PRE HOLIDAY-SEASON OBSERVATIONS AROUND MT ROGERS

A one-hour circuit walk after a rainy two days

Shiny carapaces in poo beside the path suggested a fox might have feasted on Xmas beetles. Why do some beetles have those iridescent colours?

Have a look for 2016’s Insects of South-Eastern Australia by Roger Farrow. Many insect questions answered & wonderful, accessible natural history!

After two dull, drizzly & showery days the sun’s presence cheered the spirits.

Round the bases of some Cootamundra Wattles there’s a litter of leafy branches. The Cockatoos have been through for the seed-pods. Does being eaten kill the seeds?

I remembered my fly-veil & was grateful. Camping-gear shops usually sell them.

Neatly mown is the impression around Mt Rogers’ edge-space. Thanks TAMS!

Good work by the mowing teams but we still need to be alert for snakes.

There were ten walkers between 09.45 and 10.45 on a sunny morning.

Is it their rubbed wings or a special organ that cicadas use to make their sounds?

Motor cycle of some sort went up the Gully at 10.45. Arrogance.

Eucalyptus blakeleyi, Red Gums, are showing some new leaf growth after two worrying lerp attacks to their leaves. May their resilience prevail!

Why does it become windy after rain? The vital moisture is quickly evaporated. 

I didn’t hear Koels’ calls whilst up there but they’ve been busy in mid-Flynn for 10 days now. I suspect it’s they who are eating unharvested Loquats.

Tigers of the air: Dragonflies were around today & long before the dinosaurs!

Hands need sturdy gloves if pulling St Johns Wort. Thank you to those who have identified, walked and weeded SJW. Cutting the flower-heads off is a good option.

Oats, Tall Fescue, Phalaris & other non-native grasses are taller than many of us.

The pile of soil & the prickly pear have gone from the renovated house in Schwarz Place. There’s a new Colorbond fence. Do metal fences deter Blue-tongued lizards?

Has anyone seen or heard regular Superb Parrot visitors?

Every time they land Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes shuffle their wings. I had a glimpse of one of these elegant grey birds, using the shuffle as identification.

Rosellas weren’t noticeable. Perhaps they were feeding earlier.

Suzi Bond has published her photographic Field Guide to the 87 butterfly species seen locally. Try the Botanic Bookshop at the Gardens for copies.

White flowers just past-their-prime are bottle-brush-like Melaleucas. Shrubs were planted on Mt R in the seventies. The taller trees around town have really thrived on the winter rains. Plenty of nectar for insects and birds!

Hill-topping is a butterfly activity when they’re attracting mates. Mt R. is a good place to watch for this. Some butterfly species actively defend their territories.

On their wings, Meadow Argus butterflies have round eye-spots. They’re common & cooperative, settling with wings open to absorb heat from the sun.

Near & above low grasses there were small blue butterflies. They settled with their wings closed making identification tricky. The Lycaenidae family they belong to shows some names & identification possibilities.

Easy to distinguish from their bald black heads, Noisy Friarbirds’ calls haven’t been noticeable around Flynn this sprummer. Perhaps they’ve nested on Mt Rogers and stayed quiet to avoid Koels looking to lay eggs in their nests.

Eyes surrounded by an ‘owl face’, Double-barred Finches make meowing calls. They feed on open grassy ground so perhaps they’ve kept away from the rain-induced rank grasses in the reserve. They’re not as common as they were.

Deasland place’s Frogmouths may have been those Angharad spotted on our Monday working-bee. They were near the twin tanks & a very old nest-box. See the photo at the end of this post.

Yellow-rumped Thornbills usually feed on the ground. Perhaps it was too windy for them today.

Orchard Swallowtail are those big black butterflies that are also attracted to our gardens’ citrus blooms. They are di-morphic with differing shapes and colour patterns between females & males. 

Under cover of darkness a whole new world would be visible around Mt R.

I wonder if spot-lighting walks are feasible?

Strong colours on butterflies may mean they have recently emerged from their pupae & the sun hasn’t faded their colours.

There were a few Brown butterflies about also. They, with their varied patterns & wing markings belong to the Satyrinae family.

Have a look through the Butterfly book if only to see the diversity of the names. Globally there are Albatross, Beak, Bird-wing, Crow, Darter, Owl, Peacock, Swallowtail butterflies to show ornithological connections.

Endangered Golden Sun Moth seen on Wednesday near Ginninderra Creek’s Axe Grooves at Latham. The GSM is endangered as its native grasslands have gone.

Green grass, particularly under trees in summer, signifies Microlaena stipoides or Weeping Grass. There’s plenty of Microlaena to be seen around Mt Rogers.

Red Wattlebirds called occasionally. Have they managed to breed this season without being cuckolded by the Koels?

Every now and then there were calls from the bush. Presumably they were from small birds’ calls I should know but couldn’t remember for identification!

Arriving silently, a Kookaburra landed near Schwarz Place looking for an insect snack. Birds need reliable water but don’t need food offerings from us.

