Big snail

Sphaerospira informis Mousson is one of Australia's largest land snails. It's outdone by a handful of species—Hadra bipartita of Far North Queensland and Hedleyella in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. Few others get close.

It lives in rainforests in mid-east Queensland from about Mount Dryander (near Prosperine) to Sarina. Broken shells are common. It seems that everything likes to feed on them. Not surprising, really. Any predator that landed one of these snails would dine like a king.

Something else that's not surprising is that they're good at hiding. They lurk under logs and leaves, emerging only at night or during heavy rain. I picked up this shell (sans inhabitant) near Teemburra in the Eungella region. I'm not sure what killed the snail. No doubt, some animal version of Mr Creosote was slumped against a nearby stone calling desperately for a bucket.

Feet feats

My insect net is worth its weight in aluminium and nylon mesh. I caught a male gold-tipped leaf cutter bee (Megachile chrysopyga) today.

We've established that I'm ridiculously fond of bees. (I think we've established that I'm ridiculously fond of everything except noise, people who drive as though their brains are leaking out of their nostrils and some elements of the Academy. Oh, and non-native cockroaches.) Bees are big at the moment.

I caught the leaf cutter on the fan flower, where it was minding its own business, relaxing, sipping a little nectar, taking in the mauveness. Next thing it knew, its world turned into white mesh. And then it was dumped into a specimen jar, where it had a hell of a time trying to walk on the slippery plastic.

And that's how I knew it was a male. Of course, I could have handed it the remote control for the television and watched its behaviour but—even easier than that—I looked at its front feet.

Male leaf cutters have the sort of feet that you usually only see in upmarket parts of Hobbiton. Great big gold plates with fringes of silver hair. Males use them to play peek-a-boo with the females during courtship. On encountering a potential mate, a male runs his feet over her eyes and if she likes what she sees, the potential is realised. I am tempted to set up a bee enclosure in the garden so I can watch this foot fetish bee-haviour. But not in any weird, voyeuristic way, you understand. This is all in the name of natural history.

Wildlife art blogs

Here are some of my favourite natural history art blogs. I won't say much about them—good art represents itself.

Sherrie York at Brush and baren

Debby Cotter Kaspari at Drawing the Motmot

Carel Brest van Kempen at Rigor Vitae

Natural History Artworks

Olduvai George

This ain't the complete list. Not by a long way. More soon.

My Melbourne: the Sun in the West

The Sun Theatre is a Yarraville landmark. Built in 1938, it is one of the few remaining Art Deco cinemas in Melbourne. It has been restored and updated and now houses four screens, which show a range of titles from the latest releases to the classics.

Right next door to the movie theatre is the Sun Bookshop. Although small, it has a great selection of titles. The bookshop is big on supporting local authors and runs a range of events from launches and readings to book festivals.

And all within cooee of excellent cafes and restaurants. I'm sure you can see why I like Yarraville.

Stalking the leaf cutter

Catching a gold-tipped leaf cutter bee (Megachile chrysopyga) was one thing but getting it from the bag into a jar was quite a different matter. It seemed to be on a sugar high. I couldn't wait for it to settle from hyperactive to merely active—that might have taken days—so I used a little encouragement. After manoeuvring the bee into a container, I cooled it down in the refrigerator for a few minutes. It remained still long enough for a couple of photographs but zipped off as soon as it could.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to slip the little buzzer onto a sheet of white paper for its portrait so it's not as clear as it could be. You can see the pale bands that sometimes have a blue tinge, leading to frequent confusion with the blue-banded bee, and the four spots across the thorax. The orange topknot and ... er ... nethers distinguish this species from both the blue-banded Amegilla and other Megachile.

I'm sure you've seen the pictures of leaf cutters (and blue-banded bees) taken by Western Australian blogger Amegilla but just in case you haven't here's her contribution to this blog.

(And while you're at it, here's some more bees from Amegilla's own temporarily quiescent blog: a dozing halictid and miniature resin bees.)

Shell company

The tide was on its way out at Williamstown but I couldn't stay around to see what it might uncover. So I strolled along the water's edge while the usual suspects watched me from their grandstand in Port Phillip Bay.

Shelley Beach at Point Gellibrand is flanked by two natural breakwaters. The basalt that forms them is part of a lava flow that was once quarried for bluestone. Its resistance to erosion—the property that makes it such a good building material—and the dark coloration tend to discourage molluscs from settling. There is little shelter in the smooth, even surface and the black rock heats up rapidly in the sun. Only a few hardy limpets cling to exposed boulders.

Although molluscs don't favour the basalt, the lichen love it. Orange Caloplaca spreads over the rock above the high tide level. Its success here might be a consequence of the grazers' inability to get a foothold. In other places, the combinations of fungi and algae that make up lichens support large populations of upper shore snails. Littonids, especially, feed on lichens around the splash zone.

Even though the rocks are nearly free of molluscs, thousands of shells cover the beach between the boulders. Most of them belong to one species of bivalve—Anadara trapezia. Anadara occurs in large numbers on mud in shallow water from Port Phillip Bay north to southern Queensland. The species was once much more widely distributed along the temperate coasts of Australia and New Zealand but declined since the Pleistocene. A relict population occurs near Albany in Western Australia.

Just before I returned to my car, I spotted a stranded jellyfish. They're difficult enough to identify while they're swimming around but they're almost impossible when left high and dry on the shore. I think this might be the jelly blubber Catostylus, a large species that is very common in the Bay. Whichever one it is, I know just how it feels.

More of my Melbourne

The only advantage of being driven out of your house by a proctologist's waiting room full of arseholes noisy neighbours is that you're inclined to go somewhere and do something at a time that might otherwise be wasted on getting a decent night's sleep.

I thought about going to Queenscliff to take some photographs of those splendid hotels that had been built as coffee palaces but decided that it was too big a drive when I hadn't slept properly. (It's only about 90 minutes from home but I didn't fancy it.) So I went to Williamstown instead, which is only a 15 minute drive.

