Four feet up a tree

Around here, a rustling tree on a windless day is a sign that a tree kangaroo is perched in its branches. I spotted this one yesterday at the top of the drive way, where it was trying to grab hold of some tasty leaves that turned out to be just beyond its reach. After a few minutes, the tree roo gave up and transferred its attention to grooming. Everyone likes a well-turned out marsupial.

 

You can get an idea from the shape of those hind feet that the ancestor of tree roos was terrestrial. (Their closest relatives are rock wallabies, which live on cliffs and boulder slopes.) The hind feet are similar to those of other roos, although relatively broader and shorter. The most unusual aspect is that they can be moved independently during locomotion. Unlike other kangaroos, tree roos can not only hop but also walk.

Butterflies

Mny species of butterflies have been visiting the garden but they're so difficult to photograph because a) most of the nectar-bearing flowers are waaaaay up in the canopy and b) the butterflies move so rapidly in the warm weather. Although the swallowtails (Papilionidae) and jezebels (Pieridae) are the most obvious species, only the browns (Nymphalidae) usually settle long enough to pose for pictures.

Macleay's swallowtail (Graphium macleayanus)

Blue-banded eggfly (Hypolimnas alimena)

Bordered rustic (Cupha prosope)

Brown ringlet (Hypocysta metirius)

Orange bush-brown (Mycalesis terminus)

Orange bush-brown

Also spotted but not photographed (not yet, anyway):

Swallowtails (Papilionidae)

• Ambrax swallowtail (Papilio ambrax)
• Ulysses butterfly (Papilio ulysses)
• Blue triangle (Graphium sarpedon)
• Cairns birdwing (Ornithoptera euphorion)

Whites (Pieridae)

• Yellow-bodied jezebel (Delias nysa)
• Black jezebel (Delias nigrina)

Browns (Nymphalidae)

• Cruiser (Vindula arsinoe)
• Wanderer(Danaus plexippus)

Blues (Lycaenidae)

• More than you can poke a stick at

Some days there's nothing to do ...

... except sit back and watch the world go by.

The scourge of Far Northern chooks

Forget the 2.7m carpet python in a toilet bowl! Pythons were out raiding chook pens last week. Among them was a 6m scrub (amethystine) python that was sprung going after the chickens on a property in Koah. It had already taken on a turkey. The snake was released a safe distance from the pen.

Velvet leaf (Callicarpa pedunculata)

The berries of this native shrub are supposed to attract birds, but the birds around here are so stuffed full of Millaa Millaa vine (Elaeagnus triflora) and other fruits that they give the velvet leaf a miss. Like Millaa Millaa vine it is an edge species, taking advantage of the sunlight beyond the canopy. At this time of year, the small purple berries shine like jewels among a tangle of leaves.


Velvet leaf was one of the plant species collected in North Queensland during the voyage of HMS Endeavour. You can see the original illustration at the Natural History Museum's site.

Autumn in the upland rainforest ...

... is cool and wet. This Macleay's honeyeater braves the weather in the shelter of a Melicope tree.

Green ringtail possum

After nine months of looking, I finally got a confirmed sighting of a green ringtail possum (Pseudocheirops archeri) in the garden. The green ringtail is unusual in that it does not retire to a nest, tree hollow or roof space during the day, but sleeps on a branch. This one was a few metres up close to the edge of the garden. Unfortunately, it was raining so the photos aren't good. You can see a better picture here.




The green ringtail is a Wet Tropics endemic. It is the only species of Pseudocheirops in Australia. The other four species in the genus occur in New Guinea.

Surprise!

In Townsville, it's not unusual to have one or two green tree frogs living in the toilet bowl. But a 2.7 m carpet python is a completely different matter.

Green-eyed tree frogs

This is a green-eyed tree frog Litoria serrata from Queensland's Wet Tropics. A couple of days ago, it was still known as L. genimaculata, but a paper published in the 8 March 2010 edition of the online systematics journal Zootaxa has restricted that name to the New Guinea population.

It is not a new species. Litoria serrata was originally described in 1916 from specimens collected in Atherton, Carrington and Malanda on the Atherton Tablelands. It resembles both L. genimaculata and L. eucnemis and has been synonymised with both. This new paper has extracted it from synonymy and re-established it as a separate species.

Nothing is ever that simple, of course. Molecular studies show that there are odd things going on within the populations. That's apart from a new species (Litoria myola) with a very, very limited range (Kuranda), which had previously been mixed up in that froggy mess.

