There is no plausible explanation for this other than climate change.

Pacific Koel; male (above) and female (below).

Another large cuckoo, the Channel-billed Cuckoo Scythrops novaehollandiae, has a very similar distribution and annual movements. It is still rare in the ACT (ie I’ve never seen one here yet! though a couple of weeks ago I heard one fly raucously by outside) but it too is getting commoner each year, and I judge that they will also be breeding here in years to come.

Channel-billed Cuckoo, Karumba, north Queensland.

White-headed Pigeons Columba leucomela have steadily extended their range south from the mid-south coast of New South Wales well into Victoria in the past decade or so, though there is no doubt that part of their enablement has been the spread of exotic food trees like Camphor Laurel Cinnamomum camphora and Privet Ligustrum spp. However, the Camphor Laurel in particular is probably also being assisted to move south by the warming – nature is infinitely subtle.

White-headed Pigeon, Nowra, New South Wales south coast.

As we well know however birds are not the only organisms known to be moving in response to a warming world. A wide-ranging CSIRO study in 2010, utilising a broad array of published and unpublished data, showed that at least 45 species of south-east Australian marine fish have exhibited “major distributional shifts” which were almost certainly climate-related. Warmer water fish from both further north and west have moved into formerly cooler Tasmanian waters, inevitably displacing local species.

Nor is it even just animals. In a remarkable study begun in 2003 in the Manu Biosphere Reserve in the Peruvian Andes east of Cusco US ecologists Miles Silman and Ken Freeley banded and measured 14,000 trees of 1,000 species in 14 plots covering 2,400 metres of altitude. After repeat measurements they discovered that an astonishing 85% of tree genera were moving upslope in response to warming at a rate of 2.5 to 3.5 metres per year. Perhaps the most pertinent aspect of this however is that the authors estimate that this rate would need to double for the trees to keep pace with the observed warming. (The link above will take you only to an abstract unless you're a subscriber; see here for an overview.)

Cloud forest, Manu Biosphere Reserve, in the area that Silman and Freeley are monitoring.

Studies of 175 plant species in six French mountain ranges similarly showed that 118 of them – nearly 70% – had moved at least 18.5 metres (ie 60 feet) up the slope per decade over the twentieth century.

And here of course is the rub; once the Tasmanian cool water fish reach the southern limits of that island (these are coastal waters fish, they can’t just swim out to sea), and the Manu trees reach the treeless puna, the high cold treeless mountain steppes, there is nowhere further to go. It is the same dilemma facing Polar Bears in the Arctic and Mountain Pygmy-Possums on the top of the south-east Australian Alps.

But this isn’t the only observed forced reactions of species; there are numerous data sets concerning changes in phenology characters – that is cyclical, especially annual, events such as breeding and migration. As far back as 2003 a wide-ranging review in the prestigious journal Nature revealed “significant mean advancement of spring events” by 2.3 days per decade. Five years later the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report reported that the arrival of spring had been advanced by up to 5.2 days per decade over the past 30 years. Examples cited ranged from first and last appearance of leaves on Gingkos (G. biloba) in Japan, to butterfly emergence in Britain, to bird migration in Australia.

Gingko leaves, Canberra.

A wide-ranging Australian review, published in 2013, of 89 studies of 347 plant and animal species showed even stronger responses for plants here than in the Northern Hemisphere; the mean rate of advance across all plant responses (leaf set, fruiting, flowering etc) was 11.3 days per decade! Spring migration departure of birds moved forward by 2.2 days per decade (slower than for the Northern Hemisphere, where it was 3.7 days per decade). I mentioned in a recent post how peak flowering of a dominant sub-alpine shrub in the Brindabella Ranges above Canberra has shifted over the 30 years I’ve been taking people up there from about a week into December to late November.

Leafy Bossiaea B. foliosa, Mount Ginini, Namadgi National Park, near Canberra.
Over the past 30 years I have seen the average peak flowering of this pea shrub advance by nearly two weeks.

One of the problems with this is that, naturally enough, each species has a slightly different response to the changes, so that finely-tuned systems are no longer functioning as they evolved to do. Bird chicks are hatching before their key caterpillar food supply does, migratory birds including hummingbirds are arriving before or after the flowers they pollinate are open. In the high alps of south-eastern Australia the already Endangered Mountain Pygmy-Possum Burramys parvus emerges from its hibernation with the snow melt – which is getting earlier each year. Unfortunately the great Bogong Moth migration to the high cool granite crevices of the alps is not getting earlier, which leaves the hungry emerging possums without a key food source.