Of course, I hadn't thought this through. (I rarely do.) Williamstown was packed. True, it's always popular on Sunday mornings but today it experienced an alignment of events. Apart from the usual breakfasters, joggers and amblers, there was a bicycle tour, a market and a jet boat race. As everyone was far too lively and social, I headed for the café-free part of town—Point Gellibrand, which was the site of the first permanent European settlement in Victoria.

The Point Gellibrand time ball tower started life in 1840 as a lighthouse. The original wooden structure was replaced by the bluestone (basalt) tower in 1849 but this new building only functioned as a lighthouse for a decade. In 1859, a lightship took over the role.

The Point Gellibrand time ball was moved from the nearby telegraph station to the disused lighthouse soon after. It marked time for maritime traffic for almost 70 years. Then, superseded by more advanced technology, the time ball was dismantled and the tower returned to its original use as a lighthouse. A circular brick extension added nothing to its aesthetics but made the light visible against the expanding city backdrop.

Following the decommissioning of the lighthouse in 1987, local community groups restored the mechanism and replaced the time ball.

Point Gellibrand was under threat of development but is now a park. It's a good spot for watching ships and seabirds and for musing. I would have stayed there longer but people were setting up banks of loudspeakers for the jet boat race. Out of the frying pan ...

Rant alert

Thanks to some cluster of arseholes having an all-night party, I haven't had much sleep so I'm in a foul mood. Had I been able to localise the source of the noise, I would have rung the police. Not something I normally do, but in this case I would have been happy to give them a call. And I'm sure they would have been absolutely delighted to get a request to attend a noisy party in Footscray on Saturday night. No doubt they would have otherwise been sitting around playing cards and drinking tea, waiting for someone to point them in the direction of a spot of villainy*.

Anyway, I couldn't work out where the sound was coming from other than the next street. (We're not talking about a little over-exuberance. This was serious noise pollution. The. Next. Bloody. Street.) I stuffed ear plugs into my ears (the most effective place to put them, I find) and put a pillow over my head (hoping either to suffocate or block out the racket, I wasn't fussy) and eventually fell asleep some time after 3 am.

And then I woke at 8.30 am when they switched up the music again.

Did I mention I was in a foul mood?
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* Not.

This week's episode* of Around the world in eighty treasures featured the ancient Buddhist temple of Borobodur. I missed much of what Dan Cruickshank said because I was lost in reverie. I was remembering my visit to Borobodur and the nearby Hindu temple complex of Prambanam.

With no planning other than submitting leave forms at work, a friend and I flew out to Jakarta and spent three weeks travelling from west to east through Java.

We didn't think it could get any better than the Dieng Plateau with its 1200 year-
old-temples and sulphurous vents. Then we went to Borobodur in the rainforest and thought it couldn't get any better than that. And then Gunung Merapi erupted. That was a trip to remember.
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*We're a little behind the times here but we get there eventually.

Four-footed flutterers

As I left the house to brave the convoys of chronologically-challenged Sunday drivers, a butterfly dive-bombed me. I probably should have taken this as an augury of doom and stayed home but I pressed on. (Not least of all because I had a shopping list that included toilet paper, chocolate and beer. All essentials.)

The menacing insect was a painted lady (Vanessa kershawi), which has a rapid and unpredictable flight. It zoomed over my head and landed on the leadlight on my front door. The dead leaf camouflage that would have rendered it almost invisible in the scrub wasn't quite as effective on the stained glass. (Although it would have been even more obvious had I bothered to clean the window.)

Painted ladies belong to the family Nymphalidae, which also includes the spectacular Heliconiinae of South America, the wanderers and browns. Despite the diversity of form, all nymphalids have reduced forelegs. This means they appear to possess only two pairs of legs instead of the usual three. This feature is easy to spot if the butterfly has settled. If it is flying, you've got next to no chance.

This painted lady soon tired of my shoving the camera into its face and zipped off. That left me with no other choice than to brave the Saturday afternoon traffic, much of which was driven by the sort of people who would lose a chess match to a cheeseburger. I got the shopping done though.

My Melbourne

Inspired by Sarala at Blogaway, who shares her impressions of Chicago with her readers, I thought I'd show you a bit more of western Melbourne. I've blogged a little on the West Gate Bridge and the Maribyrnong River. Here's a place in Yarraville that I drive past almost every day but know next to nothing about.

Coffee palaces were established by the Temperance League to provide alternative meeting places to those dens of iniquity, the hotels. Many coffee palaces were rather grand buildings, designed during the economic boom of the late 1800s. This more modest venue dates from the beginning of World War I.

It appears to be a private residence now. But the good folk of Yarraville don't have to go without coffee. Although the area hasn't quite reached the density of cafes enjoyed by Carlton and Fitzroy, it is approaching them. And did I mention the bakeries?

I'm about to clean out the drains. (You know, it's true what they say. The fun never stops at Chez Escargot.)

The kitchen sink is blocked. I blame it on the drought. Very little of the water that goes into the sink exits through the drain. Most of it gets scooped out and distributed on the increasingly crisp garden vegetation. The grot concentrates and settles in the pipe. (I think that's what happens. I'm no plumber. But the plumbers that plumbed my house don't appear to have been plumbers either, so we're all in the dark.)

I'm going to try bleach first. But if that doesn't work I'll have to dismantle the pipes.

I may be some time.

Conservapedia for people with lives

If you can't wait for the interminable downloads at Conservapedia, Jon Swift has extracted some of the best for you. (That page takes a while to appear as well but it's definitely worth the wait.)

