Wintry and windswept: Mt Rogers July 2011

TECHNOLOGY  I’m sure Telstra and NEXTGEN  shareholders would be delighted if the highlight of this ‘news’ update were the works associated with laying new cable to the Mobile Phone Tower. So we’ll mention these changes first and then go on to the activities and natural history that have made news for our Mt Rogers community recently. Trucks, dozers, trenchers, safety-vested workers set about digging a trench for Telstra cabling I was told, though the cement covers are marked Nextgen. Walking past their efforts it felt as though Mt Rogers had reverted to Terra nullius, land that was empty and valued by no one. But a magpie seized the moment and was searching the newly-disturbed soil for invertebrates within a few metres of the trencher. The workers can’t know that hundreds of people appreciate this land and value the habitats and other species that are resident here. The works only took a week and the gully they followed now has a level 3m-wide scar through it. They didn’t know or do much about erosion-control so I’ve spent some hours raking across the slope, re-spreading grass seed and covering it with a thin layer of soil. We’ll wait & see what, if anything, germinates and whether the familiar erosion-patterns are re-gouged by rain.

SILVEREYES & MICE   A hundred metres into the gully there’s a cotoneaster loaded with scarlet berries. They’re inaccessible and surrounded by the dead branches of an old wattle. As I passed the scene was alive with dozens of Silvereyes busily eating the berries. Endearing birds doing their bit by spreading environmental weeds…a job we like to blame on the Currawongs. Movement right on the ground under the tree turned out to be two busily-feeding mice. I was able to watch them for several minutes and found that their paws held each berry and they nibbled away the scarlet flesh and ate the seeds. Hopefully their teeth ground the seeds into infertility. There’s something ironic in vermin actually helping kill off invasive weeds’ seeds when the numbers of both mice & berries everywhere have been caused by the historic rainfall since last spring.

WEEDING    We’ve continued our focus on berries for two working-bees, hoping to prevent Mt Rogers’ seeds being eaten by birds and carried into gardens or other parts of the area. We’ve cut off as many as possible, leaving only leafy branches behind. We’ve cut back the privet, cotoneaster, hawthorn and pyracantha so that the stems, trunks and branches are easily accessible for the chain-saw and lopper crew in September. That’s when we’ll instantly apply Glyphosate to kill the weeds. The CVA crew will be on-site  working with our own Landcarers on September 24^th.  

AWARENESS   On September 25^th Ginninderra Catchment Group is hosting an awareness day for Mt Rogers with the aim of emphasising the benefits of being out in the fresh air, exercising, observing, recording and caring for nature. There’ll be a BBQ and display material about Mt Rogers and the surrounding area. Kelly and Damon will be able to explain about the popular Frogwatch and Water-watch activities regularly organised by GCG. It’s a good chance to introduce neighbours within your suburbs to the pleasure and well-being you derive from your regular visits and walks. We’re aiming to letter-box drop invitations to the nearest houses and would really welcome your help with this, please. Some advertising could go out through Flynn and Melba-Spence Neighbourhood Watch newsletters and from notices at the local shops.

ONLINE   Ann M. has been putting in the hours to create a blogspot for Mt Rogers. At present it contains the “newsletters” distributed over 5 years with a few photos interspersed. Once I do more organising of my photos some of them will go on the Blogspot. There are several people with more patience and photographic expertise than I and any contributions you’d like to make would be very welcome. Lyndon’s going to capture a few more birds on film but if you have anecdotes, poetry, paintings, sketches and historic photos that could be scanned-in the diversity of the site would increase greatly. Would anyone like to contribute photos of our canine walkers to a collage of friends for 25^th September? Our embryonic site’s at www.mtrogerslandcare.blogspot.com     I think it was Ivan who, as we worked above Bainton Crescent, mentioned that Spence once looked beige and treeless like the Lawson Grasslands we could see from our site. Did you realise that the parcel of land between William Slim and Baldwin Drives and the former Naval Transmission Station is a real native grassland jewel? It’s also home to the only known population of the Ginninderra Peppercress, Leridium ginninderrense. Development is planned for the land opposite the University of Canberra, leaving the fenced grassland intact. Try Googling seeing grasslands for evocative local photographs.