There are thousands of such phenological studies available, in full or in abstract, or in third-party reports, out there if you’re interested.

In recent times a third general response has been suggested, and demonstrated. While obviously there are always multiple factors acting on the life and evolution of any given organism, we know that in general body size of a given species is likely to be smaller in populations further from the poles – ie in warmer climes. This is known as Bergmann’s Rule and the basis of it is that a smaller object (be it bird, or ball or human baby) has a proportionately greater surface area than a larger one, and thus loses heat faster. We know this for populations of the same species at different latitudes, but what about the same species at the same latitude as climate changes – ie the environment gets steadily warmer? A treasure trove of such data is held in museum specimens throughout the world.

Janet Gardner of the Australian National University, and colleagues, measured 517 museum skins of eight insect-eating birds, collected over 140 years from 1869 to 2001. Six of the species showed a decrease in size since 1950, four of them being statistically significant. The overall impact for those four bird species is that individuals living now at the latitude of Canberra are the size that members of their species were pre-1950 at the latitude of Brisbane (ie 7 degrees of latitude). This I find very striking. Nor is it simply academic - a change in size of even just 4% (as measured in wing lengths by the study) can affect what a bird eats, and thus what it it competing with and must thus further adapt to.


Birds that are getting smaller as temperatures rise. Brown Treecreeper Climacteris picumnus, Canberra (above); White-browed Babbler Pomatostomus superciliosus Shark Bay, Western Australia (below).

Nature, as I have observed before, is never as straightforward as our little brains might like. More recently apparently conflicting results from those of Gardner’s team were obtained from south-west Western Australia for wing-lengths of Ringneck Parrots Barnardius zonarius (‘Twenty-eights’, for their call, as the sub-species is known over there), which had increased by 4-5mm over the past 45 years. Tellingly, birds from further north in the state, and from the Western Australian eastern deserts, where temperatures haven’t risen as much, show no such increase. The change is as significant as those of Gardner’s were, but in the opposite direction. There is no reason to suppose however that all species in all situations will respond identically to similar situations, and the author suggests that the parrots might be growing longer wings to assist in heat dispersal, in accord with Allen’s Rule.

Twenty-eight Parrot, Cervantes, Western Australia.
Longer wings to stay cool?

Only ten years ago such responses to climate change were only guessed at, and there will be more surprises to come. One such, which has no obvious explanation for now, is the case of the Eurasian Scops Owl Otus scops, which comes in two colour forms, dark-reddish and pale-reddish (and intermediates). Italian museum studies showed that the proportion of dark-red forms increased significantly over the last century. Some of that was due to unknown causes (perhaps an increase in Italian forests over that time, where being darker could be advantageous, suggest the authors) but the rest is apparently down to climate change. At this stage the best explanation is that the gene for dark-red is linked to one that confers an advantage in a warmer world, but so far we can only speculate.

Eurasian Scops Owl, pale-reddish and dark-reddish forms.
Illustration taken from Handbook of the Birds of the World, which refers to them as
grey-brown and rufous-brown morphs.

I am no more interested in arguing about the reality of climate change than I am in debating whether gravity exists or if the sky is blue. It does occur to me though that it would be interesting to hear from someone who has chosen to believe in a fabulous world-wide conspiracy of thousands of scientists, to explain how thousands of species of plants and animals were also persuaded to participate in the deception.

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(today I posted a day early, as I'll be away tomorrow)

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When He and She Look Different; Birds #1

When He and She Look Different; Birds #2

The Great Sandy Desert: #1

The Great Sandy Desert: #2, some animals

The Great Sandy Desert: #3, trees and herbs

Found Nowhere Else! Some Australian state endemics.

Housekeeping; updating some earlier postings

The Great Sandy Desert: #4, shrubs

Kakadu in the Dry

Wildsumaco; a gem of Ecuador's wild east

Wildsumaco Continued; away from the lodge

On This Day, 30 November: Scottish National Day

Mount Ginini; top of the Australian Capital Territory

The Old World Monkeys; newcomers

A Walk in the Centre; an easy stroll to the old Alice Springs Telegraph Station

Farewell to 2016!

Special Western Myrtles

The Kinabatangan River; a fragile treasure

The Kinabatangan River #2; on the river

Nature in a Warming World