And if you haven't seen the previous Snail's Eye View post on the wonders of the new wild and wacky* wiki, here it is: 1066 CE and all that

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* That might be a typo

Conservapedia: 1066 CE and all that

Let's face it, Wikipedia is handy but it has its faults. So enter Conservapedia, which aims to replace Wikipedia as the source of wisdom. You won't find any of that trivial gossip nonsense in Conservapedia. Nor any of that appalling British spelling. What you will find—if you can be bothered to wait for the slow downloads—is a highly idiosyncratic view of the world.

Why am I reminded of 1066 and all that?

There's geography.

England
A nation in northwest Europe. Largely secular, but increased immigration from Eastern Europe is turning the country towards Catholicism. Notable for inventing the English language.

Biology.

Carnivore

Carnivore has two different meanings. In ordinary language, it means an animal that eats only, or mainly, other animals[1], as contrasted with an herbivore (plant-eater) or omnivore (animal for whom both plants and animals are regular and important parts of the diet).

To a zoologist, carnivore usually means "a mammal belonging to the order carnivora." This includes cats and "cat-like" families such as mongooses and hyenas, and dogs and "dog-like" families such as bears, skunks, weasels, raccoons, and seals. Most members of the order carnivora actually are carnivores in the sense of being meat-eaters, but there are many carnivorous animals that do not belong to the order "carnivora."

A trick question for someone who knows biology is: "If a panda is a carnivore, then what is a koala?" Because a panda eats eucalyptus leaves, many people will fall into the trap and answer "herbivore," which is the wrong answer. The trick is that a panda does not eat meat. So, for a panda to be "a carnivore," the word must be being used in the sense of "order carnivora," and the right answer is "marsupial."

References
1. ↑ Wile, Dr. Jay L. Exploring Creation Through General Science. Anderson: Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc. 2000

And history.

Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930. He became a United States astronaut and, on July 20, 1969, the first man to set foot on the moon.

When he stepped on the moon, he said some famous words. These words are an interesting example of the problems historians face in finding out what really happened in history.

His words were broadcast. Millions of people heard them. Armstrong is still alive and so are millions of people who heard the broadcast. And the broadcast was recorded.

Yet, there is still disagreement about what he said. What he meant to say was:

That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.

But many people think he flubbed his line, and actually said

That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.

Some encyclopedias say one thing, some say another, and some split the difference by putting the word "a" in brackets:

That's one small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind.

Armstrong has always insisted that he said the word a.

You can even take a series of lectures in world history.

Do not be misled by thinking ancient peoples were dumb or boring because they lacked the technology of modern society. True, they lacked television and the internet. Does that mean it was boring or dull in 2500 B.C.? Not at all. People were probably smarter than they are today. The Egyptians, for example, cleverly built the massive pyramids using techniques that no one to this day can figure out or duplicate. In 2600 B.C., they constructed the pyramid of Khufu containing 6 million tons of stone extending to a height of 481 feet. The workmanship was superior to what we do today: the rock base was virtually perfectly flat, not varying in elevation by more than a half-inch; its orientation is precisely aligned with the points of a compass; its stones were perfect fits. Inside was a chapel, a causeway, and a temple. It amazes architects to this day. We would not be able to duplicate it even now. Many other cultures, from Mesopotamia to Greece to Rome to India to China, invented things and discovered knowledge that no one today is smart enough to duplicate. Do you know how to bake bread from scratch?

The internet truly is a series of tubes.

Slightly batty

That was nice. I'd just wandered into the garden for the unsual nightly circuit to see what, if anything, is crawling over the path and a couple of grey-headed flying foxes flapped across the sky about 6 m above my head.

I grabbed the binoculars and watched the bats for a while. Now my hands are covered in mosquito bites. But it was worth it.

Semester 1 starts on Monday. I had planned to spend today checking that everything was in place and ready to go but ended up trying to fix a whole new suite of problems. It's like cleaning up mercury.

The past fortnight has been interesting. One of the big tasks was closing down a course on short notice. That wasn't very enjoyable but we seem to have got it under control. The other biggie—which was much more fun—was meeting the new undergrads. They're a lovely bunch.

I'm hoping that once semester 1 settles down I'll be able to get back to writing. I might also have a chance to get out of the office. We'll have at least one trip to Queenscliff over the next couple of weeks. (Okay, it's not the Great Barrier Reef but it's better than the campus pond.) Should be good.

Size is everything, apparently

First the giant squid. Now the colossal squid. While longlining for Patagonian toothfish in Antarctic waters, a New Zealand fishing crew dragged up a hefty Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, otherwise known as the colossal squid. You can read the story at this BBC site.

As a fan of pointless comparisons, I rather enjoyed this one in which a double-decker bus is used as the standard measure. (Other standard measures are VW Beetles for meteorites and the MCG for areas of deforestation. Fossil horses have been measured in fox terriers and German shepherds. And we all know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.)

In 2003, the giant squid (Architeuthis) rocked in at a respectable 18 m. That's equivalent to 2.25 double-decker buses. It was a beast worthy of the epithet 'giant'. Two and a quarter double-deckers-worth of writhing tentacles and murderous beak would surely cause any ship's timbers to shiver.

But today's Architeuthis has wasted away to nothing. A wisp, barely 1.625 buses long. How could something of those meagre dimensions strike terror into the hearts of sailors becalmed in the Sargasso Sea? Or wherever.

Avast, me hearties! There be a moderate-sized squid. Arrr!

The colossal squid is clearly winning the cephalopod PR war.

I and the Bird #43

It's a movie marathon. Share your popcorn with the birds at Earth, Wind & Water.

Milestone

The 10.000th reader dropped by today. Cheers!

Caterpillars on the march

The Indian meal moth caterpillars* (Plodia interpunctella) are emerging from the remnants of cereal in the pantry to search for pupation sites. So far, all the ones I've seen have been heading upwards. Those that I don't manage to intercept get as far as the cornice and stop, perplexed. Left or right? I'm torn between eradicating the little bastards as soon as I see them and letting them get to the cornices so I can record their directional preferences.

