Ian Fraser, talking naturally

I introduced our National Botanic Gardens, to me the pick of our national institutions, early last year in a couple of postings, beginning here. At around that time an exciting and ambitious plan was put into execution to develop a 'Red Centre' garden, featuring plants and landforms of the central deserts. This was an apparently outrageous proposition in a city 600 metres above sea level and hundreds of kilometres to the south-east (ie towards the south pole) of the region being modelled, and with heavy acidic clay soils. But the Gardens horticulturalists seemingly have help from Hogwarts (or an Australian equivalent) and are able to grow anything, no matter how preposterous the idea - a rainforest gully for instance, including tropical trees, in a city where winter temperatures can drop to minus 10 degrees centigrade, and droughts and 40 plus degree summer days are the norm.

To provide suitable habitat 900 tonnes of red sand, 800 tonnes of rock and 380 tonnes of brown sand were accessed from various sources (again, none of them from the desert!).

Early days in the development of the Red Centre garden, from February 2013. The red granites were laid, and soil dug
out to be replaced with sand. The mature eight metre high Red Cabbage Palm Livistona mariae on the left was brought by
semi-trailer from Queensland (not from the wild!).

I have delayed writing about the Red Centre garden until now, to give it time to get established. In truth it might seem a bit slow in parts, for the reasons suggested above, and the low nutrient sandy soils introduced for verisimilitude. Nonetheless I think it's looking great, and will get even better as time goes on. I took a series of photos 12 months ago and retook them just now, to allow comparison of progress.

November 2013 above, and November 2014 below.
The spinifex (or porcupine grass Triodia sp.) rings have grown beautifully;
they are vital habitat in the arid lands for a wide variety of small animals,
and dominate more than 20% of Australia's area!

November 2013 above, and November 2014 below.
Again the growth, this time of shrubs, is impressive.

November 2013 above, and November 2014 below.
Again the shrubs are doing well, and while the soil may look bare, it's important
to remember that many desert plains die back after flowering, and regrow from seeds
or underground structures after the next rains.

November 2013 above, and November 2014 below.
Here the growth is less evident, but it has definitely come on.
The disc in the centre is a beautiful embossed indigenous art-inspired sculpture.
These shots were taken from the raised viewing platform visible at the top left of the
first pair of photos above.

Another feature is this ephemeral sandy creek bed, planted with River Red Gums Eucalyptus camaldulensis.

I love this red sand dune too - it's bigger than it looks here. The flowering grevillea on it is
labelled as G. albiflora, but as the name suggests that has white flowers. Though I hesitate to contradict
the gardens botanists, it does look more to me like Sandhill Grevillea G. stenobotrya.(Any comments welcomed, though I'm about to go away for a while and may not be able to respond until late next month.)


A closer view of the palm - now looking a lot happier than it did soon after being transplanted - with a family of young palms in front of it.

More verisimilitude - a termite mound (with flowering Solanums behind).
I don't assume that the mound is inhabited though...

And finally, a delightfully quirky addition, probably mostly intended for kids, though I don't accept that it's all theirs!

Thorny Devil Moloch horridus. This rendition is beautifully biologically accurate, though a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than the original which, despite the fearsome name, is a slow gentle little predator of ants.
(I acknowledge that the ants may have another view.)

Before I leave this however, I want to mention briefly another Gardens innovation which only opened yesterday - a daisy garden! (Bear in mind that these gardens feature solely native plants.)

I am interested that they have come out and backed Asteraceae as the biggest plant family;
I'd thought that the jury was still out on the on-going contest between daisies and orchids,
but I'll happily concede this one.

Just a couple of shots, which I'll repeat also in the future to allow comparison of development.

Already pretty impressive, and I gather that much of the planting was done by gardens volunteers.

Spectacular Swan River Daisies Brachyscombe iberidifolia from Western Australia.

If you're in the area, now or in the future, do yourself a big favour and drop by! In these seemingly bleak times in Australia, this is something we really can be proud of.

Next time I'll resume the pink theme begun last time - in fact it's going to be an all-pink December!

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

Having a couple of other matters demanding attention at the moment (ones more related to earning a living than is writing a blog post!), I thought to take the easy way out and just offer you some hopefully attractive pictures of some lakes. Inevitably I soon starting thinking more about lakes, and what they are, so my offering has become a bit more than just a series of images, and hopefully is more interesting for that.

A lake is of course a body of water, though there is no consensus as to just how big (ie how large it has to be to graduate from being a mere pond or pool); different suggestions range from a couple of hectares to 40 hectares. It can't be connected to the sea (so is usually, but not necessarily, fresh water), and is land-locked except for an inflow and outflow channel, though these are optional. However, there are several kinds of lake, based on origins and flow characteristics.

While less obvious in Australia (where we tend to be a bit light on with regard to water anyway), lakes originating with glacial activity, past or ongoing, form a substantial portion of the world's lakes, so let's start there. Glaciers can gouge out hollows which later fill with water, or dam valleys with moraine material left behind as melting glaciers retreat.

Dove Lake and Cradle Mountain, Tasmania.
Tasmania underwent major glaciation during the last glacial period, far more than did the mainland.

Lake Cootapatamba, Kosciuszko National Park, New South Wales.
These southern alps also had minor glaciation until 10,000 years ago, and Cootapatamba
derives from that. It is Australia's highest lake.

El Cajas National Park, in the high Andes above Cuenca, central Ecuador, is studded with glacial lakes,
above and below. The altitude here is over 4000 metres above sea level.

Further south, glaciers are still very much a part of the Andean landscape, and glacial lakes abound.

Lago Todos de los Santos near the Argentinian border with Chile,
east of Puerto Varas.

Lake in the high pampas, Andes east of Coyaique, Chilean northern Patagonia.

Further south still, the mighty peaks of Torres del Paine National Park in far southern Chile are not part of the Andean chain, but are actively glacial and at their feet are some superb lakes.

Lago Nordenskjold, Torres del Paine National Park.
In front of the towers (above) and with wind ripping the surface from the water (below).

In Australia, in the arid inland, many lake are endorheic - that is the flow is only into the them, and they are dry much more often than not, though they are based on vast ancient rich lake systems, with flamingoes, fresh water dolphins and crocodiles not so long ago. Mostly they are salty, because of ongoing evaporation.

Lake Amadeus, near Uluru, central Australia.
Part of a vast 'fossil' lake system, 500km long and covering 1750 square kilometres.

Lake Gilles, South Australia, in its normal state (above)
and as much more rarely seen (below, in September 2013).

Waterholes, often called oxbows, or billabongs in Australia, form when a river changes course - as often happens during floods especially - and the old bed is cut off from the main stream and fills during times of overflow from the new bed. In arid Australia such waterholes can also form in the main bed which very rarely flows, but deep holes retain water for considerable time; they are critically important to life in desert landscapes, and can have their own endemic fish and invertebrate species.

Combo Waterhole near Winton, north-western Queensland.
(It was here that the great Australian bush poet and journalist A.B. ('Banjo') Paterson was inspired
to write Waltzing Matilda, sometimes thought of Australia's 'other national anthem'.)

Cocha Salvador, Manu National Park, Amazonian Peru, at dawn.
A large oxbow lake.

Volcanic craters can fill with water to form sometimes large lakes.

Crater Lake near Kibale, Uganda.

Larger crater lake, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.

And while in that part of the world, many of the great east African lakes are formed on the great rift which is splitting Africa. Such lakes are unusual in that they are getting deeper faster than siltation can fill them up.

Lake Edward, Queen Elizabeth NP, Uganda (above)
and Lake Victoria, Entebbe, Uganda (below).
Two mighty rift lakes.

Fresh-water lakes can form in the dips behind sea dunes.

Meroo Lake, south coast New South Wales.

And unlikely as it seems, sand can support lakes well above sea level, though it is unusual. Some famous examples, 40 or so of them, are on Fraser Island, off the southern Queensland coast.

Lake Mackenzie, Fraser Island, a perched lake on sand.

So, a brief review of some lakes I have known... I hope you enjoyed the journey too.

PS I've just realised that this is the first posting ever by me without a named plant or animal, so I should rectify that.

Chilean Flamingoes in glacial lake in front of the Towers, Torres del Paine NP.

BACK ON THURSDAY

This topic, another in my intermittent series on colours in nature, began here, with birds. After an interruption last week I'm continuing it now by looking at other pink animals - though I've spent more time looking for them than at them! It is an uncommon colour it among animals (though of course there are more examples than the few I can show you here); again it may be that if you're going to go to the trouble of synthesising carotenoids you might as well go for stand-out reds rather than a paler version. Moreover most mammals have notably limited colour vision relative to most other animals; only apes, old world monkeys (and a few new world ones) and some marsupials have trichromate vision, meaning for instance that they can distinguish red and green. Birds, reptiles, frogs, many fish and invertebrates can do much better than us. There's limited point in being colourful if you can't see the colours, so most mammals are relatively restrained in their hues. In coming postings, by contrast, we'll be seeing a wealth of pink flowers - their pollinators are colour-acute insects and birds.

Sea Horse, Territory Wildlife Park, Darwin.
I'm not an underwater photographer, so I can't offer you examples of the pinkness that adorn many other fish.

One thing that surprised me in going through my photo files was the general lack of pink in the butterflies I've photographed on three continents; in fact, this one from Uganda was the only example I could come up with.

Butterfly (any suggestions welcomed, as usual!) Buhoma, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park,
south-western Uganda.

