The Easter bilby

The bilby is a bandicoot-like creature that lives in the desert areas of Australia. It is listed as endangered for some of the usual reasons – feral cats and habitat loss.

Education bilby working for its keep; photo by Sherie Ford

A couple of chocolate companies in Australia make chocolate bilbies instead of chocolate bunnies for Easter, and part of the profits go to conservation campaigns. There’s a fair chance that bilbies will be saved, because at least public sympathy is with them – they have the “cute” factor. This is unfortunately not the case for less cute species.

So make sure that if you eat lots of chocolate this Easter, it’s in the shape of an Easter bilby!

Not kissing anybody under this lot

In Australia we have something like 90 species of mistletoe, unlike Europe which has only one (Viscum album), the one with white flower traditionally smooched under at Christmas. But in Australia we don’t have a tradition of kissing under mistletoe, as it’s regarded as a bit of a nuisance plant in some places, killing off garden trees if there are too many on one tree.

I first became aware that we had a local mistletoe when I saw a mistletoe bird (Dicaeum hirundinaceum) in a strange plant, with pretty red and orange flowers, hanging off a bottlebrush in the backyard.

Mistletoe bird; photo by Aviceda, Wikimedia Commons

The mistletoe bird eats, among other things, the berries of the mistletoe. The seeds are very sticky, and the bird has to wipe its beak or behind (if the seed has passed through the digestive tract) on a tree branch to get rid of it. Lorikeets and honeyeaters also spread the seeds.

The germinating mistletoe sends out a searching tip, then forms a ‘haustorium’, an attaching organ that taps the water and nutrients of the host plant. The mistletoe does its own photosynthesis, so is considered only semi-parasitic. It will nevertheless die if its host tree dies. There’s a theory that mistletoe attaches to already weakened trees -  seems silly if it’s intending to survive.

Some species of mistletoes are very specific about which host plants they choose; others not so much. Some even choose other mistletoes.

I didn’t get a shot of those pretty mistletoe flowers before the bottlebrush died, though. But local botanist Brigitte – she of the many serious botanical expeditions into the serious outback – has kindly given me permission to use some of her many botanical photos. I still don’t have a shot of my local mistletoe, although a neighbour who is a mistletoe enthusiast assures me he has seen more of them on my property.

This mistletoe lives near Southwood National Park in Queensland …

Mistletoe flower, Ameyema preissii; photo by Brigitte Stievermann

The next one (Amyema maidenii) is from the Tanami Road, near the Yuendumu turnoff, Northern Territory – real desert country.

Amyema maidenii flower; photo by Brigite Stievermann

Here’s Dendrophthoe acacioides on its host, our native boab (Adansonia gregorii), near Wyndham Port, Western Australia …

Dendrophthoe acacioides on the native boab (Adansonia gregorii); photo by Brigitte Stievermann

Here’s the Dendrophthoe acacioides flower …

Dendrophthoe acacioides flower; photo by Brigitte Stievermann

and the fruit …

Dendrophthoe acacioides fruit; photo by Brigitte Stievermann

Here’s Lysania subfalcata, 103 km south of Burke, NSW …

Lysiana subfalcata, on the Mitchell Highway, NSW; photo by Brigitte Stiebermann

… and Lysania exocarpi, near Windorah, Queensland …

Lysiana exocarpi, Qld; photo by Brigitte Stievermann

Neighbour Paul also kindly sent me some photos of mistletoe. Here’s a Viscum from family Viscaceae he found as a parasite on another mistletoe (Amyema miquelli) near Chinchilla, Queensland …

Viscum species parasitic on Amyema miquelli times 40 magnification; photo by Paul Brennan

Here’s the flower of the plant it was attached to …

Amyema miquelli, host of parasitic viscum; photo by Paul Brennan

Here’s a species of Dendrophthroe he found west of Tenterfield, NSW …

A species of Dendrophthroe, found west of Tenterfield; photo by Paul Brennan

So the sighting of one small bird opened up a whole world of plants I didn’t know much about.

Many thanks to Brigitte and Paul for the use of their photos.

Emerald-spotted tree frog

It seems to be frog-spotting season. This one decided to live in my bathroom for a few days. It’s the emerald-spotted tree frog, also known as Peron’s tree frog (Litoria peronii).

Peron's tree frog

You can see the green spots in the photo above, but with the flash they stand out even more, although the skin looks paler than in real life …

Peron's tree frog

This one was 50 mm nose to tail, just as stated in the reference books. You can hear its call from this page.

Now it’s autumn and cooling down, I guess the frogs are going to be going into hibernation – their heart beat and breathing slow down and they rest in hiding places until the weather warms up.  The subtropics never get super cold, so winter is not too much of a problem for them. My bathroom is not the best place to be undisturbed, though.

Have a good rest, froggies!