The caterpillars produce a spacing pheromone when feeding, which keeps them at arm's length ... proleg's length ... apart from each. Presumably this prevents over-crowding. (Although it doesn't seem to be working in my pantry.) Unfortunately for them, parasitoid wasps can detect the pheromone and track down the caterpillars for use as living incubators. The killers aren't doing their job because these individuals are plump—and not because they're packed with wasp larvae. The one on the left got fat on dried pawpaw.
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*Judging by their numbers, I must be supporting the entire moth population of western Melbourne.

Basket cases

I've been thinking about blogging on this image for a while but haven't got the right angle yet. While I'm waiting for inspiration, I'd like to share it with you. It's a picture of the cocoons of a clouded footman moth (variously known as Anestia ombrophanes or Xanthodule fuscogrisea) taken in northern New South Wales by nature enthusiast and blog commenter Tapperboy. Those beautiful baskets are woven from silk and shed hair. Unweaving the rainbow? Pffft!

Can't blog tonight. Have to put the finishing touches to a workshop I'm running with some of the Honours students tomorrow. Better give it my full attention.

Swift moves

The musk lorikeets were having a rare old time in the sugar gums when I arrived at work this morning. They were too far away to see—even with binoculars—but the shriek and shrill of their massed chorus was unmistakeable. They must have stayed there all day because they were heading off to roost (or possibly go out partying) as I left at about 7pm.

Musk lorikeets fly as if they're not entirely convinced they can stay in the air but they're going to give it their best shot. They flap frantically, their little wings blurred with effort. They gain enough confidence to glide ... for a moment ... and then they panic. The hysterical wing beats begin again.

Needle-tailed swifts are more elegant. A flock of them were hawking for insects between the campus buildings. Or perhaps they were showing off to the lorikeets. When the first one appeared, it flew past so quickly that I mistook it for a small falcon*. The lorikeets seemed to have made the same error because they scattered—in an even more hectic fashion than usual. So did the pigeons. The swifts manoeuvred around them like an aerial stunt team. I almost applauded.
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*I've mentioned before that I'm the world's second worst bird watcher.

Cells outed

In his poem Lamia, Keats lamented that the desire of scientists to understand the natural world destroyed its beauty.

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -
Unweave a rainbow ...

I can't speak for anyone else but I find that exploring the natural world adds to its beauty. Dammit, it lets you double dip. A rainbow is a magnificent sight. But it's also a marvel of physics. Knowing how one forms does not obliterate its splendour. It gives another blast of wonderment.

Cells aren't quite as spectacular as rainbows but they are even more amazing. This animation depicts the workings of one. This is the short version, which I first encountered on the Bronze Blog (under the heading From the "Universe is frikkin' amazing!" file). The high resolution original—with commentary—is on the Harvard University web site.

We watched it at work today. We concur. The universe really is frikkin' amazing.

I haven't been my usual jolly self lately, which, I suspect, has influenced the blog posts. It's partly to do with weather—really, who can concentrate when it's 33C inside the house?—but it's mostly to do with work. Last week was a particular bastard as we had to make some hard decisions. The fall out from those decisions will drift around for a long time.

The good news is that, although I can't do anything about the job*, a 'cool' change has come through, bringing rain with it. It's hot and humid now but in a few hours time it will be warm and humid. And maybe even cool and humid by the morning.

I hope to get back to my livelier blogging self soon. Thank you for bearing with me.
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*Well, I could leave. And that's a decision that's moving from hard to piece of cake as the year progresses.

Last Thursday, I visited a provincial town which must have been the centre of the universe for personalised numberplates. And I didn't have my camera with me. Next time.

I saw this one today.

Taking flight

On the subject of butterflies ... the fan flowers continue to attract a small number of species. The painted ladies waltz around the bees while the darts skip the light fandango. (The heat doesn't seem to perturb the insects, although it has clearly fried my brains.)



With luck, the last essential elements of the net (the damned bag) will arrive in the post tomorrow, so I can take close ups of the leaf-cutter bees. In the meantime, here's one of the painted ladies.

Butterflies for the lazy gardener

Here's a dilemma. My weed clearing is going well. I've got the unwanted plants under control. The wanted plants are still running rampant, but one thing at a time, eh?

The last weed to get the chop is the most persistent — pellitory of the wall (Parietaria judaica). It's a tricky one. The stems are long and brittle, breaking easily and leaving the roots firmly in place. The leaves and seeds adhere to everything. To cap it off, the pollen causes allergies in some people. (An alternative name is asthma weed.)

So what's the dilemma?

It's a host plant for caterpillars of the Australian admiral (Vanessa itea). Do I eradicate pellitory in the garden? Or do I leave a patch for the caterpillars?

Hot as Hades here again today. Far too hot to sit in front of a computer. This morning I drew up my customary list of things to do, but then crossed out every item and replaced them with

• sprawl on the sofa
• read books
• keep hydrated

So far I've achieved all of those aims. I even managed a couple of the original ones as well:

• clean kitchen floor
• re-pot figs

Well, to be absolutely accurate, I've cleaned part of the kitchen floor and I've re-potted some of the figs. But that's a couple of steps forward.

The figs aren't the juicy edible kind. They're a selection of rainforest species from north and eastern Australia. It's going to be fun when they get going. I really am going to have to move to a bigger block ...

John Frum, you're late

I'm reading North Face of Soho, the fourth instalment of Clive James' memoirs. In the opening of one chapter, he managed to combine two of my favourite topics: writing and cargo cults. As I forgot to mark John Frum Day on February 15, let me celebrate it with this passage from James on the cargo cult of outlining.

A good general tip for would-be writers in any field is to beware of outlines. If you keep going back to elaborate the outline, instead of getting to work on the first of its listed topics, then the outline has become a substitute for the project, which will never get done. It works like a cargo cult: the natives lay out bits and pieces of junk in the rough shape of an aircraft, and wait for it to fly. They start fighting over who gets the window seat. But the thing never stirs, and eventually the jungle closes over its forlorn outline.