My only other offerings are all reptiles. Perhaps the most discussed pink reptile of recent years is the Pink Land Iguana Conolophus marthae, a critically endangered species only recognised in 2009 as genetically distinct from the more widespread Galápagos Land Iguana C. subcristatus; it is limited to the upper slopes of Volcan Wolf at the north end of Isabela in the western Galápagos where only 100 individuals live. Understandably visitors are forbidden so I can't offer you a picture of my own.

Pink Land Iguana, courtesy Animals Wiki.

However a cousin of the Pink Land Iguana, from the island of Española in the far south-east of the archipelago, is also distinctly pink. The isolated population of Marine Iguanas here is probably the most spectacular in the Galápagos.

Male Española Marine Iguanas Amblyrhynchus cristatus venustissimus.

My other examples, from a couple of other lizard families, are Australian.

Blotched Blue-tongue Lizard Tiliqua nigrolutea, Namadgi National Park, above Canberra.
A member of a small group of large aberrant skinks, this species is limited to higher altitudes here in
the more northern part of its range; further south it tends to lack the distinctive pink blotches and
is found down to sea level.

Wedge-snout Ctenotus Ctenotus brooksi, Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park, central Australia
- a more typical skink (and lunch, a beetle).
The pink-brown coloration here is an obvious camouflage adaptation on desert sands.

Cooktown Ring-tailed Gecko Cyrtodactylus tuberculatus, Cooktown, North Queensland.
This one belies its name because it has previously shed its tail, probably escaping a predator. The replacement
is rarely as fancy. Recent work based at the University of Queensland has identified five species of
Cyrtodactylus in Australia where previously only one was recognised.

OK, if you're strongly into pink you may well be dissatisfied after this offering, but please bear with me - I promise a plethora of serious pink in coming postings!

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

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

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

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

Meantime, let's just enjoy a pink parade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

Passiflora trifolia Family Passifloraceae, Sacsayhuaman, Peru.

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

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

On this day in 1821 the Argentine General José de San Martín, having led the Army of the Andes (comprising Chileans and Argentinians) to victory in Lima over the last significant Spanish stronghold in South America, declared Peru to be independent. True independence actually took a little longer, but this is the day of national celebration every year. I'm not going to attempt an overview posting on Peru here - apart from anything else there is so much of the country that I've not yet seen.

Instead I'd like to draw your attention to this wonderful country today by introducing you to just one magnificent and remarkable lake, deep in the Amazon basin. Cocha Salvador is a very large oxbow lake, a former great bend of the Manu River cut off by floods and now forming a deep still backwater with rainforest down to the shores.

Primary rainforest on the shores of Cocha Salvador.

The Manu Reserved Zone is a vast wilderness within the Manu Biosphere Reserve, inhabited by indigenous people and only otherwise accessible to researchers and visitors accompanied by authorised and environmentally trained guides. Cocha Salvador is in this reserve, not in Manu National Park as often claimed in web sites of companies who go there - the park itself is closed to all visitors except authorised researchers. It is near to Machiguenga Lodge, owned and operated by the Machiguenga people. I have to say that last time I was there the project was not thriving, but I'd love to be told that things have improved since then.

The lake is accessible by boat along the river, then a short walk through the forest before embarking on simple heavy rafts, poled along; only one group at a time may be on the water, by booking through the Parks Service.

We arrived at dawn for a highly memorable excursion.

Sunrise over Cocha Salvador.

The key aim of any visit to Cocha Salvador is to encounter one of the most impressive, and rarest, big mammals in South America. The big oxbow lakes - and they are few - are key habitats for Giant Otters Pteronura brasiliensis, an endangered species across their northern Amazon Basin range. Heavy hunting for skins has reduced its numbers to no more than 5,000; it is listed as Endangered. Even in remote Manu it is estimated that only a dozen families survive. One of these is in Cocha Salvador.

Giant Otters really are big - up to 1.8 metres long and weighing 30kg, though in pre-hunting days much larger individuals were reported. They are highly social, unlike most other members of the weasel family, and each animal may eat up to 3kg of fish a day, so large rich hunting grounds are needed.

They are also highly vocal, and their squeals, whistles and whining calls help to locate them.

They are far from the only large animals in the water though, and there is an ongoing struggle with the Black Caimans Melanosuchus niger, the largest member of the alligator family, which can grow to five metres long. Both otters and caiman prey on each others youngsters; the otters will also team up to attack larger caiman.

Big Black Caiman, Cocha Salvador.

Waterbirds are also abundant, especially in the forest fringes.

Amazon Kingfishers Chloroceryle amazona hunt from perches. These are
large kingfishers, up to 30cm long. This is a male.

Tiger-Herons are a secretive group of herons, sometimes regarded as the most primitive of living herons.
Fasciated Tiger-Herons Tigrisoma fasciatum are widespread in northern South America and Central America,
but are most readily seen in quiet backwaters such as Cocha Salvador.
This is a young bird.

Unlike the tiger-herons, Great Egrets Egretta (or Ardea) alba - or perhaps a complex of closely related species - can be found throughout the world. They are always a delight, even in remote places where rarer birds are also on offer.

Limpkins Aramus guarauna are always exciting to see, as the sole member of their family. They live on
big water snails, and gained largely unrecognised exposure by providing the call of the
Hippogriph in the Harry Potter movies.

And it's not often you can see two single-member families in one morning's outing (bird-nerds value
such things!), but we managed it on Cocha Salvador. Sunbitterns Eurypyga helias are not bitterns at all; their
closest relative seems to be the enigmatic Kagu of New Caledonia.

Muscovy Duck descendants can be seen in farmyards throughout the world, but their
wild ancestors Cairina moschata can generally only be encountered now in remote Amazon waters.
(Their odd name incidentally has nothing to do with Moscow, but was a reference to the supposed
musky smell of the meat.)

Dead trees in the water support big colonies of hanging nests, belonging to Yellow-rumped Caciques Cacicus cela, common members of the icterid family - the 'North American blackbirds' whose ancestors crossed south on the Isthmus of Panama a few million years ago.

Yellow-rumped Cacique colony (above) and an owner-builder (below).

And on the way back to the basic wharf, don't forget to keep an eye into the tree-tops - monkeys are a highlight of the Amazon.

Colombian Red Howler Monkey male Alouatta seniculus; their pulsing roar, like a great wind,
is one of the sounds of the Amazon for me.

So, Happy National Day to my Peruvian friends - and thank you for sharing Cocha Salvador with me!

BACK ON FRIDAY

Continuing with a celebration of pink flowers - see my last posting for the start of it, including some thoughts on the nature of pinkness in flowers. On going through my pictures I was struck by how many of my pink flower shots were from Western Australia, though I expect that the reason is simply that the south-west is one of the most botanically diverse areas in the world and I've got lots of pics of western flowers in general! I think they can speak for themselves, with the help of their captions.

Schoenia cassinianus Pindar. (Pindar is a small wheat town in the mid-north, 450km north of Perth,
in a dry area famed for its wildflowers.)
A spectacular daisy of the dry mid-north, though unlike many of the species which follow,
this one is not limited to Western Australia.

Pityrodia (or Dasmyalla in some recent thinking) terminalis, Family Lamiaceae (or Chloanthaceae), Pindar.
A glorious group, mostly bird-pollinated.

Bridal Rainbow (!) Drosera macrantha Droseraceae, Leeuwin Naturaliste NP, far south-west.
The sundews are insect-trapping and -digesting plants; this dramatic one is a vigorous climber.

Yellow-eyed Flame Pea Chorizema dicksonii, John Forrest NP, Darling Ranges near Perth.

Painted Lady Gompholobium scabrum, Two Peoples Bay, near Albany.
I'd intended to only include one example from each family, but I really couldn't bear
to leave out either of these superb pink peas, each so different from what most of us are used to!
(They also illustrate the different colours included in 'pink'!)

Snakebush Hemiandra pungens, Family Lamiaceae, Pinnacles NP, north of Perth.
I have no idea of the origin of the common name; the genus, closely related to Prostanthera,
is entirely restricted to Western Australia.

Pink Bottlebrush Beaufortia schaueri, Family Myrtaceae, Stirling Ranges NP.
A widespread brilliant shrub in gravelly soils.

Wiry Honeymyrtle Melaleuca nematophylla, Kalbarri NP.
Again I've allowed two species from one family to creep in, but my memory of these huge bushes
blazing pink was too strong to resist.
Actually I'm going to devote an entire posting to the WA members of Myrtaceae one day
- there are so many remarkable ones.

Grass-leaf Hakea Hakea multilineata, Family Proteaceae, Goldfields Track east of Hyden.
I could also have included some pink grevilleas from this family, but some restraint seemed in order...

Beaked Triggerplant Stylidium adnatum Family Stylidiaceae, Woody Island, Esperance.
The remarkable triggerplants have a pollination mechanism which involves a fused male-female structure
held back against the stem by liquid tension, released explosively by the contact of an insect to deliver pollen
forcefully to its body, or to collect pollen it's carrying. More on this one day too.

Coastal Banjine Pimelea ferruginea Family Thymeliaceae, Woody Island, Espereance.
Eastern species ('rice flowers') are all white; this one grows on
coastal dunes and headlands right around the south-west coast.

Pink Milkmaids Burchardia rosea Family Colchicaceae, Kalbarri NP.
A superb pink lily growing in winter-wet sand in heathlands in the mid-north.

And here we'll leave the wondrous west for now; next time I'll conclude this series with a look at some pink orchids.

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

To conclude this series on pink in nature, and just in time for Christmas, I can't think of a better way than to indulge myself - and hopefully you - by revelling in some pink orchids. If you've just come in you might want to go back to number 3 in the series for a little background on pink in flowers, or you could just dive in here and relax! All these Australian orchids are insect-pollinated, though I'm not so sure about the big Peruvian ones, which could well be serviced by hummingbirds.

