Davidson's plum

Most of my neighbours don't bother growing their own food because the rainforest birds and mammals harvest it with an efficiency and enthusiasm that humans can't match. You can't keep the animals away. Chicken wire? Birds fly over it. Nets? Rats crawl under them. Electric fences with motion-activated spotlights? Pademelons carry pliers in their pouches. You can have temporary success by overwhelming them with volume, but you can never win.

Still, there are bucketloads of native fruits in the rainforest: quandongs, bollywood, Atherton oak. They all have their fans. But the best of them — from this human's point of view, anyway — is Davidson's plum (Davidsonia pruriens).

Plummish in appearance, but not a true plum, Davidsonia makes the tastiest jam. It's slightly tart and goes well with just about everything. I doubt that I'll ever beat the fauna and collect enough fruit to make my own jam, so I'm stuck with buying it. But I'll collect seed and try the 'overwhelm by volume' approach. Always worth a try.

None of those toothmarks are mine!

'Stingray' seeds of Davidson's plum

Dedicated to glam

These may not have been the photos he would have chosen for his portfolio, but this male Victoria's riflebird has no one but himself to blame for this selection. When I threw out a rotten banana, he was on it in a flash. His eagerness for overripe fruit gave me an opportunity to take these detailed, if undignified, portraits.

They don't do him justice. His plumage is half velvet, half satin. Basic black with a shimmering blue cap and gorget. There's a flash of iridescence over his tail: sometimes purple, sometimes blue. And pink and green on his flanks. He is a bird of the 70s. He would have looked right at home on Countdown.

Hooray for Bollywood!

Every morning, my driveway is covered in fallen fruit, dislodged from the bollywood (Litsea) trees by overnight wind or rain, by messy possums or by a combination of all three. By lunchtime, emerald doves and pademelons have cleaned up most of the mess. (Catbirds may take the odd fruit as an hors d'oeuvre, but they prefer larger items. They are not dainty feeders.)

Bollywood is a staple item in the diet of many rainforest species. Although the fruit isn't yet ripe, the animals aren't deterred. I've seen no doves lying around clutching their stomachs and groaning from indigestion. And the pademelons seem to have cast iron constitutions, so they can eat anything (including stinging tree seedlings). I expect the variety of fruit-eating species will increase as the bollywood bounty ripens over the next few weeks. And when the quandongs mature ...

At ease

Every few days, a female Victoria's riflebird (Ptiloris victoriae) drops by to see what's happening at the Snail Shell. The answer is, of course, not much. But I guess she has to see for herself.

Victoria's riflebird is a bird of paradise, one of four species in Australia and the only one occurring on the Atherton Tablelands. Males are not as gaudy as some of the New Guinea species. (Yes, I'm looking at you, greater bird of paradise.) Their plumage is an elegant combination of velvet black and satin blue, and the feathers sound like swishing taffeta when they fly. They make the most of this during their courtship display, which is a flamboyant flamenco danced on a bare branch so everyone can see.

My neighbours in the property across the road tell me that they've had a male Victoria's riflebird shake his tail feathers on their verandah rail. I'm thinking of putting in a special dance floor to entice him over here. Males often have several display posts in their territory, so that would just give him another option.

Although it is found only a short flutter away from the magnificent riflebird (P. magnificus) of Cape York Peninsula and New Guinea, Victoria's riflebird is more closely related to the paradise riflebird (P. paradiseus) of SE Queensland and NE New South Wales. They have been lumped together as one species in the past, but are now recognised as different.

The riflebirds form a clade with the superb bird of paradise (Lophorina< superba), which shares the same colour pattern but a much flashier courtship dance. The video tells it all.

Life in a goldfish bowl

In Far North Queensland, the wildlife watches you! What I see when I turn around from my desk.

Curious Lewin's honeyeater

Brush turkey on the scrounge

Wondering why it's no longer the centre of attention

Having a word with the opposition

Female Victoria's riflebird convinced that the carboard box is full of goodies

Am I on Candid Camera?

A tale of two honeyeaters

As soon as anything evenvaguely resembling a piece of fruit appears in the vicinity of a Lewin's honeyeater (Meliphaga lewinii), the bird is onto it. If you're having breakfast outside, don't leave it unattended. Honeyeaters are very quick. When feeling particularly adventurous, they'll fly into the house and raid the fruit bowl, leaving beak-shaped holes as evidence of their activity. I've seen it happen.

Two other Australian species of honeyeaters look very similar to the Lewin's. Both the graceful (M. gracilis) and yellow-spotted (M. notata) are olive and grey with pale yellow ear tufts, but are distinguished on the shape of the tufts, their body form, call and demeanour. Remember that I am the second worst bird watcher in the world, so telling them apart is something that other people do. Several other species of yellow-tufted Meliphaga honeyeaters occur throughout New Guinea. Bad bird-watchers to the north have got no chance!