Not an ex-parrot

I hope this is true. The Australian reported that a dead night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) has turned up in the Diamantina Lakes region of far SW Queensland.

This is a cause for rejoicing because the night parrot is Australia's rarest bird. Rarer than the orange-bellied parrot, which former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett labelled 'a trumped-up corella'*. And much rarer than the hooded plover, which really ought to behave more furtively.

Night parrots are nocturnal, ground dwelling birds of spinifex grasslands and chenopod shrublands in outback Australia. They are difficult to spot at the best of times but since the early 1900s, they have been almost impossible to find. A team from the South Australian Museum saw live birds in 1979 and that was it ...

... for 11 years, when Australian Museum ornithologist Walter Boles almost tripped over the mummified remains of one at the side of the road near Boulia, western Queensland.

This latest specimen is the first record in 17 years. They must be hanging on by the skin of their beaks.

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* It is widely believed that he meant 'jumped up' but who knows what goes on in the mind of Jeff?

Oh crap!

I just went out to see if there was anything interesting wandering around the garden. (Apart from me, obviously.) Not having a torch and reluctant to switch on the outside light, which is so bright it dazzles low-flying aircraft, I relied on the gentle glow of street lamps.

I spotted something glistening on the path. It looked like a slug. So I prodded it with my finger.

It's astonishing what birds can squeeze from their rear ends when they've been raiding the neighbour's fruit trees. This was worse than the dollop that I mistook for a bird-dropping spider.

Memo to self: Buy a fricken torch.

Glow in the dark squid

The Neurophilosopher has a beaut post about a squid that lights up like the Blackpool illuminations to dazzle its prey.

Amazing molluscs

Borneo has the best fauna. There are tiny rainforest Opisthostoma, whose spikes and flares foil predatory slugs. And there are vivid green slugs and snails.

A semi-slug has a shell that's too small to protect anything but the most delicate body parts. Now you see it.

Now you don't.

This snail's shell is transparent. The green colour comes from the surface of the mantle.

And while you're there, have a look at some of the other extraordinary invertebrates in that part of the world. And then book your flight to Kota Kinabalu.

Thanks to Budak for the link.

Dragons and damsels

While sitting in my office getting more and more incensed by the utter stupidity of work, I decided that staring out of the window would be a better use of my time. And I was right.

My office is on the second storey and has windows opening to the N and NNE. (This is hideous in the afternoon, when the sun heats up the expanse of glass, but magnificent for the hours before.) I can look past the computer monitor, which is cluttered with all sorts of e-mail crap, and watch the white-plumed honeyeaters chase each other around the eucalypts or gaze at the squadrons of pelicans heading from the Bay to inland waters. (I saw 17 of them yesterday, flying in elegant V-formation.)

Today, I spotted dragonflies zipping around in the free air-space between my window and the trees. Obviously, I couldn't tell which species they were because it's difficult to check the wing venation when the insects are 10 metres away. But they looked a lot like this one, which I photographed over the nearby pond.

Dragonflies have an air of belligerence when compared with the rather more refined damselflies. Their eyes cover most of the head. What's left is mouthparts. Dragonflies hunt whatever won't get them first. That's not to say that damselflies are wimps. They're simply more delicate.

Odonates catch food on the wing by scooping prey up with their forelegs. Damselflies almost always take lunch back to a perch, whereas dragonflies either do that or eat in flight.

Not so odd odonates

My friend Dark Orange has a keen eye for dragonflies. His latest odonate pictures are up on Flickr.

Australian Tiger (Ictinogomphus australis). This species is widespread in eastern and northern Australia. Two other Australian species have much more limited ranges: one occurs in the Plibara of WA, the other on Cape York in Queensland.

Yellow-striped flutterer (Rhyothemis phyllis). Another northern and eastern species but this one has a disjunct (interrupted) distribution, with a break at the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Scarlet percher (Diplacodes haematodes). This one's found everywhere!

Somewhere over the house next door ...

A net gain

Determined to get photos of the leaf-cutter bees, I bought some new insect nets. The plan is to catch a couple, take snaps of them, then release them from whence they came. True, it's a simple plan. But that means there's not much to go wrong.

The nets arrived today. I unpacked them. Handles, hoops and ... where were the bags? That's right. They'd been sent to another customer.

Dragonfly

It was hot and humid yesterday. I'd spent the day in a conference centre where the air-conditioning had been turned up to 11, so walking out into the late afternoon sun was a hell of a shock. By the time I got home (in a car with no cooling), I was ready to crawl into the refrigerator. But first I had to do the rounds of the garden.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the heat, most plants are doing well. Only the Alyogyne huegelli is suffering but I'm hoping that it will come good once it settles in to its new spot. And the plants have brought in the insects. There are flies and hoverflies, bees and wasps, bugs and beetles, moths and butterflies, damselflies and dragonflies. No matter how bad the day has been, it's difficult to resist the magic of these exquisite animals. (Having said that, it takes no effort to resist the magic of cockroaches, silverfish and those bloody meal moths.)

This dragonfly posed obligingly on the Livistona decipiens*. Having taken a bunch of portrait shots, I thought I'd try to identify it. Not that I know much about dragonflies but I've bought a bunch of books written by those who do. I thought I'd try to key out this orange beauty.

I knew it was a dragonfly and not a damselfly. The eyes of dragonflies are usually close together (but not shifty) and the fore wings differ in shape from the hind wings. Damselfly eyes are more widely spaced and the two pairs of wings more or less identical. (The normal caveat applies, though—there are exceptions.)

But the diagnostic features of dragonflies — those that distinguish one species from another—are almost all on the wings. And it's not until you start looking at them that you realise just how extraordinarily complex those wings are. And how much you can't see in a photograph.