We'll start with some Australian ones though.

Hyacinth Orchid Dipodium variegatum, Nowra.
This is a group of striking orchids in every way; they flower at the height of summer when few others are out,
the flowering stems are up to 60cm high, and they bear up to 50 big colourful flowers.
Moreover (other than a couple of tropical species) they are leafless, relying entirely on
mycorrhizal fungi to tap into nearby plant roots.

Pink Spiral Orchid Spiranthes australis, Mongarlowe New South Wales southern tablelands.
In great contrast to the Hyacinth Orchids, these delicate little plants have flowers only 5mm long,
tightly wound around the stem. A genus widespread in Africa, Asia and the Americas, with an uncertain number of Australian species which are still being sorted out.

Esperance King Spider Orchid Caladenia (or Arachnorchis) decora, Esperance, south-west Western Australia.
The debate about whether to divide the huge and apparently disparate genus Caladenia is slowly dying down,
with the forces of conservatism seemingly prevailing.
This is not the time of year in Australia to fan flames however!

Pink Candy Orchid Caladenia (or Arachnorchis) hirta Paynes Find, inland Western Australia.

Little Pink Fairies Caladenia reptans (at least everyone agrees that this is still Caladenia!),
Boyagin Rock, south-west Western Australia.

Purple-heart Fingers Caladenia (or Petalochilus) hillmanii, near Nowra, New South Wales.
The members of this (sub-)genus are notoriously variable in colour.

Pink (or Rosy) Caps Caladenia (or Stegostyla) congesta, Canberra.
The beautiful black 'tongue' makes this a favourite of mine.

Pink (or Purple!) Donkey Orchid Diuris punctata, Tallong, southern tablelands New South Wales.
Striking in a genus of mostly yellow flowers; the flower purportedly resembles a donkey's face.

Parson's Bands Eriochilus cuculatus, south of Canberra.
A delicate little group of orchids, dominated by a pair of lateral sepals far larger than the other flower parts.
Flowers in summer, unusually around here.

Pink Sun Orchid Thelymitra carnea, Canberra.
Opens fully only on hot sunny days.

Epidendrum syringothingus, near Machu Picchu, Peru.
At least some members of both this genus and the next are known to be pollinated by hummingbirds.

Sobralia dichotoma, near Machu Picchu, Peru.

And on that delightful note I will leave you for 2014; my very sincere thanks for reading this far, and I can hope we can explore further together next year.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY, NEW YEAR'S EVE

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

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

JANUARY

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

FEBRUARY


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

MARCH

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

APRIL

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

MAY

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

JUNE

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

JULY

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

AUGUST

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

SEPTEMBER

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

OCTOBER

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

NOVEMBER

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

DECEMBER

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

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

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

BACK ON TUESDAY TO START ANOTHER YEAR!

This posting is in memory of a place that I had the fortune to visit a few years ago - a fortune that will not be shared by other western visitors for a long time to come, it would sadly seem. My stimulus for this posting was a depressing news story from the first day of 2015.

Back in 2008 I had the privilege of exploring Cameroon with the excellent Rockjumpers, a South African-based birding company. It was probably the toughest trip I've ever undertaken, very challenging birding conditions in a country suffering from crumbling infrastructure dating from French and English colonial times, widespread corruption, including regular police roadblocks whose sole purpose seemed to be wage-augmentation, and a president dedicated to maintaining power for life (this year marks Paul Biya's 33rd year in change), though he is at least elected. At the time I was there, there had been transport strikes recently, put down with violence, and renewed rumblings as we were leaving led to much more threatening road blocks and checks.

On the other hand our interactions with civilian locals were always cordial, there was little evident sign of crushing poverty (though in the rural north life was clearly demanding) and Moslem and Christian communities apparently coexisted amicably. And the land itself is superb, with habitats ranging from semi-desert to rich dry woodlands to riverine forests to mountain rainforest to lovely coasts on the Gulf of Guinea.

A highlight for me was our trip to the far north, to Waza National Park in the Sahel (the arid woodland belt that crosses Africa from west to east, bordering the Sahara to the south). The heat was like a wall, and towards the end of our stay I got as sick as I recall being for a day or three - but, that's part of travelling, especially in less-developed countries.

The red arrow points to Waza village and National Park in the far north of Cameroon.

The key thing to note on this map in the context of this posting is the immediate adjacency of Nigeria in the west. Until 2013 a small but regular flow of tourists found its way to Waza for the vast landscapes and rich wildlife. All that ended in February of that year when the French Moulin-Fournier family - three adults and four children - were kidnapped by Boko Haram insurgents crossing the border. They were released two months later amidst claims that money had been paid to the Boko Haram cause (claims strongly denied by the French government). The flow of tourists - and the money they put into the local economy - stopped right then. In May 2013 ten Chinese engineers were also snatched from Waza and later released. And only a few days ago, on 1 January, a local bus was attacked on the main road south from Waza and at least eleven people killed. It seems to be Boko Haram's intent to destroy peaceful existence in northern Cameroon; one can only worry about their plans for the rest of the country.

However, the point of this post is to share my memories and images of this part of the world which is now off limits to us.

We drove from the south, from the 200,000-strong regional capital of Maroua, a distance of just 120km but on the appallingly pot-holed roads that's a journey of several hours - and of course we were stopping to look for birds. The gardens and spreading village trees of a bit further south have dried up in this area. The Moslem influence gets stronger to the north, though there are regular signs to 'église evangelique'. Trees are low and sparse and unsustainable firewood collection looked to me to be a very serious problem indeed, especially as regular grass-bound bundles by the roadside awaiting collection indicated that much of it was for the city market.

Transporting firewood; after visiting the Waza region I am convinced that there is nothing that cannot
be moved on a bicycle!

The land is dotted with granite and volcanic outcrops. .

Rocky arid landscapes, Maroua-Waza road.

Somewhere which must have been near to - and very similar to - the murderous recent bus attack, we stopped to search the sparse scrubland for the mysterious and elusive Quail-plover Ortyxelos meiffrenii. It took some time, but we eventually succeeded.


A tough country, for birds and birders. The hazy conditions, which made photography a bit smudgy, belie just how hot it was.

Quail-plover south of Waza, a very interesting little desert-specialist. Fortunately for birders it is scattered,
though sparsely, right across this level of Africa; it will probably be many bird generations before this one's
descendants are again seen by visitors. It is apparently unequivocally a button-quail (family Turnicidae)
but doesn't at all give that impression, with its oddly bouncy flight.

While searching, other hardy desert-dwellers were encountered too.

One shouldn't get too easily distracted by wildlife - the plants, especially the acacias (above and below), are ferocious.

Capparis sp. The lovely flowers of the caper genus can be found widely in both
Old and New World tropics and subtropics.

Beautifully camouflaged grasshopper.

Dragon lizard, Family Agamidae; the family is found across Africa, Asia and Australia.

Black-headed Lapwing Vanellus tectus; a most handsome plover, at home in very dry situations
as well as moister ones.

Rufous Scrub Robin Cercotrichas galactotes, another widespread species.

Speckle-fronted Weaver Sporopipes frontalis.A specialist in the hot arid Sahel conditions.

And here I'll leave it for today. I feel quite unsettled at the idea that the apparently pointless slaughter of local villagers, perhaps people who waved to us as we passed that day, took place very near to where these photos were taken.

Next time I'll move just a little further north and introduce you to Waza itself - or at least Waza as it was just a few years ago.

BACK ON SUNDAY

This completes a posting I began here earlier in the week. I'd always meant to feature Waza National Park in the far north of Cameroon at some stage, following a visit in 2008, but I was prompted to do so now by the news of a murderous attack on a local bus by Boko Haram combatants crossing the nearby border from Nigeria on New Years Day. This follows earlier kidnappings by them of French tourists and Chinese engineers. These events have effectively closed the park and area to visitors for the imaginable future, cutting off a valuable source of income to locals.

This is my tribute to those people and a magnificent park which deserves to be seen and supported. I may not see the day that adventurous nature lovers drive into it again, but I'm sure that the day will eventually come.

Deep in the Sahel - that vast belt of arid woodland which blends into the Sahara to the north - Waza is dry, dusty and hot, but full of life. Accommodation is in traditional round huts on a rocky hill overlooking the park, by the village of Waza.

View of the accommodation from the plain, behind a herd of Korrigum Damaliscus korrigum (a threatened
species of limited distribution, formerly regarded as a subspecies of Topi D. lunatus).

The reverse view over the plain, from the restaurant balcony.

My cabin; basic but comfortable.

The habitat that I saw - and with 170,000 hectares to explore, there was much that we missed - was dominated by deciduous acacia woodland with a grassy understorey.

Typical habitat; below, the deciduous nature of some of the trees, and the grassy understorey,
are more evident.

There are 30 mammal species recorded for the park - including lion and elephant - but we only saw a few, not being there in the evening or night.

Korrigum herd; Waza is a stronghold of these antelope, which apparently number less than 2500 animals.
(The haze that renders murky many of these pictures is evident here. Dust or smoke, I can't say.)

Roan Antelope Hippotragus equinus, one of the largest antelopes at up to 300kg.

Patas Monkey Erythrocebus patas, a largely ground-dwelling monkey of the Sahel.

Warthog Phacochoerus africanus.

Even in the morning, before temperatures began to seriously rise, the waterholes were attracting many birds.

Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse Pterocles exustus, above and below.
A highly mobile, arid-loving species found across central Africa and into southern Asia.
The relationships of sandgrouse are obscure; indeed they seem not to have any near relations.
I'd love to think that at least some of these beautiful birds were absorbing water in their dense breast
feathers to carry to chicks, a remarkable feature for which they are famous.

