Recent sightings

 This post covers my images of sightings on a plant walk along the power lines (sort of) organised through U3A Mallacoota and a few other interesting sightings on 11 and 12 October.  

The first image is Burchardia umbellata (Milkmaids).  Very common over the slashed area.  One of the participants asked about the pollinators of plants: note the ant on the lowest flower on the rhs.  Ants are very important in this role. 

The commonest Sun-Orchid seen was Thelymitra ixiodes (Spotted Sun-Orchid)

This is a really crappy image but a pollinating fly is visible in a fuzzy way.  (Some other genera of orchids are pollinated by wasps, using mimicry and pheromones to achieve this purpose.

Just about the time we turned a Thelymitra rubra (Salmon Sun-Orchid) was found.

Quite a few of the Xanthorrhoea resinosa (Grass trees) had flower spikes.  The area was slashed a few weeks ago, so the vegetative growth has come since then and we speculated whether the rain from a week ago stimulated the emergence of the spikes.

A Lily, without a common name (at least, one is not shown in Flora of Victoria), Thelionema umbellatum.

This is a Heath Rhytidosporum procumbens (White Marianth).  The first, fuzzy, image shows the structure of the flower ...

... while the second shows the leaves and a fruit.

Definitely a Pea and I believe it to be Dillwynnia glaberima (Smooth Parrot-pea).

A moth: iNaturalist has been consulted.

iNaturalist has also been consulted about this - to my mind, unusual - frogspawn.  The bubbles are 25-50mm in diameter and it looks to me as though the eggs have hatched into very small tadpoles.

Moving on to other sightings.  I went to Mullet Creek in search of Cuckoos but no luck for them.  I did better with Black-faced Monarch.  This image hints at the wing-fluttering display posture.

A male Common Bronzewing (note cream forehead).

A female Common Bronzewing (note grey forehead).

On the 12th we were surprised - and excited - to see 6 Sharp-tailed Sandpipers at the Broome St Lagoon on our morning walk.  I returned with my camera to get some snaps.

2 Little Egrets were mixed in with the Royal Spoonbills.

Both visible here: one carrying on like a pork chop, diagnostic of the species.

Just a nice shot of a landing Spoonbill.

This one is to show a discoloured Royal Spoonbill.  Usually they are always white, unlike Yellow-billed Spoonbills or Australian White Ibis (where the dirty colour is explained by the vernacular name "Bin Chook")

After all that good stuff I took myself to check on the Beach Stone Curlew.  It was still there, and very easy to see (and photograph) looking down from site 344 in the Caravan Park.

Filling a blank etc

I have recently done a small project to identify the species of birds which, if absent, would indicate that an area in Far East Gippsland needs further 'work' to be regarded as having a representative bird list.  One land area showed up as having no eBird records at all.

So I decided to visit cell A3 to start a list.  This shows the area I chose to attack and the associated tracks.

We parked at the intersection with the Salvage Track: this comes off the Princes Highway, but there is no indication that it is closed at that end.  I assume that there is a swamp somewhere along the road which has got a tad cut up.

This is East Wingan Road: the surface is a little loose in places but basically very smooth and easy to drive.  The Jetta would have handled it with ease.

Obviously the Shire budget for road signs was well funded!

We wwalked down the East Wingan Track.  From looking at the tracks in the sand the only vehicle which has been down there recently has been a bulldozer, probably clearing the fallen trees off after the fire.  The surface was uncompacted and erosion was an issue.

There were very few birds around (both Pardalotes, Yellow-faced Honeyeater and Superb Lyrebird were all we recorded).  None of the Indicator Species.  There were some nice flowers however.  

One of the most obvious was Tetratheca ciliata (identified by the leaves not being in whorls).

Dampiera stricta was very common.

The only flowering wattle I noticed here was A. myrtifolia.

A few specimens of Kennedia prostrata were in one area,

A large white Epacris impressa near Salvage Track.  I tried, but failed to turn this into another member of the genus.

Our walk was 1km out and back.  

I intend to revisit the area and go further  along the Hard to Seek Track with side visits to Sandpatch Track etc to get a bit more coverage of the area.  Going further down the East Wingan Track will wait until I have got new rear tyres, but after curving around somewhat - or possibly more than somewhat  - it rejoins the Sandpatch track.

Our second visit was to the Genoa Creek Track which later in the season is an excellent spot for orchids.  As soon as we got out of the Pajero, Frances found a specimen of Caladenia caerulea.  This was the first we have found in East Gippsland.  Apparently there was a thriving colony here but we had not visited early enough in the year.  Now the site has been dug up for some works - which went to fair lengths to avoid other species - and is no more: hopefully(???) they will come back.

I am was reasonably certain this is Epacris microphylla.  However an expert on iNaturalist has explained that the leaves are insufficiently 'micro' and this is E. paludosa.  Many specimens in exactly the habitat described for that species in Flora of Victoria..

A different wattle.  From reading "Wildflowers of the Wilderness Coast" I am fairly confident that this is A. brownii.

Hovea heterophylla: we hadn't found this in the area until earlier this week.  Now it is going to pop up everywhere!

A member of the Fabaceae: iNaturalist reckons it is Aotus ericoides, which seems sensible.

A puddle in the track held hundreds of tadpoles (aka polywogs).  No idea what species.   Other, apparently similar, puddles had no, or at best very few, inhabitants.

I suspect these are some species of sawfly larva.  Their behaviour was very like the infamous Spitfires.

Some of the puddles were decorated with former insects.  The iNaturalist AI suggests a genus of termites not apparently known to exist in Australia.

Our final stop was in Genoa, looking over the flats North of the town where one Emu was spotted among the cattle.  I hope that there are others who survived the fire hiding in the woodland.

A useful drop!

When I woke up this morning I was surprised to find we had had 2.2 mm of rain as I had heard nothing while in the Land of Nod.

Then I looked at the radar and it looked as though that was our lot for the day.  and I thought the BoM 'range of 6-20 mm was ridiculously high.  However by 1130 matters were looking a little damper to our West.  Perhaps .....

 As I was driving around at about 1245 I had to have the wipers on the intermittent setting. Maybe ....

By 1402 the radar was looking a little serious about matters.

A few minutes after snipping that, there were a few loud rumbles and then the rain started.  By 1423 we have scored another 16.4 mm.  According to my Weather Station it was coming down at a maximum of 198.6 mm/hr which is very heavy.  The Inlet had vanished from view.

Our gutters gave up the struggle, with quite a large surface area trying to go through a 100 mm pipe a bit of back up occurred and thus some overflowing.  A frog had been resident in said pipe and was duly ejected.

There were also a few leaves in the pipes that had caused the filter to get partially blocked and spill on to the garden.

Looking at the image of the frog the enlarged toe-pads say "tree-frog" and the cross shaped pupil adds "Peron's" (Litoria peronii).

In case you wonder why a frog was named after an Argentinian President - it wasn't.  It was named after a French naturalist Francois Peron.

Thinking of French gives a lead-in "Apres la deluge ..." I though the frog was lurking in the filter so went to get a closer photo (and scoop the leaves etc out of the filter).  It was a frog but a former House Sparrow which I suspect had died in the gutter and been washed down (which might also have contributed to the backing up).

By 1450 that lot was over  with the day to date running at 21 mm (so the BoM 25% estimate was conservative). In fact for the period from 1400 hrs the BoM - via Meteye - offered a 10% chance of more that 10mm and looking at the probabilities through EXCEL I would guess that the fall we got had a probability of less than 15%.

This has got us in front of last year and the pro-rata estimate for the year at exactly 600 mm.  Gentle rain is continuing,