I followed the key through characteristics of the antenodal crossveins, the orientation of the arculus in relation to the basal side of the hind wing triangle and the shape of the anal loop. (Don't ask.) And I think my visitor is a wandering glider or global skimmer (Pantala flavescens)**.

This species is found throughout the warmer regions of the world. It even occurs on Easter Island. Jill Silsby mentions that it was one of the first insects to recolonise Bikini Atoll after the atomic tests. That's a dragonfly that gets around.
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* A cabbage palm from the Rockhampton area in mid-east Queensland. It absolutely loves this weather.

** Can any odonatologist confirm this ID? Or tell me that I can't follow a dichotomous key to save my life?


Read more
Silsby, J. (2001) Dragonflies of the world. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood.

Theischinger, G. & Hawking, J.H. (2003). Dragonflies of Victoria. CRC for Freshwater Ecology, Albury.

Theischinger, G. & Hawking, J.H. (2006). The complete field guide to dragonflies of Australia. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood.

Whereas yesterday wasn't so bad, today was appalling. And it's not going to get any better. (I'm not sure where you go beyond appalling but I'm sure I'll find out very soon. Horrendous? Abysmal?) Anyway, it was so dreadful that I've decided that I'm not going to think about work once I get home—at least, not intentionally—so this is the last blog post on the topic.

But the good news is that we may be only half an hour away from a serious storm. I expect it'll pass to the west of us (I'm between the outermost red arc and Melbourne City) but I live in hope. (I can hear approaching thunder. Woo hoo!) The Bureau of Meteorology have also issued a warning for flash flooding, so we might be getting rain as well. I say 'might' because interesting weather tends to detour around this part of Melbourne.

Better unplug the computer. I'll be back after the storm.

Truthiness in advertising

After a short night (I dropped off sometime around 3 am), today wasn't so bad. Not being at work would have been better, of course, but you can't have everything.

I had to give a talk to the School about one of the degrees that I co-ordinate. But I didn't have the correct enrolment figures so I relied on truthiness to make my point. That seemed to work. Here's Stephen Colbert explaining the phenomenon on The Colbert Report.

And now I'm going to crawl into bed. It's a long time since I've been able to thrive on four hours sleep.

Break in transmission

I haven't been blogging much lately. In fact, I haven't logged on much at all, except for a brief surf of my favourite sites and to check the weather. (It rained last night. Not a lot. But it was better than nothing. And it sounded great on the tin roof.)

Apart from the prospect of having to work for a living again—horrifying enough to bring creative processes to a halt—I've had the worst bout of migraines that I've experienced for ... well ... years. Normally, I'll get one of three symptoms in the lead up: inability to concentrate, very bad thirst or an unshiftable headache. (Yes, it's a bit strange that a headache is part of the migraine aura but there you have it.) (And before anyone says it, no it's not a tooma.) And then I get the visual disturbances—zigzag lights that start in one part of the optic field, expand until I can't see and then subside on the other side of the field. It's not much fun.

So the migraine comes—the severity of the headache seems to be correlated with the time taken for the visual disturbance to develop—and then it goes. I'm usually tired for a while but not completely useless. Unfortunately, over the past two days, I had migraines in quick succession (migraine, sleep, next migraine immediately on waking). It doesn't allow a great deal of time for other stuff, like blogging.

But I'm back now. Slower. Possibly less articulate. But back.

And the neighbours are driving me insane. They've just bought a music system, which they've placed near the open window in their front room. So that means that their appalling taste in music is blaring down the street. But, because they're working in the back of the house, they've turned it up loud enough that they hear in their garden. Which is next to mine, them being neighbours and all. Ear plugs are cutting out the high notes but the bass is going straight through everything.

It's time for the ear plugs and the industrial grade ear protectors.

Oh, bugger it! I just remembered I've got to do a presentation tomorrow morning. There goes the rest of the afternoon.

I and the Bird #42

Is at the Neurophilosopher's Blog. Stowaway on the HMS Beagle as it takes us on a journey around the world of bird blogging, new ... and old.

Looming Monday

I've gone in to shock because Monday's return to work is only a long weekend away. Not long enough, clearly. I was getting used to alternating between pottering and loafing. Of course, pay is still going in to my bank account, so I can potter and loaf without risk.

My morning trip to the nursery for a kurrajong (Brachychiton discolor and a Hakea 'Burrendong Beauty' yielded mixed results. The kurrajong is now planted at the back of the garden, next to the cabbage palm, where it will be watered in with water saved from the shower. I didn't get the Hakea though. In fact, I couldn't find any hakeas at all, except for the tree species. But I've prepared a spot, so when I finally track one down, it's going straight to the pool room backyard.

While I was at the nursery, I did the usual rounds of the Casuarinaceae, Kennedia and Lasiopetalum. But I'm not obsessive, you understand. I've now expanded the Lasiopetalum collection into a cross-section of Sterculiaceae by buying not only the kurrajong but also three Thomasia. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

When digging the hole for the kurrajong, I was appalled at how dry the soil is. The clay has cracked so much there appears to be an extension of the San Andreas Fault running across my garden. (I hadn't noticed this before because it had been hidden by weeds and weed mat. Both have now gone.) I soon forgot about it when I uncovered what looked very much like a hank of human hair.

I leaned on the mattock for a while and wondered whether I should excavate any further. If I were about to uncover a grave, it would be a very shallow one. Unless the hair's owner had been buried vertically or hacked into small pieces and strewn around the garden, that is. Considering the concrete consistency of the clay, the former was unlikely. As for the alternative ... Well, I have picked up bones from time to time, although none of them actually looked human.

I continued digging but shifted a foot to one side. (That's a foot in distance, rather than a foot of a murder victim.) I'm sure the kurrajong will appreciate it.

More new species than you can poke a pair of forceps at ...