Helmeted Guineafowl Numida meleagris; found across sub-Saharan Africa, and a personal favourite.

Knob-billed Ducks Sarkidiornis melanotos have a remarkable distribution across Africa, southern Asia
and South America, but are never common and I was glad to see these.

A real thrill for me was a close-overhead flyover of a small flock of the magnificent Black Crowned Cranes.

Black Crowned Cranes Balearica pavonina in formation.
This beautiful bird is the national bird emblem of Uganda, and is unusual among
cranes in its preference for arid habitats. It is a threatened species.

Other bush birds were not so tied to the waterholes.

Vieillot's Barbet Lybius vieilloti, another Sahel special.
African barbets are regarded now as quite separate from their American namesakes.

Abyssinian Roller Coracias abyssinicus, one of the common birds of the Sahel,
but not one I could ever tire of.

I've felt that we've been a bit cheated with regard to starlings in Australia; we have only one native species, with a very small tropical range, and two widespread (and not especially colourful) aggressive exotics. Africa always reminds me of the alternatives!

Greater Blue-eared Glossy Starling Lamprotornis chalybaeus (what an immodest collection of
adjectives!) is much more widespread than the next starling.

Chestnut-bellied Starling Lamprotornis pulcher, yet another Sahel specialist, and an attractive one again.

And as I've suggested before, the day became hot (high 30s anyway), and the birds were dealing with it in their various ways.

African Swallow-tailed Kite Chelictinia riocourii, holding its wings out, hoping
for a scrap of breeze to cool it.

Gasping to allow evaporation from inside mouths and throats was popular.

Ethiopian Swallows Hirundo aethiopica.

White-throated Bee-eaters Merops albicollis breed in the Sahara itself, and come
this far south for winter.

African Silverbills Lonchura cantans hung about in the shade near the accommodation,
but still did their share of panting.

So, Waza, one of those places that for most of us we only hear of when it's too late. I was just lucky, and I'm so glad I was.

I'll go on thinking about it, and its fate, for a long time.

There'll be many such Waza sunsets through the thorn trees long after we've stopped
making a mess of things.

BACK ON THURSDAY

It's been a while now since I waxed lyrical about the amazing spin-off of flight called hovering. It is an extraordinary achievement, but there is another extreme to flying that only a very few species have ever achieved.

Female Magnificent Frigatebird Fregata magnificens, Galápagos.
She accompanied our boat (with many companions - see below) for kilometres,
and I don't recall once seeing her flap.

Strictly, she was not flying, but soaring. Perhaps this is being a bit precious, but it does seem important to make the distinction or we'll miss out on understanding this extreme of flight. Flying is, in technical terms, 'assisted aerial motion', which can also be stated as 'flapping your wings'. You need to be able to flap fast enough to overcome the drag of air along and behind your body. To accelerate or climb you must flap even faster still.

Soaring however, as I observed in the caption above, involves not flapping your wings. The energy in this case comes from the air around you, which may be deflected up (eg from a boat pushing through it, or from an air mass moving over a ridge-line or a mountain) or from rising thermals of warmed air, over a sand dune or even a city. The frigatebirds were using this energy to move forwards; birds which rise on a thermal can then soar for tens or even hundreds of kilometres, losing height only incrementally as they go. In any case, as you could imagine, very complex and precise adaptations of both physiology and shape are required; it seems that only some larger birds and pterosaurs have ever mastered the art.

Mathematically, the best shape for a soaring wing is the one exhibited by the frigatebirds above; it is very long and slender and pointed, and known in the trade as a 'high aspect ratio' wing. Aspect ratio is defined as wingspan squared divided by wing area - in other words a high aspect ratio means a very low wing loading, or very little weight per square centimetre of wing. This allows very slow flight without stalling, and facilitates 'riding the wind'. (It's also good for hovering, but that's another story.)

Waved Albatross Phoebastria irrorata. Española, Galápagos.
Albatrosses are also consummate soarers and utilise high aspect ratio wings.

However, everything in nature is about trade-offs and compromises, and most soaring birds do not have these very long slender wings.


Straw-necked Ibis Threskiornis spinicollis soaring, Grenfell, New South Wales. (I love the way the two birds on the left are undertaking running repairs to their feathers.)

These ibis are soaring on very differently shaped wings from the ideal. The problem with the high aspect ratio wings is not with their undoubted efficiency in the air, but the problems they pose in getting there. Simply, they are so long that a normal takeoff is very difficult to achieve; they bang on the ground when being flapped! Large birds which possess them must either launch into the air from a high point (such as a cliff, which is what the Waved Albatross on Española were doing) or using wind energy to get into the air (which both albatrosses and frigatebirds also so).

The ibis use the compromise solution, known somewhat inelegantly but descriptively as 'soaring wings with slots'. These wings are broad and long, with deep slots between each primary feather to reduce air turbulence around the wing tips and promote easy soaring. While slightly less efficient than the albatross wing, they are shorter and enable relatively easy takeoff from the ground.

Not only is soaring only effectively available to large birds (and formerly pterosaurs), because only they can have the large wing area to body weight ratio required, but the reverse is true too. As birds get closer to the cut-off maximum flying weight of around 15kg (the largest eagle, swan, condor, pelican, albatross and bustard are all about this size), soaring becomes the only realistic option, as sustained powered flight would be just too energy-intensive.

And with that, let's end by simply admiring some other magnificent soarers.

Black-breasted Buzzard Hamirostra melanosternon, Uluru, central Australia.
Many soaring birds have black wingtips, because the melanin confers resistance to wear.

Andean Condor Vultur gryphus, Los Glaciares NP, Argentina.
One of the great soarers!


Galápagos Hawk Buteo galapagoensis, Santiago, Galápagos.

White-bellied Sea Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster, Esperance, Western Australia.
A magnificent sight soaring along coastlines (and sometimes well inland) from India to southern Australia.

American Swallow-tailed Kite Elanoides forficatus, Ecuador.
One of the smaller soarers but an efficient one,
which in part uses the skill to glean prey from foliage.

Black-necked Stork Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus. Muttaburra, Queensland.

Australian Pelicans Pelecanus conspicillatus, Muttaburra, Queensland.
Pelicans constantly criss-cross the continent by using rising thermals, especially over sand dunes.

Soaring, just another wonderful aspect of this wonderful world, and perhaps one we don't think about enough.

BACK ON THURSDAY

With a title like that you might reasonably suspect a joke on my part, but in fact this is the latest in my sporadic series on favourite trees; you can find the most recent instalment here and find earlier ones from there if you so wish.

I grew up with some of the Australian children's classics, including May Gibbs'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie series, very whimsical (and somewhat downright scary) and very Australian, with the characters based on bush flowers and fruits. I'll leave you to investigate further if it's new to you, but one thing that always intrigued me was their use of Kurrajong pods as boats. In Adelaide we didn't know Kurrajongs, but when I moved to eastern Australia I was delighted to get to know them, and the members of the genus Brachychiton are now among my favourite trees. Around Canberra and onto the western slopes Kurrajong B. populneus grows in a range of drier situations from rocky hillsides to deep plains soils. (The myth that Kurrajong indicates the presence of limestone appears to be just that.)

Kurrajong near Molong, New South Wales.
A lovely spreading tree with soft glossy green foliage that shines in the breeze.

The seed pods, the May Gibbs boats of my childhood reading, contain stinging hairs,
but the seeds if winnowed can be roasted and used in a beverage.

The genus name Brachychiton translates as a short Ancient Greek tunic, in somewhat whimsical reference to the loose covering of the seed. Populneus is a reference to the supposedly poplar-like nature of the foliage.

Kurrajong leaves; the three lobed form is often a character of younger trees. These leaves are quite soft,
unexpectedly so for an Australian dry country plant.

The foliage is a reason that Kurrajongs are often left in otherwise largely treeless rural landscapes; the leaves are valuable drought fodder and branches are cut in hard times to feed sheep and cattle. The tree recovers.

The palatability of the leaves can be readily deduced when a Kurrajong grows on a fence line.
Outside the fence (on the left) the foliage sweeps down to the ground; inside stock have
browsed it as high up as they can reach.

The origin of the word Kurrajong itself is somewhat confused. It seems that it is probably one of the few words remaining of the language of the people who lived where Sydney now stands; their name or language might have been Dharug, as is often asserted, but not all experts are convinced. However the word seems to have referred to a fibre used for lines or fishing nets, and deriving from a native Hibiscus (H. heterophyllus). Somehow the word got to be used for 'our' Kurrajong, which grew on the Cumberland Plain to the west of Sydney. It has also been applied at times to species of Pimeleas which, like the Kurrajong, were also valued for their fibrous bark. Too often we didn't pay enough attention to what we were being told and I've wondered if many of our forebears merely confused the word for the fibre with the various plants it derived from.

However the Kurrajong is just one of 31 Brachychiton species, all of which are Australian but for one New Guinea species. Until 2006 they were broadly accepted as being in the family Sterculiaceae, but then a detailed genetic study determined that Sterculiaceae was really an artificial family, and most of its members (along with those of other related families) were moved into the hibiscus family, Malvaceae. That seems to have since been generally accepted.

The flowers are distinctive - and not very reminiscent of hibiscus, it must be noted. They comprise a tube of fused sepals (not petals, it seems, despite their colouration).

Kurrajong flowers, Pilliga National Park, New South Wales.

Others are more brightly coloured.

Red-flowered Kurrajong B. paradoxus, Litchfield National Park near Darwin.
A small tree of the tropics.