Litoria serrata has two distinct populations — north and south. (From a quick look at the paper, I suspect there are actually three populations. But I don't have the data, so that's nothing more than a wild guess.) They are currently being studied and may yet turn out to be different species. The good news is that, if they do turn out to be different, the species that hangs around here will retain the name L. serrata.

Litoria serrata is the 'house frog' in the rainforest. It has a particular fondness for bathrooms, but may turn up anywhere in the building. This one was viewing its domain from patio.

References
Hoskin, C.J. (2007). Description, biology and conservation of a new species of Australian tree frog (Amphibia: Anura: Hylidae: Litoria) and an assessment of the remaining populations of Litoria genimaculata Horst, 1883: systematic and conservation implications of an unusual speciation event. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 91: 549–563

Richards, S.J., Hoskin, C.J., Cunningham, M.J., McDonald, K. & Donnellan, S.C. (2010). Taxonomic re-assessment of the Australian and New Guinean green-eyed treefrogs Litoria eucnemis, L. genimaculata and L. serrata (Anura: Hylidae). Zootaxa 2391: 33–46.

Moths!

No new cicadas for a while, so I've turned my attention to moths. This involves a lot of leafing through plates in I.F.B. Common's 'Moths of Australia' and clicking on pictures in CSIRO's Moths Online. I haven't had a great deal of success so far. Although Common's book illustrates 1,000 species, that's only about 10% of the described fauna. The other 90% are crawling over my windows or battering themselves senseless on the fluoros and falling into my tea.

Here are some that I've managed to identify. (Possibly incorrectly. So if you can help out, please let me know.)

Chrysodeixis illuminata (Noctuidae: Plusiinae)

This species also occurs in New Guinea and Fiji. The spur on each foreleg is an epiphysis, used for cleaning the antennae and proboscis.

Close up
(I want this pattern on a sofa)

Micronia fuscifimbria (Uraniidae: Microniinae)

The best known uraniid is the day-flying Alcides zodiaca, a large black moth with iridescent markings. The family also includes a small number of pale nocturnal species.

Eumelea rosalia (Geometridae: Oenochrominae)

A variable species that extends from SE Queensland through Indonesia to Malaysia.

The rich tapestry of Letters to the Editor

I had given up reading them, but I slipped up today. It won't happen again.

This is the final paragraph of a letter complaining about 'no pet' conditions on new housing subdivisions in ecologically sensitive areas. The gist of the letter is that these conditions are discriminatory, will do nothing to improve the environment but will create areas of 'wildlife fanatics'.

The fact that so-called "wildlife" is almost continually trespassing on people's property throughout Australia has not been taken into account, other than to blame everything and everyone else.

It's not a parody.

I had been wondering why one of the branches of the Melicope in the front garden had developed a bit of a sag.



I was going to blame the coppery brushtail possum, who climbs the tree in the evening to watch what's going on in the soap opera that is the pademelons' world.

Oh, the shame!

But then I saw the true culprit engaged in a neat balancing act. I suspect this turkey is going to work its way through all the branches until every one of them points downward.

Raiding the fruit bowl

Following the lead of David Rentz at BunyipCo, I put out some fruit to lure in nocturnal frugivores. Over the past few nights, the frugivores have all been furry tree-climbers ...



... but last night, a winged fruit-eater made an appearance.




Ischyja manlia is a large noctuid moth (Noctuidae: Catocalinae) found from India through South East Asia to Queensland. PaDIL (Pests and Disease Imaging Library) lists it as an exotic. CSIRO's handy Australian Moths Online depicts several set specimens, including this one caught by Frederick Dodd.

It spoils citrus crops by piercing the fruit skin with its proboscis and sucking up the juice. Not only does this damage the fruit directly, but also opens it up to further attack by insects and moulds. This moth didn't have to work too hard for its meal. It seemed happy to share with ants.

A related genus of fruit-piercing moths, Calyptra, includes species that use their sharp-tipped proboscis to puncture the skin of mammals so they can drink blood. Other noctuids feed on tears from birds and mammals. Although unusual for moths, these are all variations on the theme of liquid feeding. Other insects — especially flies — have travelled along a similar path. Most noctuids restrict themselves to plant products. Lucky, really, because there are well over 1,000 species of them in Australia.

As far as I know, Ischyja is not a vampire moth. But I might add more garlic to the pasta, just to be on the safe side.