I went
out to a small woodland reserve adjacent to Uriarra Village near the start of
Brindabella Road. There had been recent records of Pied Butcherbirds from the
area, a species which I have not yet seen in the ACT and is therefore of great
interest (i.e. I need it for my “ACT List”) despite being very common in many
other places in Australia.
While
picking up some nice birds, including a pair of nesting Leaden Flycatchers, the wind had picked up and it wasn’t quite as productive as I had
hoped. List total augmented to 98.
 |
| Male Leaden Flycatcher on nest duty. The nest was about 4 m above the ground and too high to see if it contained eggs or nestlings, but I suspect eggs as neither the male nor female bird brought food when they approached the nest. |
A couple more stops along Uriarra Road for not many birds (the wind was not being
helpful) and I headed for Stony Creek Reserve near Uriarra Crossing where just
six weeks ago the place was alive with White-browed and Dusky Woodswallows,
Painted Honeyeaters, sittellas, Speckled Warblers and other nice birds. It
couldn’t have been more different! None of the above was seen. To be fair, I
did eventually tally 25 species for the site and it was nice to pick up
Mistletoebirds and Rainbow Bee-eaters to bring my List up to 104.
One
young bee-eater had learned well and returned to a high exposed bare branch in
quick succession with a cicada and then what appears to be (from the not
brilliant photograph I did manage to get) some sort of wasp – both common items
for this species which does also eat bees!
Perhaps part of the young bee-eater’s success was due to the prevalence of insects around (if not birds L) and perhaps because of this my attention shifted. The shrilling of cicadas was constant and there were lots of Christmas beetles about too, steadily doing their best both to defoliate the local eucalypts and to perpetuate the species.
Christmas
Beetles (Anoplagnathus species) often remain in mating pairs for far longer than
the actual act of copulation requires! The male (on top, although because they are upside down he is on the bottom of the photo) has an identifiably
longer ‘snout’ (the clypeus) than does the female.
Down by the Murrumbidgee, there were small gatherings of dainty damselflies of a sort I don’t recall seeing previously, glowing orange in the sunny patches beneath the casuarinas. These are Orange Threadtails Nososticta solida; they occur along streams, rivers and riverine pools throughout eastern Australia.
Also
living up to its name was a Scarlet Percher Diplacodes
haematodes, brilliant in the morning sunshine. These are widespread across
Australia (as well as extending to Timor, PNG, Vanuatu and New Caledonia) and
frequent streams and rivers as well as still waters.
The
tapering plain red abdomen and yellow infused wing bases
of this Scarlet
Percher indicate it is a male.
On the
river itself, rafts of water striders skimmed effortlessly in the shallows, leaving
their distinctive shadows on the muddy bottom. Water striders, or pond skaters,
(Family Gerridae) are true bugs (Hemiptera) adapted to life on water. They can sit
on the water due to a combination of surface tension and their long legs being
covered with very fine hairs which help spread the load. They propel themselves
with the middle pair of legs. The individual in the photo below has no wings
but I’m not sure what this means as there is a high degree of wing variation in
gerrids, with some species having forms either with wings, with reduced wings
or with no wings.
And then it was time to get home, via the shop to pick up some milk, for a very late breakfast…
The
shadows produced by the dimpling of the water surface
where their feet make
contact are more obvious
than the ‘true’ shadow cast by the insect’s body.
And
robber flies were everywhere, buzzing noisily about, chasing each other, and
landing on any available substrate – bare sand, rocks, driftwood, dead
blackberry brambles or the narrowest grass stem. These robust flies (Family
Asilidae) are voracious predators and it was a little surprising not to see any
of the many clasping some unfortunate insect meal.
Yellow-winged
Grasshoppers Gastrimargus musicus regularly
fled from in front of me, clicking away some 5 metres or so to a new well camouflaged
position on flashing yellow wings. These are always difficult to relocate
in thick vegetation and tend to flush again before you’re close enough to see
them let alone lock a camera lens onto them, but the grasshopper below (sorry –
I don’t know what sort it is) was more obliging.
Lots of
Cabbage White butterflies about too, but they didn’t inspire any photographic
activity this time, and a few Meadow Argus butterflies which appeared
particularly bright orange rather than the somewhatbrowner form I’m more used to.
And then it was time to get home, via the shop to pick up some milk, for a very late breakfast…