Flowers of Illawarra Flame Tree B. acerifolius carpeting the forest floor, Chichester State Forest, New South Wales.
Like other forest species, this one is deciduous, flowering after the leaves have dropped,
producing a spectacular effect.

At the other habitat extreme from the wet forest Flame Tree, there is a Brachychiton native to the harsh central deserts too.

Desert Kurrajong B. gregorii, Mereenie Loop, central Australia.
The species name is for Augustus Gregory, the explorer who collected the type
specimen far to the west on the Murchison River in 1848.

Desert Kurrajong fruit - the close relation with Kurrajong is obvious.

Perhaps the most widely recognised member of the genus however is endemic to inland south-eastern Queensland. The Queensland Bottle Tree is instantly recognisable by its oddly bulbous trunk at its mid-height, which intrigued the explorer Thomas Mitchell when he encountered it near where Roma now stands in 1848 (coincidentally the same year that Gregory discovered the Desert Kurrajong on the far side of the country). He considered, understandably, that it "looked very odd".

Queensland Bottle Tree B. rupestris near Tambo.

The landscape dotted with these magnificent trees makes the drive through central Queensland worth it just for that. (And incidentally they are not at all the same as the Baobabs of north-western Australia, Madagascar and Africa, though the recent taxonomic revision has put them into the same family.) They dominate now scarce and threatened vine scrub habitats.

My love affair with kurrajongs and bottle trees is not wholly platonic - our relatively small front and back yards host a Kurrajong and Queensland Bottle Tree respectively, and they're showing every sign of returning our affection by thriving.

I hope you can share my enthusiasm for them.

BACK ON THURSDAY

Having just returned from a week and a bit based in Darwin at the very northern end of central Australia (and having organised my photos) it's inevitable that this wonderful tropical part of the world should feature today. Some people considered us mad for visiting during the 'Wet' (or the 'Green Season' as the tourist industry has taken to preferring!) and while they may have a case, we loved it. It doesn't rain all the time, though impressive storms featured late on most days, and while it's of course humid the temperatures were surprisingly mild - no more than about 33 degrees.

Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, at the end of the red arrow.
We live a bit over 3000km away (and some 2600km to the south) at the end of the green arrow.

One 'must visit' destination for any visitor is the magnificent Territory Wildlife Park (the 'Northern' is apparently considered superfluous!), 60km south of Darwin. Technically I suppose it is a zoo, but that conjures up images quite misleading in this case. Founded by the territory government in 1989, it is set in 400 hectares of natural habitat, of which only a tiny proportion is developed. A four kilometre circuit track is regularly travelled by a little train (not on rails) driven by informative guides and is paralleled by walking tracks which also branch off into the bush. Features include a series of habitat-based aviaries, culminating in a huge and magnificent aviary featuring the monsoon forest; an aquarium including a walk-through tunnel with animals swimming by and over you; a nocturnal house, and daily educational displays of free-flying birds. All are well done, and the educational and conservation themes are powerful.

However I want to feature today 'the rest' - the huge area of the park which is outside the developed sections, accessed by the walking track system. There are three basic habitat types represented within the grounds; dry woodland, monsoon forest and wetland systems, though each can be further sub-divided.

Dry eucalypt woodland, the dominant vegetation type of the Top End.
Above, featuring 'Screw Palm'Pandanus spiralis,and below the cycad Cycas armstrongii; both are common understorey components.

'Screw Palms' are of course not palms at all - monocots certainly, but in the family Pandanaceae. The leaves
are spirally arranged on the trunk, and their bases form the distinctive stem spirals when they drop.
Indigenous culture is alive and well in the Top End, and this plant is very important to the original Territorians: it provides food from seeds, fruit and stem; medications; fibre for mats, baskets and rope; wood for drum sticks and rafts.

Monsoon Forest (above and below), or Vine Forest, is a type of dry rainforest, occurring in
isolated patches across the Top End, especially nearer the coast. Away from the coast, where rainfall
is often lower, it tends to be found around streamlines (below).
There is no true ('wet') rainforest in the Top End because winter rainfall is too low to sustain it.

Wetlands comprise open water and their fringing vegetation, plus surrounding areas of paperbark (Melaleuca spp.) swamp woodland which may be inundated for weeks or more every year.

Goose Lagoon (above) and associated paperbark swamp (below).

The rain didn't disappoint us either. On the one occasion we travelled a section in the little (open-sided) train it bucketed down, and as we cornered a gush of water from the roof filled the curved plastic bench sit beneath us. We naturally leapt up - and were politely but firmly requested by the driver-guide to sit down again! Oh well, it was a warm pool to sit in at least.

Tropical rain in the Park.
The attractive but bedraggled centipede (below) shared our shelter; I'm afraid poor light and
its haste to escape make for an inadequate photo.

Which brings us to the many wild animals which dwell within the park boundaries. One of the apparently counter-intuitive aspects of the Wet is that water birds are far harder to find than in the Dry. It makes sense of course - with water across ten of thousands of square kilometres of country the birds are scattered across the plains. However even now there are some to be found around the park's wetlands.

Australian Pelicans Pelecanus conspicillatus.


The eponymous geese of Goose Lagoon. Magpie Geese Anseranas semipalmata are widespread across northern Australia. They are neither goose nor duck, but the sole living member of an ancient family which predates all current ducks, geese and swans. One distinguishing characteristic is the partially webbed toes (from which derives the species name).


Radjah Shelducks Tadorna radjah are well within the mainstream of duckdom - and in my opinion are one of the most beautiful ducks in the world.

Forest Kingfishers Todiramphus macleayii are another spectacularly beautiful component
of tropical Australian birdlife; they are members of the tree kingfisher family.

Orange-footed Scrubfowl Megapodius reinwardt.These relatively small megapodes - mound-builders - build huge incubating mounds for their eggs.
This is the only one of the three Australian species to be found in the Top End where they are widespread.
They can be encountered anywhere in the park.

The Varied Triller Lalage leucomela is another common Top End bird, but also found throughout
the near-coastal tropics and down the east coast almost to Sydney. Its melodious call is
part of the musical sound track of the park.

Agile Wallaby Macropus agilis, the commonest wallaby of northern Australia.
You can't afford to live up here if you can't cope with wet feet and a bit of rain!

This Javelin Frog's (Litoria microbelos) luck changed for the better when we arrived at the Goose Lagoon
bird hide. It was being seriously molested by a trio of Green Tree Ants and launched itself at me when I appeared.
The ants were dislodged and I placed it on a post outside (below) from where it could jump into the water.
It was still being stalked however...

Reptiles are always present in the Top End, and the Wildlife Park is no exception.

Slender Rainbow Skink Carlia gracilis. This is a breeding male; only they develop the spectacular
blue-green head and bright chestnut sides.

Mertens' Water Goanna Varanus mertensi; this water-loving monitor is nowhere near as common as it
used to be before the arrival of the toxic introduced Cane Toad Bufo marinus.

So, when you go the Top End, whatever the season you must visit the Territory Wildlife Park; when you do so don't miss the aviaries and aquariums, but equally importantly don't miss the wealth of life going about its wonderful business outside the developed sections. This is the Top End concentrated!

BACK ON TUESDAY

[If you'd like to leave a message, I'd love to hear from you. I've changed settings so that you don't have to have an account with Google or anyone else, and you don't have to identify yourself - though I'd love to know who I'm talking to. You only have to prove you're human by clicking in a circle; they've made this an infinitely simpler process now than it used to be. I tried it for a while with no restrictions, but got swamped by horrible spammers.
I know that lots of people read this, but very few comment. ]

When we're in tropical Darwin (capital of Australia's Northern Territory - see here for a map) we always make a point of popping into the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Of course one of our motives is the art and exhibits - notably the indigenous art, the dramatic and moving gallery telling the story of Cyclone Tracy which almost wiped Darwin from existence on Christmas Day 1974, and in a different way the also moving story of Sweetheart, a magnificent 5.1 metre long Estuarine Crocodile which drowned in 1979 while being relocated away from fishing dinghies, to which it had taken a liking.

However of equal attraction is the subsequent coffee or cold drink taken on the café verandah afterwards, looking out across treed lawns to the Timor Sea.

The view from the museum café verandah on a recent sunny day; the Timor Sea
can be seen in the near distance.

Of course the views are not always this clear, especially in the summer wet season.

The same view, taken on a previous summer visit.

In both pictures, a handsome Umbrella Tree Schefflera actinophylla features. This member of the Araliaceae family (which includes ivy and ginseng) is native to tropical Queensland rainforests and wetter monsoon forests (ie 'wetter dry rainforests'!) of the Top End, as the imprecisely defined wet northern sector of the Northern Territory is known.

And because of this tree, we are not the only ones to come to the museum verandah for refreshments. The flowers are small but incredibly numerous, with many hundreds of them on each spray of flowers, which may be two metres long. They are rich in nectar and the birds come to them by day, and bats by night. Later the fruits are also hugely attractive but on our most recent visit it was the flower-visiting birds which distracted our attention, coming in waves to the flowers almost above our heads.

Here are the main visitors.

Little Friarbird Philemon citreogularis, the smallest of the group of large honeyeaters known as friarbirds.
The first one named, the Noisy Friarbird P. corniculatus, was common around Sydney when the first European
settlers arrived; its head is bald of feathers which prompted the disrespectful moniker.
More on them in a separate posting one day.
Little Friarbirds are found across much of eastern and northern Australia.

Helmeted Friarbirds Philemon buceroides on the other hand are solely tropical.

Unusually for honeyeaters the birds were largely willing to permit others to feed nearby, a sure sign that the nectar resource is effectively infinite.

