Olga (almost) at Tolga

Yesterday, I tweeted my (mild) disappointment that the path of Tropical Cyclone Olga meant that I wouldn't be able to make a reference to Olga at Tolga (a small town north of Atherton). According to the TV news, TC Olga crossed the coast near Daintree Village yesterday afternoon and turned into a low over land. Both commercial and ABC evening news programmes had live crosses to damp reporters in Port Douglas. ABC news even called it 'a false alarm'. Really? We must have different definitions. Yes, it was a small system (category 2), everyone was prepared and it didn't cause significant damage to life or property. But there was nothing false about it.

Anyway, TC Olga became ex-TC Olga and (apparently) headed west towards the Gulf of Carpentaria. Attention turned to ex-TC Neville, which was now making its way along the coast and kicking up high seas as it went.

But that wasn't the complete story. I retired to bed very late last night, because I was a) on a writing roll and b) listening to the BBC's reading of Jekyll and Hyde. The rain was heavy. Then it got very heavy. Then it was so heavy I couldn't hear the BBC podcast, so I gave up and slept.

About 90 minutes later, an intense storm passed over the area. I could see the lightning through the rainforest canopy. Not sheet lightning, mind you. Proper stuff striking to earth somewhere close. Spectacular. But the rain and thunder couldn't keep me awake. Zzzzzzz.

This morning I checked the latest version of the cyclone tracking map. Turns out that Olga only skimmed the coast at Daintree Village and actually made landfall to the south, between Cairns and Innisfail. My place lies right under the line that marks the ex-TC's path from 10 pm Jan 24 to 10 am Jan 25.

So Olga almost went to Tolga. (It appears to have passed to the SE, but close enough.) There, I got the chance to say it. Also, be careful what you wish for.

Two tree frogs

After several evenings listening to the frogs calling from somewhere deep in the undergrowth, I finally managed to get pictures of them. Because it's still raining heavily, I took these photos from the comfort of my living room. I've already been soaked through once today.

These orange-thighed tree frogs (Litoria xanthomera) sit in low vegetation at the edge of the rainforest and call only in heavy rain. The call is a series of loud quacking growls finished off with a brief bird-like trill. Until the mid-1980s, this species was considered to be a northern subspecies of the red-eyed tree frog (L. chloris), which occurs from mid-east Queensland to northern New South Wales.

Rain!

After all that whinging about our lack of rain, I can report that water is falling from the sky. Not vast amounts, but enough to turn my unmade, sloping driveway into a morass. I went out earlier armed with gardening implements and a sense of purpose and opened up a drainage channel that had been blocked by the industrious activities of bandicoots and/or scrubfowl and/or brush turkeys. I got soaked. Unless the animals don SCUBA gear to resume their digging, that drain will keep working. (Mind you, I wouldn't put it past them. Especially the bandicoots. They're devious little devils.) Not that the drain is very effective because the rain is running off in sheets, but it's making an effort. It's doing what it can.

The rain is causing the internet connection to wink in and out of existence. Still, that should mean I get some work done.

What are the odds?

Fully sick cicadas

At night, the living room lights attract a great variety of insects. I have no idea of the identity of many of them beyond order — Hemiptera, Lepidoptera, etc — but I can distinguish cicadas from other bugs. And I have a copy of Max Moulds' Australian Cicadas, a fully illustrated guide to … well … you can work it out, so all I have to do is match up the insects with the pictures and bingo!

So far I've recorded five species from the living room window: brown leaf cicada (Lembeja vitticollis), northern greengrocer (Cyclochila virens), a small green one that I'm not really sure about, and the two I photographed today.

The frog cicada (Venustria superba) is a laid back insect that sits on tree trunks in the middle of the forest and makes a croaking noise like a frog. Although it doesn't look like much from these photos, it certainly lives up to the specific epithet superba. The wings have a bronze sheen and the head and body are a patriotic green and gold. The monotypic genus* is endemic to the Queensland Wet Tropics.

Filiform antenna, the typical form in cicadas

The second species was a little more difficult to identify, but I think I've got it. Psaltoda antennetta doesn't have a common name, perhaps because it was only described in 2002. What characterizes this species is the shape of the antennae — each antenna is expanded (foliate) towards the tip. Psaltoda is another Australian endemic genus, with a number of species occurring along the east coast in all wooded habitats.

Foliate antenna characteristic of this species

Both species have similar distributions, occurring in forest from Mt Hartley, near Cooktown south to the Kirrama Range (Venustria) and Mt Fox (P. antennetta). They are also about the same size, with a forewing length of between 30 and 40 mm.

Both of these individuals had red erythraeid mites attached to them.

Venustria superba

Psaltoda antennetta

________

* A monotypic genus contains only one species

References
Moulds, M.S. (1990). Australian Cicadas. New South Wales University Press, Kensington, NSW.

Moulds, M.S. (2002). Three new species of Psaltoda Stal from eastern Australia (Hemiptera: Cicadoidea: Cicadidae). Records of the Australian Museum 54: 325–334.

Three tree roos

More on the earlier sighting ...

The two adult roos had a youngster with them, which I didn't spot when I took the camera out the first time.

These shots aren't very good because of the low light in the forest, but I thought I'd show 'em for their curiosity value. The young tree roo is every bit as cute as the young pademelon. Awwwww!

Fifteen paces from the back door ...

... between the patio and the tooth-billed bowerbird stage.

I was at the computer when I heard a kerfuffle in the back garden. My work desk is ideally distractingly sited where I can see both the front and back gardens with ease. Not that they're really gardens: more small, scruffy clearings in the rainforest.

Anyway, the source of the noise was two adult Lumholtz's tree kangaroos on the ground. Despite the racket, they picked up the sound of the screen door sliding open, so they bolted. I managed to photograph the slower of the two when it was still on the track.

They clambered up the nearest tree and are still there as I type this. I love this place.

Slowcoach

Tree roo no. 1 (at the top of the tree)

Tree roo no. 2 (a bit lower down)

Closer

And closer still

New fungi website

Bill Leithhead has been a fungophile for years. Now he's put all his fungi pics onto a website, together with tons of tips on how to identify and photograph them.

2010!

Happy new year! Okay, I'm late with the greetings, but that doesn't make them any less heartfelt.

Have been busy lately, but am trying to impose some order on my days. Time management, a tidy desk, that sort of thing. I need to draw up a timetable, but I think I'd end up like Red Dwarf's Arnie Rimmer when he was revising for the engineering exam.

Rimmer
Lister, where's my revision timetable?

Chen
Sir, it's Saturday night!

Lister
Come on, no one works Saturday night.

Rimmer
You don't work any night. You don't work any day.

Lister
'Skive hard, play hard'. That's our motto!

Rimmer
Look, I've got my engineering re-sit on Monday. I don't know anything. Where's my revision timetable?

Lister
Wait, is this the thing in all different colours, with all the subjects divided into study periods and rest periods and self-testing times?

Rimmer
It took me seven weeks to make it. I've got to cram my whole revision into one night.

Lister
Hang on, this the thing with a note on it, in red, said, "Vital, valuable, urgent! Do not touch on pain of death!"?

Rimmer
Yes!

Lister
I threw it away.

Will get back to proper blogging soon. In the meantime, here's a pic of Crinkle Cut's joey, which recently left the pouch. The young 'un is very lively. Crinkle Cut parks it in the scrub while she feeds on the lawn, but sometimes the joey can't resist checking out mum's dinner. No name yet.