NESTBOX In early June I was “crashing” around where we’d helped the Guides plant in August last year giving each plant a few litres of water. For a while I was away watering the Dianella lilies Flemming and I planted amongst rocks 100m away. When I returned there was a bulge in a nest-box’s entry hole. “Bees” my brain assumed as swarms are common colonisers of the boxes. When I focused the binoculars on the hole they revealed the ‘face’ of an Owlet-nightjar. I managed one photo from 12m away and tried moving forwards for another. The hole ‘popped’ wide open as the 23cm bird retreated into the darkness of the box. Aegotheles cristatus have very appealing Sugar-glider-like faces and huge eyes to help with the in-flight capture of insects at night. Whether the one I saw had moved boxes from the gully we don’t know but it might be worth looking up at nest-boxes especially if the front is being warmed by the sun.

 
QUAIL   There are some areas of woodland where there is a shallow layer of gradually decaying leaf-litter, bark and twigs between the trees. The material is decomposing to return nutrients to the soil with the help of a teeming invertebrate population. In places there are clear, scraped areas the size of a ‘side-plate’. These platelets are evidence that Painter Button Quail have been seeking out seeds and insects as they forage, though this may have happened some months ago. The PBQs are between 17-23 cm. This may be slightly larger than the other native Quail people have reported in the last month or two. They all ‘explode’ away from danger so identification is often tricky!

TREE-CREEPERS  In recent years the piping-call of the White-Throated Treecreeper has been a regular feature. I’d always assumed there was only one bird so sighting two on 27^th June was very special. They searched trees separately moving quickly up and round trunks searching for insects using the bark as shelter. They came within 2.5m as I stood in dappled shade with their attractive, patterned plumage and the female’s orange spot on the edge of the white throat-feathers very clear.

 
WEEKDAY-WEEDING   As it turned out we didn’t need to water the Guides’ plants on 4^th July. Our weeding concentrated on removing herbaceous weeds such as Fleabane, Flatweed and Plantain. They’re in the ‘rosette’ stage at the moment but with more rain and warmer weather in spring they’ll grow quickly to spoil the clean image this part of the woodland has. We worked amongst recently-lush mosses and lichens and tried to replace any of the small plants we had to disturb so they’d continue to bind the soil together. Nearby there’s a colony of St Johns’ Wort which required even more attention-to-detail as they have numerous creeping roots under the ground which easily re-grow. Persistence will be required here but larger patches will be sprayed when the rosettes are more visible.

 
SMALL BIRDS   There have been regular sightings of MFF…mixed feeding flocks of small native birds. They feed in the same area, at different levels, on different diets, though most of them are insectivorous. Finches, Thornbills, Grey fantails and Wrens have trustingly allowed us to stand and watch them. There’s added colour when Scarlet Robins are in the group darting from a bare branch, down to the ground and up again. Speckled warblers are a real bonus as their numbers are in decline in the ACT’s woodlands. Did you see swirling columns of gnats before the cold winds arrived? They seemed to be airborne even after minus- 4-degree beginnings and, curiously, I didn’t see aerialist Grey fantails taking an interest in them. I watched wonderful fly-pasts of Swallow above the trees one warming-morning. They don’t all migrate out as we’ve tended to expect.
 
SILENT TROOPERS   In addition to our Mt Rogers weeders there’s several behind-the-scenes workers who regularly collect litter and other undesirable items left by the thoughtless. Thank you all for this very special support. Most recently I heard of a second climb to the trig-point by a walker-with-bucket, disgusted at the broken glass remaining there from those whose camp-fire ashes were still warm mid-morning on Tuesday 12^th. Each of us makes a contribution to keeping Mt Rogers special and to our community-spirit.