Helmeted Friarbird and White-gaped Honeyeater Lichenostomus unicolor; unusual table-mates.

White-gaped Honeyeater; another tropical specialist.
Its notably loud and stroppy disposition doubtless assists it in being allowed to feed
undisturbed by the bigger bully. This species and the next are on the increase in Darwin gardens.

Brown Honeyeater Lichmera indistincta; both common and species name do scant justice
to its sparky personality and big voice. Unlike the previous species it is found in a huge range
of habitats across western, northern and eastern Australia; I feel it is penetrating further and further
into the dry country too.

Another honeyeater was visiting too, but was being chivvied on by the other bigger and more aggressive birds too quickly for me to get a photo.

Dusky Honeyeater Myzomela obscura feeding in a quieter restaurant elsewhere in Darwin.

And just before we reluctantly moved on, a couple of truly spectacular diners rocketed in and took over.

Red-collared Lorikeet Trichoglossus rubritorquis.This tropical beauty has a chequered taxonomic history, being alternately regarded as a separate species
and lumped in with the ubiquitous east coast Rainbow Lorikeet T. moluccanus.Now however it (and some non-Australian taxa) are widely regarded as separate species.

No doubt if we'd come at another time or sat for longer we'd have enjoyed still more species, but it was a pretty good distraction - or in my case probably the coffee (and even the delightful human company) was more the distraction...

BACK ON MONDAY

As I've mentioned before, one of the many things that fascinates me about this wonderful world is the persistence of relic species in habitats that have survived in special situations when the world around them has changed. The survival of groups such as palms and cycads in desert ranges of central Australia is one such example.

Another is the existence of the 'bottle tree scrubs', 'vine scrubs' or 'bonetree scrubs' of inland south-eastern Queensland, alluded to here. These are remnant dry rainforest patches that have survived within the formerly vast Brigalow Acacia harpophylla belt; this broader habitat is most unusual in dry Australia in being strongly fire resistant, and within this protection rainforest elements have survived and adapted. Long-nosed Bandicoots Perameles nasuta for instance survive in them, though at such latitudes are otherwise found only in much wetter habitats.

One tree species which can dominate in such situations, though now fairly scarce following past widespread clearing, is Ooline Cadellia pentastylis, from the small family Surianaceae (mostly Australian with one species widespread around the Paficic). Ooline is the only member of the genus.

Ooline, Tregole National Park, inland south-east Queensland near Morven.

It is a throwback to much wetter times, when rainforests dominated much of Australia. It extends in similar habitat into northern inland New South Wales.

It was named in 1860 by the great 19th century Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller, who chose to commemorate a somewhat unlikely character. Francis Cadell was Scottish-born (on 9 February 1822), an enthusiastic entrepreneur and pioneer of the steam-driven river boat trade on the Murray-Darling River system. After knocking around for a while he came to Australia and focussed on the South Australian government's huge offer in 1850 of 2000 pounds for each of the first two riverboats - which had to be shallow-draft iron steamers of at least 40 horse-power - to navigate upstream as far as the Darling River junction. The government was trying to develop a river trade with the vast sheep and cattle stations far upstream, and ultimately to provide a shipping lifeline to the east without the extreme hazards of the coastal route via Bass Strait.

Cadell managed to persuade the government - who had no takers by 1852 - to up the ante, with the addition of more conditions to suit him, to 4500 pounds, and he had a boat purpose-built in Sydney. With much pomp he entered the Murray via the hazardous mouth, then proceeded upstream as far as Swan Hill in Victoria (beyond the Darling), making sure that one of his passengers was the Lieutenant Governor Sir Henry Young.

Francis Cadell, late in life; photographer unknown.
Photograph courtesy State Library of South Australia.

Unbeknownst to him however, he was beaten to it by a young South Australian country flour miller from Gumeracha, who started from scratch and built his own paddlewheeler. William Randell had never even seen a paddlesteamer, but he was anxious to get his flour to the Victorian goldfields to take advantage of the high prices on offer. There are horrific stories of his early attempts, with the bulging steam box being held together only by bullock chains and his engineer (his brother) running for safety. Miraculously it held, and he set off up the river in advance of Cadell and got much further than Cadell did; it seems that they each only became aware of the other when Cadell's Lady Augusta overtook Randell's Mary Ann (named for his mum) near the Murrumbidgee Junction. It is most unclear whether Randell had even been aware of the prize on offer before that.

Outside of South Australia, Randell's role is largely forgotten, and there is little doubt that Cadell helped to ensure that, with the assistance of Henry Young who had three gold medallions struck to commemorate "the first successful steam voyage up the Murray" - one for himself, one for Cadell, and one for the Legislative Council. None for Randell.

In responding to a toast at a banquet at his honour in Adelaide later, Cadell said that his ambition was the "waking up of a mighty but hitherto torpid stream" so that it might "fulfil its alloted duties, as intended by the Creator of all things, and to render it subservient to the uses of mankind". Hmm. I am not entirely amazed that he was murdered by a crew member in 1879 near Ambon, while trading in the East Indies; he was widely accused of mistreatment of his crew, including withholding of wages. An article in the Register of 1917 said that he was "a red-headed, red-moustached, pompous and bombastic man, who knew how to keep himself in the limelight and to reap what others had sown"

But, he got an interesting and attractive tree, for reasons that aren't clear to me. This is von Mueller's explanation from his formal description of the tree; my reading of it in my rudimentary Latin (since, and more significantly, confirmed by my linguistic friend Jeannie Gray) is that he simply praises Cadell's efforts in exploring the rivers and opening up the hitherto unknown inland. Perhaps he was trying to encourage Cadell to collect some plants for him in the future!

"Genus aucto carpidiorum numero in ordine alienum, transitum ad sapindacearum familiam ostendens, signavi nomine clarissimi Francisci CadelL praefecti navalis, qui navigationem fluviorum Murray et Darling animóse incipiens non solum explorationeni terrae Australis interioris adhuc incognitae faciliorem reddit, sed etiam expeditionem nunc in plagas Australiae centralis suscipiendam animo generoso adjuvit."

Names, as always, are just human conceits, but stories matter, and I've long found the story of Cadell and Randell an intriguing one, a contrast in personalities and motives. I'd have been happier if Ooline had been named Randellia though; he had no connection with or knowledge of the tree either, but I confess to liking him more...

Ooline stand, Tregole National Park.

BACK ON SUNDAY

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

Here I've replaced the photo of Bellendana montana.

Here a better picture of Green (or Golden) Tree Snake.

Here a much better photo of Crimson Finch.

Here a better picture of White-gaped Honeyeater.

Here a better Black Currawong photo.
Here, in a posting on Darwin's Finches, I've replaced three photos with better ones, and added two species of which I didn't previously have photos.
Here I've also made some significant additions, and replaced one pic (of a Yellow-breasted Antpitta) with a much better one. The additions are mostly of extra antpittas, which might be of interest.
Here I've added Green Rosella to the posting on rosellas.
Here I've replaced the photo of a Jacky Lizard with a much better one.
Here I've added a photo of Forest Kingfishers to the posting on kingfishers.

BACK WITH A REAL POST ON SUNDAY!

The moral of this story, if any, is perhaps that you don't want to annoy an amorous Musk Duck. Archibald Menzies did.

Male Musk Duck Biziura lobata, south of Canberra.
This striking duck is the only member of its genus, long regarded as a member of the sub-group known (for evident
reasons) as stiff-tails, though it's starting to seem as though it's one of those Gondwanan specials which diverged long ago and is not that closely related to the stiff-tails. That however is a story for another day.
They are not uncommon on deeper water throughout much of the southern half of Australia. The males are
characterised by the leathery lobe beneath the bill which engorges with blood during courtship, when he
whistles and grunts and sends out great sprays of water with his feet. He also then emits a strong musky smell.

George Vancouver (a veteran of Cook’s Pacific expeditions) was sent by the Admiralty in the Discovery in 1791 to sort out the Spanish who were regarded as being tedious off the north-west coast of North America. As ever, Sir Joseph Banks made sure there was a scientific presence, in the person of Archibald Menzies, a Scottish naval surgeon and botanist. Now, getting to the North American west coast from England literally meant travelling much of the globe in a way hard to imagine today. You could of course go round the southern tip of South America, via Cape Horn - an enormous distance anyway - but that was a very bad idea. After Magellen navigated his eponymous strait, the next 21 ships to attempt it were all lost, with at least 1000 lives. The alternative was to sail down the west coast of Africa, across the southern Indian Ocean below Australia, then north-east across the entire Pacific.

Since he was in the vicinity Vancouver thought he might as well have a look at south-western Australia. Inland from the current Albany, Menzies made extensive plant collections, live as well as dried, and presumably for future visitors he planted vines and water cress, and sowed orange, lemon, pumpkin and almond seeds. (None of which were sighted again.)

He made some significant bird discoveries, including the first European descriptions of a couple of Western Australian endemics.

Red-capped Parrot Purpureicephalus spurius (above)
and Western Rosella Platycercus icterotis (below), both in Albany;
both were first described in writing in Menzies' diary.

However he never got round to publishing and others got the credit later. He also collected the unfortunate duck; it's not often that we can say with certainty which individual animal gave a name to an entire species, but in this case we can. The poor beast had been cut down at the height of his amorous activities and proceeded to imbue the entire ship with his potently musky aroma.

Things got worse for Menzies though - he fell out with Vancouver, and though the subject of contention seems to have been the health of his living plant specimens details vary. One account I read had Menzies locked up on board for three months (during which time his plants died) though other versions omit this bit.

In Australia he is best remembered for some plant species, especially the magnificent and common Western Australian Firewood Banksia, Banksia menziesii.