A great barred frog

Last night was one of those weird nights when the wind was swooshing the trees around, and it couldn’t make up its mind whether it was cool or warm, so tried both alternately. The land itself seemed restless and it was not conducive to sleeping, so when Andrew found this frog I had a midnight look at it. It is the great barred frog (Mixophyes fasciolatus), common in our area.

The great barred frog; photo by Andrew Roberts

I’d often heard them ‘wark’-ing away on wet summer nights, their call deep and resonating. But I imagined from the sound that they would be a lot bigger than this one – 7 cm from nose to rear end. This is within the normal range of 6 to 8 cm for adults.

It’s called ‘barred’ because of the markings on the legs.

You can here the sound from a link on this page.

I’ll now be able to put a face to the sound in the night – and a very nice face it is, too.

Tai chi with stick insect

I don’t practise tai chi, but it sure felt like it this morning when I was handling a stick insect a friend brought for me to see. She’s often out maintaining her plantings, and sees a lot of interesting insects. It’s likely to be the titan stick insect (Acrophylla titan).

The insect kept climbing up, and I had to keep moving around to prevent it climbing onto my shoulder or head. This resulted in a kind of dance that would have reminded tai chi exponents of how not to do tai chi.

Titan stick insect

Stick insect auditioning for Cirque du Soleil

The titan stick insect has been measured as the second-longest insect in Australia. I measured this one as 150 mm from top of head to tail fork.

It moved in a fairly slow but determined manner. You can read about the species of Australian stick insects here.

This photo shows the serrations on the legs …

Serrations are visible on the forelegs

This one just wanted to keep walking up. When it got to the end of my fingers, it paused with its front legs stretched out in the air. If I let those legs touch something, it moved forward again. Otherwise, it just stayed in that position.

Head of the stick insect

Tail view

The Lord Howe Island phasmid, which I wrote about here, is related.

Preparing to hide under a leaf

I hid it under some foliage. Stick insects feed on leaves at night, and this one went into ‘stick’ camouflage position, presumably because it was still daytime – front legs stretched out together and back legs together, doing a credible imitation of a long thin brown twig.

I’ve seen bigger titans on my property, but never had a chance to take a photo before. Many thanks to Jan for bringing it around.

A Liebster award!

I got a nice surprise back in January. Lynette from SoulSong Art kindly gave me a Liebster award. (“Liebster” seems to mean “beloved” in German. In English I guess it would mean “favourite” in this circumstance.) I’ve put off accepting it until now, as it involves certain obligations: I had to decide on five blogs, each with fewer than 220 followers [update: a little research shows this can vary a bit - some sites say under 200, some under 300], to pass it on to. The idea is to bring attention to these small blogs who deserve more attention.

Rules for giving the award

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you (thank you, SoulSong Art!).
2. Reveal the five blogs you have chosen and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award onto your blog (see above).
4. Request the people you have chosen to receive the award pass it on to their favourite bloggers.

And the winners are …

In no particular order …

1. The Nature of Robertson: about nature and other doings in Robertson, Southern Highlands, NSW

2. The House of Fran_mart: about nature in rural Australia

3. Coastal Georgia Birding: birding on Jeckyll Island, Georgia, USA

4. Brazen Artifice: about the next big thing, 3D printing

5. Anybody seen my focus?: an Aussie transplant to Georgia, USA, photographing nature

Blog on, folks!

They’re doing it – they’re doing it now!

I have a long-standing fascination with the deep ocean. Hence my interest in Her Deepness Sylvia Earl, and my books on what’s known so far: Van Dover’s “The Octopus’s Garden” and “The Ecology of Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents”, Broad’s “The Universe Below”, Rice’s “Deep Ocean”, Chave and Malahoff’s “In Deeper Waters” and Cameron’s “Aliens of the Deep”.

It was originally thought that not much lived in the cold, dark and high pressure, but then nobody had really looked. In fact, there’s a bunch of strange animals down there, a large food web, relying at base not on sunlight as the source of life but on sulfur-eating bacteria. You can see images of some deep sea animals at the NOAA website here and here.

In places there are vents spewing super-hot (measured up to  464 degrees C) water containing mineral sulfides, and cold seeps with springs releasing methane and hydrogen sulfide-rich water.

Now James Cameron, he of “Avatar” and other multi-buck-making movies and explorer extraordinaire, has financed and had built a submersible to take him to the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench. He’s already gone on a test expedition to 7260 metres in the New Britain Trench (not quite to the bottom of it), and writes about his experience here.

A few things went wrong:

“Sitting down there at 27000′, alone in the dark, with no comms, no contact whatsoever with the world so far above, and nothing but the ingenuity of the engineering to get me back … it’s simultaneously scary and exhilarating. It’s the precipice we put ourselves on by choice, to test ourselves and our machines.”

But nothing he couldn’t get out of. Better for it to happen here than on the main expedition, going to 10,900 metres.

Assuming success, Cameron will be only the third person to go to the very bottom of the sea. The first two were Walsh and Piccard in 1960.

You can read the expedition journal here. I’ll be following it with bated breath.