Tiny blue butterflies reminded me of the numerous species of beige moths that inhabit our grasslands & grassy areas. Should I carry one of the coat-hanger-based butterfly nets we made for the children years ago & try identifying them?

Eyes are pale blue for Magpie Larks or Peewees. I wonder what evolutionary & survival advantage those pale blue eyes give them?

Striated Pardalote calls came through “cappuccino, cappuccino” from the canopy. 

There are only a few yellow Paper Daisy plants on Mt R. Painted Lady butterflies are photogenic when eating from the daisies as a reward for pollinating them.

Going back down to Flynn the unnatural noises of vehicles & crassness of dumped rubbish disturbed my reverie. Thank you to our wonderful team of removalists who take others’ rubbish home to keep Mt R clean.

I did wonder at a green bag, dropped in error, presumably containing dog poo. Un-bagged poo will break down in the bush decades sooner than plastic bags. 

Flatweed flowers are obvious on many nature strips. Impress by knowing they are not dandelions. Each flower head can have 75+ individual flowers then seeds.

The ringing calls of magpies provided serenades from various vantage points. We’ve had great pleasure in the magpies’ company, antics, territorial spats for another year. We’ve tried to identify & name them from their markings.

HNY!

I hope you're able to zoom in on this to see the Frogmouths' expressions. 

MT ROGERS: Brilliant spotting from Angharad.

The green nest box has been to the SE of the twin tanks for decades.....long before Kate Grarock began her Indian Myna nestbox studies. 

The roost tree is perhaps 30m from the long-fallen tree that's been painted. There's no guarantee that they will roost there in future.

Angharad, Ted and I were walking back to the Wickens car-park after a hot 1.5hours working-bee against St Johns Wort. Angharad looked towards the nestbox and saw the Frogmouths straight away. Ted had said he'd not seen them since they fledged in spite of looking. We assume these are the ones from the large eucalypt above the white house and near the steps up from Deasland Place.

Rosemary  17.12.16.

Convenor: Mt Rogers Landcare Group.

MT ROGERS in late NOVEMBER 2016

Our next Monday working-bee and last for 2016 will be on Monday 5 December. We’ll meet at the Wickens Place, Fraser carpark at 09.00am. Gaiters, tools and gloves will be provided but please bring water to rehydrate!

27.11.16 Working-bee

Thank you all for making today's such a special working-bee. Anne, Ivan, Kirsty and Ted all worked very hard at demanding tasks needing our bodies to bend and pull when not thrilled about doing so … as the temperature climbed towards the forecast 26 degrees.

We were reducing the St John’s Wort (SJW) plants’ chances of being pollinated, setting seed and returning thousands of seeds to Mt Rogers’ soil.

We know we made a difference, even though the lack of SJW in those areas may be almost un-noticeable to the passer-by. I would imagine we moved 100 plants onto the track, or onto rocks or onto barer patches to desiccate. Many more were de-bloomed and/or pulled up and left to dry out where they'd grown. That's 10xthousands of seeds that won't make it to the seed bank.

These are complex places to work. Steve can't really reach the plants' rosettes to spray Starane on them, even with a suitable nozzle. The many species of introduced grasses are already tall, allowing their pollen to catch breezes and winds. And, as we saw towards the end of the morning, these areas are habitat for many native species ... and are therefore ‘DO NOT DISTURB THE SOIL’ places, if we can manage that. We came across mosses, lichens, hundreds of Cheilanthes (native Rock Ferns) and some young eucalypts.

Team-work, musing and socialising

I like the way our land-carers so readily work in flexible teams regardless of the combination of people who are able to be present on any one occasion. The social benefits of landcaring and its volunteering are very important, together with sharing tales of our journeys towards being in the same place and with the same objectives for this particular working-bee.

At various stages Anne, Kirsty and I explored the value of gardening concluding that it's much the same as a walk on Mt Rogers in that our brains are able to unclutter, re-process and also respond to what the bush offers us in new sightings and new stimuli for our thoughts whilst we work at a physical task or exercise. 

Other species

We were rewarded today by the presence of several birds (even a brief Superb Parrot call) and by finding new research opportunities through the St John’s Wort biocontrol beetle Chrysolina hyperici. The photo below shows the beetle this year at Shepherds Lookout in Woodstock Reserve North. We hope to see these on Mt Rogers' SJW.

Ted's other multi-coloured beetle and the spider Kirsty found added to our shared ‘biology’ lesson. 

We met at Mildenhall Place, soon finding that 3 or 4 of the native grass species looked really healthy, if hugely out-numbered, as we walked through them to the weeding sites.

We often heard Noisy Friarbirds, which was interesting because their calls and Koels’ calls have been unusually inconsistent in mid-Flynn this ‘sprummer’ (spring and summer). On Saturday 26 November there were Oriole calls on Mt Rogers but I didn’t sight them. Thank you to those who have sent wonderful photos of the Frogmouths this spring and/or emailed through updates on the three nesting pairs’ progress. Do you have Rainbow Lorikeets near you? There must be blooming eucalypts near here as the Lorikeets are nearly as ubiquitous as ‘our’ magpie families at present.