... have been discovered in the waters around Panglao island in the Philippines. Although the material hasn't been studied thoroughly yet, the experts are estimating that field work has turned up between 150 and 250 new crustaceans. That would be impressive enough. But there may be ten times that number of undescribed molluscs.

"To put it in perspective, the whole decapod crustacean (shrimp or prawn) fauna of Japan barely exceeds 1,600 species.

"The Mediterranean (300 million hectares) has 340 species of decapods and 2,024 species of mollusks."

Read the story at Seed Magazine. Or go one better and have a look at these links kindly provided by Budak: a photo album from the expedition and the official home page.

Lasiopetalum

I hadn't noticed Lasiopetalum before I went on a field trip to Portland in SW Victoria with a carload of botanists. (Now that's something that I can recommend. Pack up the vehicle with people who are specialists in an area about which you know next to nothing and take them somewhere new. It's wonderful! The only problem is everyone wants you to marvel at their darlings. But as plants don't to flit into a tree or scoot down a burrow as soon as you blink, it's not so bad.)

Although several species are cultivated, Lasiopetalum is a low-profile genus in nurseries. They're not show offs. The flowers are usually small and inconspicuous, hanging down among the leaves. You might notice them if you look carefully. It's the foliage that makes Lasiopetalum a favourite in my garden. (That and they are ridiculously easy to grow.)

Young leaves of Lasiopetalum are rust-coloured. As unfurl, they turn light green. Short hairs coat both surfaces of leaves. Those on the upper side are clear; those below rufous. Despite the appearance, the dense pile isn't velvety to the touch. (And the stems are quite brittle, as I discovered while trying to photograph the underside of the leaves. I wonder these plants strike from cuttings?)

But it wasn't until I examined the leaves under the dissecting microscope that I realised why they're not soft—the hairs are arranged in stellate clusters. When magnified, they look like little Sputniks.

Unfortunately, photographing them is beyond the capabilities of my digital compact. Another reason why I'll have to stay at work ... so I can afford a digital back for the SLR.

The Battle of Hastings

More from Humphrey Lyttleton's introduction to the town of Hastings in I'm sorry I haven't a clue. Once again, I wish I'd written these lines.

Hastings joined with Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich to form a brotherhood of coastal towns in 1067. Intending to defend England from any cross-Channel invasion, they took the crest of a running horse rampant and stable door bolted.

It goes on ...

A blog-free day ... almost.

I was occupied with other writing. And cleaning the bathroom. I may have commented earlier that I am no stranger to squalor but the bathroom was getting beyond even my rather flexible level of tolerance. Now it's gleaming—so clean that you could eat your dinner off any surface (If I let you, which I wouldn't because you'd just mess it up again. So don't make the suggestion. It will end in tears.)

Apart from getting a numb posterior from sitting in front of the computer for one half the day and then getting dishpan hands from scrubbing the floors for the other half, I haven't really done much.

Well, I knocked off another 1000 words from draft four or five or whatever it is now. So that's something, I suppose. I'll polish those thousand for an hour or so until the words gleam like the tiles of the splashback. Then I'll go to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream of a way out of the next scene.

Tomorrow I'm going to blog on Lasiopetalum, a plant genus that everyone should have in the garden. I was admiring my collection today (while trying to avoid writing and/or cleaning) but I didn't get around to taking photographs.

'night, all.

Beachcomber

The Annotated Budak has a superb post about living on an island. It's literal, figurative and lyrical. That summary does it no justice. You'll have to read it for yourself.

Comet update

McNaught is still visible in the southern sky. More stunning pictures of the comet at the Solar Terrestrial Dispatch gallery. You can also check for aurora activity in your neck of the high-latitude woods.

Bow River

I was a lot younger when I packed up my 1969 Holden Premier and headed north 'for the heat, babe, and the tropical rain'. Cold Chisel's Bow River kept me going. Even when one of the shitty old retreads blew out at Biloela and I ended up in a cotton field. But the tyres were the least of my worries—the car had a dodgy transmission that played up intermittently, usually at nightfall on the long, empty stretches. I didn't know this when I left Melbourne but it was abundantly clear by the time I reached Coonabarabran. But I couldn't go back. So I continued to Townsville (via the cotton field) with a car full of books, no money and a dying transmission.

Those were the days.

LBBs

I can't tell one little brown bird from another. Well, I can distinguish a house sparrow from a tree sparrow but, as we only get the first around here, that's not a very useful skill*. And Richard's pipits. I can now recognize that species, thanks to Duncan. Oh, and spice finches. I managed to identify a bunch of those in my garden in Townsville, mostly on the way they were behaving. Hopping up and down as if they were on a trampoline. Strange little things.

But apart from sparrows, pipits and finches, little BBs are a closed field guide to me.

Large BBs, on the other hand, are dead easy. As long as I can see them. Despite their size, this pair of large BBs did an excellent job of being inconspicuous. Had they not been enclosed by a fence, I might not have noticed them at all. I may be the world's second worst birdwatcher but I know that a chain link fence means something important. I pick up on clues like that.

These are Australian bustards (Ardeotis australis), those big, beautiful but unfortunately declining birds of the open plains. I'd like to say that I saw these individuals in the wild but they're at Serendip Sanctuary, SW of Melbourne. I've only seen this species in the bush on one occasion—at Fossilbrook in North Queensland. (I mentioned it in an earlier post about bustards.) I'm hoping to see them when I visit that way again in the middle of this year. But I won't hold my breath.

In The big twitch**, Sean Dooley records seeing bustards at Hugh's Waterhole in South Australia.

I passed the five hundred mark with a group of four stately Australian bustards. It was nice to have these big turkey-like birds as the milestone bird. At the time of European settlement I could have got them on the outskirts of Melbourne but these slow-moving creatures apparently taste delicious and were quickly shot out. Even in these remote areas where their habitat hasn't gone under the plough, they make a nice meal for the locals, who can easily pick them off from the back of a four-wheel drive. They are now only commonly found in conservation zones and in fact the birds I saw were within the borders of a national park.

