Happy Thanksgiving

It's true that there's nothing quite like taking a nap in the sun... 

...when you're certain that you won't end up as dinner. 

Well, not as a human's dinner. 

The Wednesday Herbarium: Buttonwood

The buttonwoods(Glochidion harveyanum) are doing well. For the past month or so, the stems have been covered in tiny yellow flowers that are popular with flies and wasps.

Now they are loaded with blushing fruit that look delicious, but are ignored by the birds and possums. Despite their enticing appearance, the fruit are nothing more than papery capsules enclosing half a dozen seeds. With all the other possibilities in the rainforest, these are very low down on the list of preferred noms.

That's not to say that everyone avoids buttonwoods. Large-billed and Atherton scrubwrens and brown gerygones love these trees. The birds get into gangs to hunt insects among the leaves. (The only thing that stops them from mugging tree kangaroos is the difficulty of throwing gang signs with wings.)

And this morning, I saw a Lewin's honeyeater on a buttonwood. It was stabbing fruit with its beak. To get at the insects inside.

Probably.

It wasn't interested in the seeds cloaked in their scarlet arils. Didn't give them a second look.

I did, though. They're glorious.

Monday's marsupials

Friday: "Oh yes, tree kangaroos are very common around here. I saw a couple of them in the garden only yesterday."

Saturday: "No, they really are quite abundant."

Sunday: "They're definitely about."

Monday: "You should have been here. Just saw one hopping across a lawn about ten metres from the road. Yeah, from the car as I was driving past. The things you see..."

Tree kangaroos are never around when you need them, so here's one that I prepared photographed earlier.

Burny Bean II: The Opening

The burny bean flowers have opened. They don't last long. Still no sign of a pollinator. Will keep looking. (When I remember.)

Insect haiku

On wild ginger, ant 

Meets caterpillar, while bug 

Sidles unnoticed 

Burny bean (not burny and without beans at the moment)

Whose daft idea was it to do NaNoWriMo this year? And why can't I write faster?

The burny bean (Mucuna gigantea) is flowering. (Oh, lots of other things are flowering too. But I can actually recognise the burny bean, unlike...well...just about everything else.) The vine scrambles over the rainforest canopy and makes narrow runways across gaps. There's a cat's cradle of burny bean across the driveway and the grey fantails like to sit there and watch what's going on.

The common name comes from its beaniness (it belongs to Fabaceae, the pea and bean family) and its burniness (the seed pod is covered in irritating hairs). (But not at this time of year.) It is also called a seabean (because it occurs in forests along beaches). As this rainforest block is 750 metres above sea level and on the western side of Queensland's highest mountain, I thought that calling it a seabean would get me into trouble with Advertising Standards.

I haven't seen any birds feeding from the flowers, so I wonder if this species is pollinated by bats? The petals are pale green and difficult to spot among all the other greens of the forest, so they are not screaming for diurnal attention. They also hang down in bunches, which says bat (or perhaps large moth) food to me. Still, I'm no judge of what a volant mammal might want for dinner, so I will have to observe and record.

But these flowers...ain't they grand?

Welcome to the world

Pip — Crinkle Cut's new joey — is out and about and hopping around. Here are some photos from September, when he was getting to know the world outside mum's pouch.

11 September 

17 September 

30 September

Turkey/vulture

Everyone's a critic

A spotted catbird (left) sings, while a brush turkey (right) looks on 

In A General History of Birds (1821), ornithologist John Latham described this bird as the 'New Holland vulture'.

He later corrected his misapprehension, but I am considering resurrecting the name. Not because of the appearance — although they do look very vulturine — but because the brush turkey is the rainforest species most likely to knock you over, then rip out and eat your still twitching liver, possibly washing it down with a nice glass of chianti. (I'm a bit vague on the chianti, because I'm not sure if any of the local bottle shops stock it. A turkey’d probably have to buy it in Cairns and bring it up the range. But I'm only speculating, you understand. They might wash down a liver with cask moselle for all I know.)

Oh, New Holland vultures brush turkeys pretend to be harmless. On warm afternoons, they lie around in the sun.

But look at these claws. I swear they're adamantium.

One of the turkey hens has kicked a hole in the screen door. Now she can slide the door open and get into the kitchen. Why does she want to get in? To raid the pantry? To knock me over and rip out my liver? To see if I've got any chianti in the cupboard, to save her the trip down to Cairns and back?

No.

To take my shoes.

I find myself yelling, 'Don't you steal my shoes!' at the birds. I suppose this is good practice for my dotage.

I suspect my dotage is not as far away as I'd like.