Pulling weeds

I think it was Ivan who first spotted Paterson’s Curse (PC) plants scattered through the grassy-bush. Pulling these up and leaving them to dry became our first team-job for the morning. Anne mentioned that she’d pulled a few up on her dog-walks each day. We have a few more days when SJW and PC plants can be pulled up and left to desiccate in the sun. Soon some of the pollinated flowers will have seeds which could continue to ripen and disperse even after uprooting. If anyone else is prepared to take a pair of gloves with them on their walks and pull SJW and PC this would enhance our efforts and augment Steve’s spraying hopes. Gloves are essential as there can be reactions when handling these ‘pretty’ weeds. We each wore gaiters this morning in case the snakes were slow to move away from where we walked. Gaiters are great guards against seeds manipulating their way into socks and laces.

This photo shows the team at our 27 November Working-bee: Kirsty (hat and backpack visible!) gathering SJW plants to put on the track to dry out. Anne and Ted with Ivan (who is kneeling). Ivan is a specialist at retrieving and working on weeds from under other plants. In this case the fallen but live branch of the eucalypt had allowed the weeds to grow with maximum protection and moisture. The hills seen distantly beyond Hall form a background to this, Mt Rogers' Cryptandra patch. 

Daisies

The incredible rains have really shown us what plants can achieve if they’re well watered. Many nature strips are now hosting Flatweed blooms so large and sun-happy they rival Dandelions in size. They belong to the Daisy family; its name used to be Compositae and has changed to Asteraceae. Other members are Asters, Gazanias, the daisies, Marigolds, thistles and paper daisies. Sunflowers show the flower-heads contain hundreds of individual but small flowers surrounded by showy ‘petals’ that advertise the presence of rewards to pollinating insects. Sunflowers have seeds that appeal to birds but, of course, many daisies disperse their seeds on parachute-like structures that allow seed dispersal by the slip-streams of passing vehicles. Alternatively, I’ve noticed Crimson Rosellas feasting on the furry and unappetising-looking brown seed-clusters of Capeweed.

Other pollinators

Have you noticed the huge numbers of Hoverflies around, once flowering began in 2016? They are much slighter than Honey-Bees but seem to have taken over pollinating duties this ‘sprummer’. There are also many species of native bees around and they’re often about the same size as Hoverflies. There’s been plenty of publicity about bees in recent months including Bee Houses at the Botanic Gardens and at Floriade’s Bush Friendly Garden.

Other insects act as pollinators as they crawl over composite flowers moving pollen from plant to plant as they feed. This sprummer we’ve been able to watch the successive arrivals and/or hatching of butterfly species. In the last few days several of the ‘Brown’ butterflies have come on the scene. Many birds and some possums are pollinators, being rewarded with nectar from the flowers they visit. There is protein in pollen, but around nesting time birds are also seeking insect larvae in order to give their chicks the best chance to grow quickly once hatched. Some birds, such as cuckoos, specialise by eating caterpillars that are hairy or spiky.

Other Working-bees

On Sunday 23 October we tried an experiment to see whether cutting and daubing Wild Sage, Salvia verbenaca, would kill those plants closest to a cluster of boulders where Vanilla lilies had been found a week earlier. We were working on the principle of weeding out from the cleanest, most weed-free areas, an adaptation of The Bradley Method. A check this week showed very few Wild Sage left where we had worked. Those more distant from the lilies are now seeding with seeds that readily stick to socks and other fabrics probably by small hooks. (Was it high school or college where we learnt about the origins of Velcro? Burrs on Burdock plants’ seeds allow them to hook onto animals’ fur. George de Mestral patented his fastener idea in 1955.)

Anne Mc teamed up with Ted, and Ivan and Anne C worked together, whilst I tried to persuade the Vanilla lilies to open up for more photos in the sometimes-reluctant sunshine.

Ann M joined us later by which time we’d turned our attention to a patch of Mustard plants just beginning to flower yellow amongst a wattle thicket and near an inspiring Kurrajong sapling. 

On Monday 7 November, Phil, Angharad, John and Diana walked through the reserve from ‘behind’ the notice box. Our main target species was Serrated Tussock. We found a few plants to dig up but were amazed and delighted at the thoroughness of Steve’s spraying sorties in recent weeks.

Snakes Alive, January. Spread the word!

In January, the annual Snakes Alive display is on at the Botanic Gardens. Even if you’re unlikely to go yourself please would you help with publicity? Any money raised by the volunteers through the event is used to protect frogs, reptiles and snakes in their natural environments. There’s no need to book tickets:

As Snakes Alive 2017 gets closer, the ACT Herpetological Association are looking for ways to get word out to the general public to promote the display. To achieve this we have created a Facebook event for Snakes Alive! 2017 that can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/713339572164158. 

Rosemary. 62584724