Bustards persisted for some time around Melbourne before people, agriculture and foxes got the better of them. While exploring the lands around Port Phillip Bay, John Lort Stokes (HMS Beagle, 1837 – 43) spotted 'several large bustards resembling a light brown domestic turkey' on the plains below Station Peak, close to what is now the site of Serendip Sanctuary. They were still abundant enough then that they received nothing more than a casual note in his records.

But the population plummeted after 1870. Less than a century later, bustards were thought to be extinct in Victoria. Today, they are known to occur in very low densities in a couple of areas in the NW of the state. In other parts of Australia, they are faring better but are nowhere abundant.

The Victorian Government's Department of Sustainability and Environment has reduced its support for captive breeding and increased its effort to maintain the species in the wild (PDF). It would be nice to think that one day even the world's second worst birdwatcher might be able to see these large brown birds in the wild without having to travel half way across the continent.
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* There's always the possibility that tree sparrows are, in fact, as common as rats and I've over-estimated my ability to identify them.

** The book documents his bid to break the Australian record of 700 birds in a year. He started on Jan 1st with a sooty owl (Tyto tenebricosa) in Gembrook, Victoria, and ended on Dec 30th with number 703, a little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus) at Sherwood, Qld.

Bringing the chitons down

Alan at Birds in Tasmania has been watching sooty oystercatchers. They don't just dine on bivalves—they tackle chitons too.

But they're not the only molluscicidal avians in the blogosphere this week. Kevin at Natural Visions has a portrait of snail-killer. Don't be deceived by the bird's mild appearance ...

Survival of the cutest

We've known if for a long time but here's the evidence. David Stokes and his students at the University of Washington looked at what made certain animal species attractive to humans. They analysed the results of a popularity poll for penguins* and found that colour, size and neoteny (retention of juvenile traits in adults) were important factors in our aaaah-isn't-it-adorable categorisation of species. Emperor and king penguins topped the list, with rockhopper and macaroni penguins coming in at second. (Our little blue penguins were at the bottom of the popularity poll. How could they?)

Stokes ties the cute factor into conservation effort.

'We do have these big differences in how we feel about living things. These feelings are going to play a big role in what we choose to conserve.'

So all we need to make invertebrates more appealing is to give them big eyes and a smart colour scheme. Hmmm ... I still can't see anyone wanting to hug a hornet.

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* The penguins were the subject of the poll; they weren't the ones being questioned.

European wasps

In the late afternoon, European wasps (Vespula germanica) arrive in my garden. They're after wood, which they strip from the fence posts and chew into pulp. Somewhere, in this rapidly gentrifying area, a wasp colony is building an extension to its nest and the materials are coming from my garden.

Two species of introduced Vespula are found in Melbourne. The European wasp is the more abundant, whereas the English wasp (V. vulgaris) is restricted to the eastern suburbs. The two are easy to tell apart—if you can get close enough without provoking them. The European wasp has a black arrowhead on its first abdominal segment. The corresponding mark on the English wasp is a small triangle. (You can see that in this image from this CSIRO insect site.)

European wasps are recent arrivals in Australia. They became established in Tasmania in the late 1950s / early 1960s. Within two decades, they were recorded on the mainland. At almost the same time, the English wasp also appeared in Victoria. This species went in the other direction, spreading to Tasmania, where it has been very successful. Museum Victoria has lots more information on these wasps in Australia.

I took this picture with my digital camera set to telephoto. The flash seemed to upset the wasp, so after firing off half a dozen photos I backed away in a nonchalant yet determined way. Although I don't have a serious response to the toxin, I've been stung enough times to know that any encounter between me and a shirty insect is bound to end badly. And not for the wasp.

The book list

That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three ... three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting? — George W Bush showing German newspaper reporter Kai Diekmann the Oval Office, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006

More Bushisms here.

Despite swags of spare time, I haven't transferred many volumes between the 'to read', 'am reading' and 'have read' stacks. But the first stack hasn't got any longer, which may be a good thing.

I'm still reading John Steven's autobiography Not for the faint-hearted. It's a struggle. So far he's still a plod on the beat around Tottenham Court Road, back in the days when the job was Dixon of Dock Green with biffo. And he manages to make tales of gangland violence sound about as exciting as mopping the kitchen floor. I hope he gets promoted soon.

In a search for livelier writing, I started Clive James' fourth volume of memoirs, North face of Soho. It's been a while since I've read James and it's taking time for me to settle in. (And now I'm beginning to think there's something wrong with my attention span and/or interest in reading, which is a worry.)

The two novels that are about to shift from the 'to read' to 'am reading' piles are Cormac McCarthy's The road and Ian Rankin's The naming of the dead. Post-apocalyptic U.S. and serial murder in Edinburgh. Jolly stuff for my holidays.

Perspective

i do not see why men
should be so proud
insects have the more
ancient lineage
according to the scientists
insects were insects
when man was only
a burbling whatisit

certain maxims of archy, Don Marquis

The lazy gardener

Work on the garden continues slowly. But it does continue. The backyard still looks crappy but appreciably less crappy than it did at this time last week. As I clear away the dead weeds, I'm starting to wonder whether there might be snakes around the place. It's unlikely but you never know. Tiger snakes have turned up in some of the oddest places, including a bookshop in the CBD.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this cleared space. The cabbage palm, Livistona australis, is staying, as is the pincushion hakea (Hakea laurina) (the tree at the back). But with the kangaroo apple on its way out, there won’t be much elevation in the garden. Maybe a Brachychiton. Or two. And something robust and interesting for underplanting.

I still have a yen for a bog garden. It would have to be in a container, of course, which could be as large as a bath or as small as a Nally bin*. And a ...

There's nothing for it. I'll have to move to a place with a bigger yard.
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* Nally bins. Next to cat bags, the most important item on a field trip.