According to Pizzey, Macleay's honeyeater (Xanthotis macleayana) is 'often untidy; likened to a scruffy Regent Honeyeater'. Well, other people's honeyeaters may be a bit tatty, but mine are well-feathered and stylish. No, really. They have a particularly pleasing symmetrical pattern of black streaks on the tum, which this bird refused to reveal for the camera. These pics don't do justice to these handsome and not at all dishevelled honeyeaters.

Macleay's is the most highly-coloured of the Xanthotis honeyeaters, a small genus found in FNQ and New Guinea. One other species, the rather less flamboyant tawny-breasted honeyeater (Xanthotis flaviventer) is found on Cape York Peninsula and also occurs across New Guinea. Both species share the apricot-coloured patch around the eye.

It is easy being green

The birds are getting used to me. It took a week or so before the spotted catbirds (Ailuroedus melanotis) emerged from the forest, but now they sit in the trees in what passes for a front garden, and watch me while I work on the computer.

Catbirds are unusual bowerbirds. They neither build bowers nor construct display grounds. But they make up for their lack of interest in matters architectural with their extraordinary calls, which range from melodious tinks to cat yowls fed through a synthesiser. I've tried imitating them, but they look at me with a mixture of confusion and disdain.

They also steal bananas.

Duck tails

Some days, the birds just don't co-operate.

Australasian grebe

Plumed whistling-duck

Hardhead

Pacific black duck

Little black cormorant

The two-storey bird hide at Hastie's Swamp, near Atherton, is a good spot to watch water birds. Not that it's brimming with rare and unusual species, but it's a restful place and you can sit there for hours watching the whistling-ducks and thinking about ... well ... nothing in particular.

This little black cormorant was one of several sharing the swamp with the ducks and grebes. It kept to the shallows in front of the hide. I think it might have been showing off.

Avian mayhem

For a couple of minutes yesterday, the garden erupted in ornithological pandemonium.

In the moments before, the Macleay's and Lewin's honeyeaters were shouldering each other away from the azaleas. (Even though there's enough for everyone.) A pair of spotted catbirds perched in a nearby tree, watching the dispute. Scrubfowl and turkeys scratched through the leaf litter. The usual scene. Not entirely peaceful, but Zen-like compared with what was about to happen.

Enter a whipbird, the most cartoonish of the forest birds. They look like the Roadrunner but have the demeanour of Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil. This one had flushed a frog from the undergrowth and was determined to catch it at any cost. The bird came scooting out of the forest, chuckling and chattering as it chased the frog, which was making enormous leaps to escape. The parade zipped past my window. And then came back again. The circus was in town.

I grabbed the camera and did what I could. But whipbirds are very quick and somewhat unpredictable. I wonder if they know what they're going to do next.

Usual view of a whipbird

Caught in the open

There must be some food somewhere

Nest assured

We'd assumed that the turkeys were responsible for the mound, because that's what brush turkeys do — build nests in the least convenient spots. In this case, the edge of a narrow drive. But Tookie the Turkey, who patrols the block, ignored it. He strutted past without a second glance. He might have been bluffing.( Although they don't seem particularly bright, brush turkeys show the same sort of cunning as the velociraptors in 'Jurassic Park'. But with rather less bloodshed. At least, so far.) But there was something in his demeanour that suggested he was genuinely indifferent to the big pile o' leaves.

Nothing to do with me

So that left the scrubfowl.

Orange-footed scrubfowl are more difficult to watch than turkeys because they are not only secretive but are also given to fits of hysteria on being surprised. I know there's more than one on the property because I can identify individuals by their calls. (Well, I think I can. I may be delusional.) On moonlit nights, they cluck and cackle in a way that says, 'Beware! Mad chickens ahead.' It doesn't take much to set them off.

I hadn't seen any of them near the mound. But did that actually mean anything? Were they uninterested in it because it was turkey business or were they interested but shy about ownership?

Yesterday evening I got an answer. Just on dusk, one of the scrubfowl started remodeling the nest. Looks like I might have some more crazy, cockaded, big-footed chooks around the place.

Nobody here but us slightly insane chickens

_____

For those not familar with these birds, both species are megapodes. This small group of Australasian birds incubate their eggs in mounds of leaves. They regulate the temperature inside the mound by piling on more leaves or scraping them off. Saves having to sit on them all the time.

Climbing pandanus

Related to screwpines, the climbing-pandanus (Freycinetia) lacks a rigid stem and uses trees and boulders for support. One species, the widespread F. excelsa, is common on my property.

I am hoping they will flower soon. So, I suspect, are the catbirds, which love the fruit that follows. (Not that there's a dearth of nosh at this place. I'm surprised the quandongs haven't fallen over under the weight of their fruit.)

Nice paddies

Am suffering from telco rage. You don't want to hear about it. Just never mention the word Telstra within earshot.

So it is nice to come home to the red-legged pademelon (Thylogale stigmatica) mob. A handful of them wander in during the morning and late afternoon to graze on what passes for a lawn here and on the leaves and fruit that fall on the drive way.

I'll write more on this species when the telco rage subsides. Yes, I'm stuck on dial up. But that's only the beginning ...