Banksia menziesii Badgingarra NP.
The name was bestowed by eminent fellow Scot Robert Brown in 1830, though Menzies
never saw the species.

Menzies went on to make his mark in Britain by introducing many plants, especially from the Americas, for the first time. One of his coups was in pocketing some seeds he was served with dessert by the governor of Chile and cultivating them on board - thus were the first Monkey Puzzle Pines Araucaria araucana introduced to Britain.

However, while in Hawaii in 1794 with the Discovery, he made the first recorded ascent of the volcano Mauna Loa; the next European to do so was another Scot, David Douglas, 40 years later. Their paths crossed again, though I doubt they ever met. In 1791 on Vancouver Island Menzies collected specimens of the mighty tree which was named Pseudotsuga menziesii for him. But it was Douglas who many years later reported on the values of the timber and brought it to public attention, which is why we now know it as Douglas Fir. Whether it was Menzies who passed his bad luck on to Douglas via the tree is unknown. (Surely youwouldn't let me get away with that sentence, would you?)

Douglas Fir, courtesy Wikipedia.

Douglas though, indubitably had little luck. From various sources I've gleaned the following series of events; I can't vouch for the veracity of all of it, given how unlikely it sounds. Early in his time in North America, while he was collecting up a tree, his guide absconded with his jacket and money. The hired horse and carriage were left, but the horse only understood French and Douglas at that stage didn’t. His health profoundly deteriorated after drifting for some time, drenched and frozen, in Hudson Bay, and he was substantially blinded by years of sun on the snow. At this point he decided it was time to go home to England - via Alaska and Siberia, on foot, to save money. En route to the coast though his canoe went over a waterfall and all his specimens and notes were lost. Somehow he found himself in Hawaii, where having climbed Mauna Loa he managed to fall into a bull trap, complete with bull, and at that point all luck ended.

However we started with Archibald Menzies, so should leave with him too. He had a much longer and happier life than Douglas. After retiring he went into medical practice in London, and succeeded Aylmer Lambert as president of the Linnean Society. He died in 1842 aged 88.

Archibald Menzies.
This image is widely reproduced, but I can nowhere find the original colour version,
who the artist was or when it was painted. My apologies to whoever it was!

Just another very small-part player in our story, but as I've said before, they all add up. And once you start following a loose story thread, who knows where it will lead?

BACK ON FRIDAY

OK, so maybe that's a provocative title, but the mere fact that a large number of Australians would know immediately what you meant by bluetongue, or even just bluey, is indicative. The six Australian species of the genus Tiliqua (plus two New Guinea species) comprise the bluetongue skinks, usually referred to here just as bluetongue lizards, because they don't really seem like skinks. They are atypically large (sometimes up to 50cm long) and relatively slow, not small and slender and whisking across the surface of ground, rock or log like their numerous more familiar and ubiquitous relations.

The one exception is the Pygmy Bluetongue T. adelaidensis, barely a quarter this size; it is remarkable too in being an ambush hunter, using as cover the burrow of a wolf or trapdoor spider (having evicted and eaten the rightful owner). The story of its remarkable return from oblivion can be found here.

The Blotched Bluctongue T. nigrolutea (here in the high Brindabellas above Canberra) is a typical bluetongue.
It can be over 40cm long, with a heavy body and diamond-shaped head. Further south, including in Tasmania,
it can be found at sea level and the pink spots are less conspicuous.

Many Australians, even in suburbia, have a bluetongue in their yard, either as a resident or passing through. Many people leave out water or even food for them, and a very welcome tenant they are too, with a healthy appetite for snails in particular. (They do like strawberries too, but that can be managed with a bit of fencing!) The wedge-shaped face is in part due to the heavy jaw muscles which, in conjunction with large rear teeth, make easy work of crushing snail shells and beetle carapaces.

They are daytime omnivores, with little defence against larger predators - birds of prey, goannas and large snakes, plus of course now dogs and cats. However, bluff can count for a lot, and blueys are good at it - and here's where the blue tongue comes in!

The fleshy blue tongue, which of course is just a food manipulation organ, is also utilised,
in contrast with the pink inside of the mouth, and a bit of huffing and puffing, to scare off
real or potential threats. This, in combination with the somewhat snake-shaped head, is apparently enough
to save them from at least some attacks.
This is the northern race of the familiar Eastern Bluetongue T. scincoides, which is found widely across
northern and eastern Australia.

Size apparently counts too, as they will also try to make themselves look as big as possible in such situations.

Eastern Bluetongue, Kakadu National Park.
This one has turned itself side on to me, flattened its body and tilted it towards me to appear bigger than it really is.

Unusually, the entire genus gives birth to live young. While this - which essentially means the young hatch internally - is not uncommon among lizards from colder climates, to avoid eggs developing in cold or even frozen soil, even tropical bluetongues do it. There is some dispute in the literature as to whether there is a placental connection between mother and unborn babies, as there is in some other smaller skinks, though the weight of opinion is that there is. The young are large, and Shinglebacks T. rugosa generally have only two at a time; other species may have more.

Shinglebacks are also unusual among lizards in forming lifelong pair bonds; at the start of each breeding season they will seek each other out and remain together for the next couple of months until they mate and then go their own way again until next year.

Shingleback pair, Nullarbor Plain, South Australia.
This is the most physically aberrant of the group, and perhaps the most unusual skink in the world.
Widespread across inland southern Australia, it has attracted names including Bobtail, Stumpy Tail,
Pineeone Lizard, Boggi (or Bog-eye) and Sleepy Lizard, the name I grew up calling them.

I have a great affection for Sleepy Lizards, having followed them around the paddocks at the back of our home north of Adelaide when I was little, and later kept them in a big lizardarium in the back yard in Adelaide (in the days before protective legislation restricted the keeping of native animals).

They are mostly animals of the hot inland - and I couldn't imagine how many I've moved off outback roads to safety in my time - but they reach their south-eastern limits in the high cool country near here, just coming into the northern part of the Australian Capital Territory. Interestingly, at these cold limits, the local Shinglebacks are completely black, to maximise sun absorption.

Shingleback, Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve, Canberra.

Bluetongues always makes me smile fondly when I see one - and I'm sure many people reading this will have stories and good memories of these slow, gentle Australians. Here are some portraits to finish with.

Blotched Bluetongue, Namadgi National Park.

Eastern Bluetongue, Kakadu National Park.

Shingleback, Nullarbor National Park, South Australia.

Western Bluetongue T. occipitalis, Nambung National Park, Western Australia.
Despite the name this species is found from the Indian Ocean to south-western New South Wales
and western Victoria, substantially overlapping with the Eastern Bluetongue in South Australia.

The only species missing from this gallery (apart from the frighteningly rare Pygmy Bluetongue) is the Centralian Bluetongue T. multifasciata, an omission I can't readily explain. One day...

Blueys, a good part of the Australian landscape. I hope you've enjoyed meeting or remeeting them.

[By a bizarre coincidence, just 24 hours after I posted this my friend Harvey Perkins posted a similar offering here on his excellent blog. It's worth visiting for his photos alone.}

BACK ON THURSDAY

In Quichua, the language once spoken by the Incas and still spoken by many indigenous Ecuadorians, Pacha Quindi means 'place of the hummingbirds'. It's not hard to see why Tony Nunnery and Barbara Bolz chose it for their superb and inspiring cloud forest home property in the Andes north-west of Quito. Their 'garden' - defined a little broadly perhaps, but not unreasonably - boasts the largest number of hummingbird species ever recorded in one place. That number is 42! They claim that on most days of the year you can see up to 19 species in an hour.

Part of the Pacha Quindi garden; the cleared area is immediately surrounding Tony and Barbara's house
with regenerating cloud forest hemming it in on all sides.

Tony and Barbara arrived in the upper Tandanyapa Valley nearly 20 years ago and bought first 30 hectares of land - a mix of forest and cleared cattle pasture - and with outside assistance later added another 50 neighbouring hectares. With a vast amount of physical labour and a lot of experimentation they set about first removing the densely matted exotic pasture grasses, and then encouraging the return of the forest, by direct planting (including of over 6000 trees) and by enabling natural regeneration to proceed. The results are remarkable.

Photo from the Pacha Quindi garden.
A decade or so ago the ridge across the valley (as well as the foreground) was devoid of native vegetation.

They employed local workers - often the same people who'd helped clear the forest to start with - but their very limited resources did not permit this on a permanent basis.

Tony was from Mississippi, where his family ran a building business, so he was equipped to tackle the task of building their beautiful timber home, which originally stood in the cow paddocks until they developed the garden around it. And with the plants came the hummingbirds; these cloud forests on the equator are fabulously rich in these amazing birds. Each hummer species has its preferred flowers, to which its bill has evolved in size and shape, and when these flowers are absent the provision of hanging hummingbird feeders helps ease the stress. However when the flowers are present, the birds eschew the feeders; in any case the feeders, charged with a sugar solution, do not provide the protein the birds need, which they obtain from insects and pollen. Nonetheless the 30 or so feeders use up to 40 kilograms of sugar a week in peak demand period (in February, when it is coldest and energy demands are correspondingly high). The birds drink over $1000 worth of sugar a year!

Hummingbirds at Pacha Quindi feeder.
The stunner centre front, with his back to us, is a male Violet-tailed Sylph Aglaiocercus coelestis;
the rest are Buff-tailed Coronets Boissonneaua flavescens.

It is essential to refill every day with fresh sugar water to prevent the risk of disease from contaminated solutions; each feeder must be regularly cleaned too.

