Jottings from the Tropics: 3 May 2013

Despite evidence to the contrary, I have not disappeared off the face of the planet. I have now settled in at my rental house and am living among overfilled bookcases and half-empty packing cartons. I don't expect this will go on forever, but I'm worried that it might. I could get used to the mess. Very easily. Very, very easily.

— o O o —

I was curious about the bird that has been pooping all over my car door while trying to beat the same stuff out of its reflection in the wing mirror. After staking out the car port, I discovered the culprit. It wasn't one of the usual suspects — a magpie-lark or a willy wagtail — but a white-browed scrubwren. And now the next question is how can a bird that small make such a huge mess?

— o O o —

I was woken the other night by a crashing sound in the kitchen. A large green tree frog had knocked down the curtain rail, sending it into a pile of crockery. The frog was spreadeagled on the window pane. The amphibian and I stared at each other. I'm not sure of my expression, but the frog definitely looked guilty. And as we continued to stare at each other, its grip on the window loosened and it slipped slowly down the glass. The frog is now confining its moth-hunting to the hall and bathroom until it recovers its dignity.

Full nesters

A few weeks ago, I spent too much time following the antics of an almost full-grown Australian magpie that was determined not to become independent. You're all familiar with the behaviour, if not in magpies, in other birds and, possibly, in mammals as well.

The youngster traipsed after its parents, begging constantly (even when food was being shoved down its gullet) and pecking listlessly at the ground to indicate that it was starving because there wasn't anything in the fridge on the lawn.

The last straw came when one of the parents decided to spend a peaceful moment in the sun. The adult bird lay down on the grass, spread its wings to catch the rays, closed its eyes...and then found itself being trodden on by the youngster who thought that sunbathing looked like a Good Idea and that mum/dad had bagged The Best Spot, so that was where it should be.

After that incident, the parents were decidedly more distant. Hopefully, the youngster has discovered the wonderful world of foraging and finding its own spot in which to loll about.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the magpie, but here are pics of a young pied butcherbird (top) and pied currawong (bottom) hanging about in the garden. In both cases, the accompanying parent took advantage of the distraction to nip off while their youngsters were otherwise occupied. I hope they enjoyed their moment of solitude.

Friars tucking in

Now, some might think that friarbirds are ugly; I think they are magnificent. A tree full of friarbirds is like Jurassic Park in miniature. The nice bits. Well, so far...And a mob of big honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) is almost as entertaining as tree full of parrots.

I'm not sure if these are helmeted (or hornbill, if that's now a full species) or silver-crowned friarbirds, so if you have a better idea of the ID, please let me know.

Thanks to nut, who not only identified these birds as helmeted friarbirds, but also provided the diagnostic characters of helmeted and silver-crowned friarbirds. (See comments below.)

These golden pendas are no longer in flower. Yes, it's taken a while to put up this post.

Waltjim Bat Matilda

If we're going to adopt Waltzing Matilda as the national anthem*, this is the version we should go for.


Ali Mills, Waltjim Bat Matilda



* We're not

Parrots in the penda

The good news is that the rainbow lorikeets have found the golden penda. The even better news is that only a few of them have found it, so the tree closest to the office window isn't covered in a shrieking, frantic, multi-coloured mass all day.

It has been raining intermittently, which many of us are hoping indicates the (horribly delayed) start of the monsoon. But we've been down this path before. If it keeps going like this for a month, I might accept that the monsoon has finally arrived. Until then, it's just a bit of precipitation.

 

The lorikeets don't seem to be put off by the rain and will take advantage of a light shower.

And the juveniles don't much care for anything except a free meal. This youngster climbed over and through huge clusters of penda flowers to cadge some nosh from a parent.

And appeared to be quite miffed when left to fend for itself.

When it begs, that one youngster is almost as loud as a whole flock of lorikeets. No wonder its parents scarper at the first opportunity.

Dispatches from the Tropics: 2 March 2013

From time to time, the fork of the Macadamia tree becomes home to not one, but two coppery brush-tailed possums. One of them is the felonious creature that attempts to break into the house nightly via the flue on the wood heater. I suspect that it does not plan to leave Christmas presents. Not the sort that you might want, anyway.

The problem with sharing a tree fork is that it can be a trifle cosy. Which is fine in winter, but not so delightful in the middle of a tropical summer.

Move over!

I haven't got any space on this side.

You think you've got problems.

— oOo — 

And while we're on the subject of sharing, the green tree frog has returned. I do like frogs, but would prefer that this one did not use the toilet as a swimming pool and the sink as a toilet. Still, bathroom fixtures are the natural habitat of the green tree frog. The species was unknown in Australia prior to the invention of indoor plumbing.

Dispatches from the Tropics: 1 March 2013

I was staring out of the window the other day — an activity that I like to call 'seeking inspiration', although it is better known by its synonym 'procrastination' — when I noticed something white in one of the citrus trees. I thought it might have been a plastic shopping bag, as unlikely as that was. But when I whipped out the binoculars, I saw it was a lone sulphur-crested cockatoo...

Cockatoo feasts while magpie-lark flies past appalled

...a lone sulphur-crested cockatoo that proceeded to consume more than three dozen limes during the course of the afternoon. Fascinated by the bird's prodigious appetite and wondering at what point the acidity was going turn its beak inside out, I watched it for over an hour. I'm not proud of that. I merely report it.

Unsurprisingly, the bird has not yet returned to the garden.

Penda-monium

The golden pendas (Xanthostemum chrysantha) are about to flower. The one in front of the office window is covered in yellow buds and a lot of impatient insects. They won't have long to wait.

Golden penda is native to NE Queensland. A popular street tree, it is often mixed with South American tibouchina, which flowers at the same time. The combination of gold and purple is something to behold and rivals the spectacular red and mauve of flame trees and jacarandas at Christmas.

Most of the native pendas are lowland species, among them the stunning crimson penda (X. youngii), which is restricted to coastal sand on Cape York Peninsula, and the ice-green X. formosus of the Daintree region. I have no hope of growing the crimson penda here, but other species might be suitable. All of them are beautiful plants.

(I think I hid my enthusiasm well.)

Pigeon post

I was so used to seeing little birds at the bird bath — especially red-browed finches and fairy-wrens — that I didn't notice the white-headed pigeon until it burst into the air with a clattering of feathers.

To be fair, the pigeon didn't notice me either. Hence the bursting and clattering.

The bursting, by the way, is not literal. The clattering is.

 This area is good for native pigeons. On a good day, you can see eight species, including several endemics.

Crested pigeons and peaceful doves perch on overhead wires or patrol lawns and cattle paddocks in the drier areas. Emerald doves strut around the rainforest floor. Up in the forest canopy, wompoo fruit-doves and topknot pigeons make their presence known by characteristic calls and a gentle rain of discarded fruit, dislodged leaves and pigeon poo, which droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. Just make sure that the place beneath is not your car. Or your head. Definitely not your head. And between the paddocks and the rainforest are brown cuckoo-doves, bar-shouldered doves and white-headed pigeons.

The white-headed pigeon (Columba leucomela) is endemic to eastern Australia. (A second native species of Columba, the metallic or white-throated pigeon (C. vitiensis) formerly occurred on Lord Howe Island, but was hunted to extinction there in the 1850s.) The other conspecific is the rock dove a.k.a. bloody feral pigeon get off the roof ya flying rat, although that species is nowhere near as abundant up here as it is in coastal towns. If you add that and the spotted dove, which is common around the larger towns, you can get your pigeon count up to ten. Not a bad list for half a day's work.