Visitors are very welcome, but don't expect to just drive up the mountain and turn in when you see the sign. The access is unmarked, and comprises an obscure foot track through the roadside grass, which emerges in the lovely garden above the house. They need no driveway as they don't have a vehicle but use the local buses to go to town when required. Powerlines cross their land, but they have refused the offers to be connected to the electricity grid, opting for simplicity. They don't eat animal protein, so don't need refrigeration, and can run their computer and charge phones from solar-charged batteries.

Looking down through epiphytes to the village of Tandanyapa in the valley below;
Tandanyapa lies almost exactly on the equator.

To find them, visit the newly erected web site here: http://www.pachaquindi.com/ They can advise the best way to visit, or you can make arrangements through travel agencies. Local lodges can also help in theory, and often will in practice, though there have been some unfortunate incidents when staff of neighbouring lodges, presumably seeking to protect their employer's market share, have lied to guests about either not knowing of Pacha Quindi or even claiming it had closed. Don't believe such stories - Tony and Barbara aren't going anywhere soon!


Tony Nunnery in his garden - he is a great communicator, passionate, articulate and funny. He and Barbara met in Germany (from where she comes) and travelled south through the Neotropics before settling in Ecuador.

They do ask a very modest entry fee - $10 last I was there - which goes a little way towards maintaining the place and enabling them to live their very basic lives while doing their very important work. For that you'll get an amazing bird list and a never-forgotten experience. They have got small NGO grants in the past, Tony does bird guiding for a company from time to time to replenish the coffers, and your entry money - whether you go alone or with one of the bird tour companies who increasingly take their clients there - all helps keep it going.

However you can help more if you so desire too, by clicking on the Donations button on the web page. No, just saying - I have no vested interest whatever in the place, beyond what any caring person should.

In addition to the hummingbirds, over 300 bird species have been recorded for the property - which Tony claims, somewhat impishly, makes it the longest back yard bird list in the world. Many of these are Chocó endemics, the Chocó being the ridiculoulsy wet western slopes of the Andes in north-western Ecuador and adjacent Colombia; it is one of the world's great biodiversity hotspots and boasts more than 50 endemic bird species. In addition the mammal list for the property is startling, including Andean Bear, Puma and the remarkably recently 'discovered'Olinguito. Not to mention the amazing botanical richness.

Unidentified (by me!) orchid along one of the network of lovely walking tracks in the forest.
(As ever I'd be glad of your assistance.)
One of these tracks leads to a raised and enclosed bird hide facing the forested slope.

I was startled to discover how few photos of Pacha Quindi I have, which doesn't make sense given how many images I have in my mind! I can only suppose that I've been so entranced by the place when I've been there that I've just forgotten my camera, not something I do often! Here are a few anyway.

Eighty-eight Butterfly Diaethria anna under the house; named for the wing pattern.
(Thanks Rainer!)


Toucan Barbet Semnornis ramphastinus, a very special bird, one of the Chocó endemics, and readily seen from the garden at Pacha Quindi. Its wonderfully melodious honking is one of the sounds of the cloud forests in this part of the world. Now not regarded as either toucan or barbet, but one of only two memebers of the newly erected family Semnornithidae.

And I do have a couple of hummingbird pictures at least!

Wedge-billed Hummingbird Schistes geoffroyi. An uncommon hummer which sometimes
(but not always) 'cheats' by puncturing the base of flowers with its awl-like bill to steal nectar.
A regular in the garden.

Brown Inca Coeligena wilsoni is restricted to the west slopes of the Andes, in Ecuador and Colombia.

White-tailed Hillstar Urochroa bougueri, another scarce hummingbird resident at Pacha Quindi.
This bird regularly roosts on garden implements under the house!

Pacha Quindi is not yet on the main ecotourist trail, but that's changing, and so it should. I'd love you to support Tony and Barbara's work however you can - and the first way to do so would be to visit them!

It's always a highlight of my visits to Ecuador - and Ecuador is a treasure trove of highlights. One more memory of Pacha Quindi, not of its natural wonders. By now you won't be amazed to hear that Tony and Barbara are also accomplished musicians (Tony studied music composition) and as we left in fading light from my first visit there, we were followed by a superb and energetic jazz piano solo from Tony. Every now and then I wonder how they got the piano from the road down to the house - and how they keep their instruments tuned in 100% humidity. But everything about Pacha Quindi is pretty wonderful.

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

Answer - crashing, mostly.

We'd have no trouble, I think, in recognising the essential role in flight of the great driving flight feathers (remiges) or the steering, braking tail feathers (rectrices). But what would you think if I suggested that the alulae are of equal importance - even (or perhaps especially) if I called them by the more-used term 'bastard wing'?

Well, let's at least see what they look like.

Great Egret Ardea modesta alighting, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra.
The alulae can be seen half way along the top edge of each wing on the 'elbow',
little clumps of three to six feathers which can be raised as required.

The key to their importance lies in what the egret is doing - landing. This is where alulae mostly perform their essential service. My attempted explanation as to what they do will be simplistic for two significant reasons; firstly my grasp of physics is always tenuous at best, and secondly even the professional aerodynamics fraternity (they do seem to be mostly blokes) don't seem able to agree in any detail how a wing actually works, be it of bird or plane.

As the leading edge of a wing tilts up (or as the experts would have it, the 'angle of attack increases') two significant things happen. Firstly the lift increases, as a 'pressure shadow' is formed behind the spread upright wing and the wing is pushed up - this is how a bird achieves acceleration and climb. But as the area of wing facing the wind increases, so does drag, so it has to flap faster to compensate and produce nett thrust to move forward and up. Now, air turbulence over the wing further increases drag and the higher the angle of the wing, the higher the turbulence. This seems to be manageable in most situations, but there is one inevitable part of any flight where the wing is virtually at 90 degrees to the ground, which would seem inevitably to create disastrous turbulence, hence impossible drag - and a crash. This is the moment illustrated by the egret above, just before it lands.

And here, as doubtless you've divined, is where the alulae come in. They are erected from the wing like mini-wings, creating a slot through which air flows over the wing surface, nicely smooth and even and not at all turbulent. I'm not sure if the professionals don't really understand how it works, or if it's just that I can't understand their explanations - always a likely scenario - but either way I can't explain it to you. The important thing however is that counter-intuitively, rather than stall and crash the bird touches lightly down in a way that an Archaeopteryx, lacking alulae, could only have dreamt of.

Andean Condor Vultur gryphus, Torres del Paine NP, Chilean Patagonia.
Everything is spread - wings, tail, feet - to maximise drag, and the alula visible on the left wing
is erected to minimise the turbulence created.

So when did the alula appear on the billions of wings that daily drop their cargoes lightly to earth? Well certainly a very long time ago. We know this thanks to a remarkable fossil from near the World Heritage listed ancient walled town of Cuenca in Spain. While not doubting the city's beauty or historical significance, to me it is most significant for the superbly preserved fossil of Eoalulavis hoyasi, the only known species of its genus. This small bird died 115 million years ago with a belly full of tiny shrimps - and a clear alula!

Eoalulavis hoyasi, with alula indicated.
(In searching for an image to share with you, I came upon this in one of the most unlikely places
I could imagine ever finding myself - a bizarre web site dedicated to 'proving' that evolution has never happened!
As I can't find the image anywhere else on the web, I can only assume that they pinched it, without acknowledgement,
from a book. If this picture is yours, I apologise for being unable to give you due credit.
However it's too good not to use!)

However Eoalulavis ('dawn alula bird', incidentally) left no surviving descendants, so either the alula arose more than once, or it arose a very long time ago - before the separation of the ancestral Eoalulavis and the ancestor of modern birds. Either way it underlines the importance of the alula to successful flight. The feathers of the alula are apparently controlled by the first of the three remaining vestigial finger bones in a bird's wing (technically number 2, as numbers 1 and 5 have long disappeared).

Here are some more illustrations of alulae erected by birds in the process of landing; in some of these pics you may need to click on the photo to enlarge it to see the alula clearly.

Welcome Swallow Hirundo neoxena, alighting to feed dependent young, Canberra.

Australian Pelican Pelecanus conspicillatus skating to a halt on the Georgina River, Camooweal, far west Queensland.
In this case not only wings (with alula visible), tail and feet are splayed to slow the bird down, but apparently the
huge bill as well!

Great-winged Petrel Pterodroma macroptera landing at sea off Wollongong, New South Wales.
(Old scanned slide - sorry.)

The other primary situation where the alula comes into its own, for the same reason - that is to reduce turbulence over near-vertical wings - is when a bird is hovering. This Australian Kestrel Falco cenchroides is illustrating the point quite nicely.

Australian Kestrel hovering near Canberra. Again, all feathers are working hard here, including the obvious alulae.

I find this fascinating; I can only hope you do too, and that you'll pay close attention to the next landing bird you see. If so, Glory Alula!

BACK ON WEDNESDAY

The Australian National Botanic Gardens Revisited; exciting developments

As You Lake It

Thinking Pinkly #2 - other animals

Thinking Pinkly #3 - flowers

On This Day, 28 July; Peruvian Independence Day, Cocha Salvador

Thinking Pinkly #4 - pink glow from the west

Thinking Pinkly #5 - orchids in the pink

Farewell to 2014!

Thoughts of Waza: part 1

Thoughts of Waza; part 2

I Come, I Soar, I Conquer

Kurrajongs and Bottle Trees

Northern Territory Wildlife Park; the wild side

A Busy Umbrella Tree; Darwin Museum

On This Day 9 February: Francis Cadell born

Housekeeping; updating some earlier postings

On This Day, 15th February: Archibald Menzies died

Bluetongues; Australia's favourite lizards

Pacha Quindi: a very special place

Where'd a Bird Be, Without Alulae?