Creekside Street Park has a lovely play area for children, with wide expanses of parkland to kick a ball around or go for a walk!
Why not take the kids along for some fun on Sunday morning 25 February?
You’ll find the park tucked away in Kenmore Hills.
And while you’re keeping an eye on the kids, you can help us out with some bushcare activities down by the creek.
For more info see our Working Bee calendar or contact Jim Pope on 07 3374 4181.
For many years there have been unsubstantiated rumours that a Red-necked Pademelon had been seen in the vicinity of Gold Creek Road.
But no-one could provide proof, so we weren’t really sure!
We now have evidence that this small elusive marsupial does indeed live locally.
During evenings at home on his Broofkield property, Ed Frazer has often heard a very distinctive single thump. This is the sound a pademelon makes when it is disturbed: it sends a warning to predators by thumping its hind feet.
Ed has never seen the animal as they are particularly cautious, easily frightened and notoriously difficult to spot.
So Ed set up his Infra-red triggered camera and recently was fortunate enough to pick up the following shot of the timid Red-necked Pademelon:
The rumour has become reality: we now have proof that the Red-necked Pademelon is present in the lower areas of Brookfield! Very heartening news indeed.
Note: to learn more about the Red-necked Pademelon, visit the Queensland Museum website.
Location: QCAT
Type: Event
Organiser: THECA (The Hut Environmental and Community Association
Contact: 07 3878 5088
Open to Creek Catchment members. For more info visit the THECA website
Location: Kholo – Brisbane West
Type: Open garden
Organiser: BCC – Community Conservation Partnerships Program
Contact: email to [email protected]
Open to Land for Wildlife members
Location: Northern Region – To be confirmed
Type: Workshop
Organiser: BCC – Community Conservation Partnerships Program
Contact: Andrew Wills – Phone: 3407 0215 or email: [email protected]
For Habitat Brisbane members
Location: To be confirmed
Type: Event
Organiser: BCC – Community Conservation Partnership Programs
Contact: [email protected]
Open to everyone
Location: Belmont Services Bowls Club, 20 Narracott Street, Carina
Type: Event
Organiser: BCC – Community Conservation Partnerships Program
Contact: Andrew Wills – Phone: 3407 0215 or email: [email protected]
Open to everyone. Join us and our guest speakers, Professor Darryl Jones, ecologist Stefan Hattingh and local bushcarer Heather Barnes to hear about Brisbane urban bird behaviours, gliders in suburban settings and White Hill Reserve biodiversity preservation. Book your spot through Eventbrite by Tuesday 1 May 2018.
In this month’s issue of Feather Fascination, Jim Butler explains physiological features of the Australasian Darter which enable it to perform so many remarkable and varied manoeuvres.
It can dive into water with barely a ripple, swim underwater for 30 metres but it can also soar swiftly and beautifully at high elevations on air thermals.
Find out also about their spear fishing techniques and learn why we often see them fanning their wings, as in the photo of a female below, provided by Ed Frazer.
Click to read on: Feather Fascination February 2018
STOP FOR A MOMENT TO THINK ! Can you see the beauty in a spider?
If you read our latest Bush Bites article you may find yourself captured by the magic of the Golden Orb Weaver!
These large, often strikingly colourful spiders are plentiful in our Catchment and you will have no trouble finding one, even in your own yard!
Ed Frazer has teamed with respected arachnologist Robert Raven to introduce us to the world of the Golden Orb Weaver.
Click here to read on.
Recently, Ed Frazer was fascinated by some wonderfully colourful insects he frequently encounters on his Brookfield property.
It is quite likely that you may also have seen these little bugs!
Ed was so intrigued that he took some photos and sought the advice of Geoff Monteith, a respected local entomologist.
Geoff kindly identified the insects and filled in some fascinating details about them.
They are Mallotus Harlequin bugs.
We soon learned that these little bugs have some intriguing and highly developed behaviours. There is an explanation for their vibrant colouring as well.
We contacted Prue Cooper-White, an MCCG member who is a keen wildlife photographer.
Prue graciously contributed some of her own shots. Combined with Ed’s photos, they give us a good understanding of some of the intriguing behaviours of these little bugs.
Here is the info provided by Geoff, together with some wonderful shots from Prue and Ed!
This is a common bug out in the Moggill Catchment way.
It’s name is Cantao parentum or the Mallotus Harlequin Bug.
It breeds on Mallotus trees, mostly on Mallotus philippensis but also on the smaller Mallotus claoxyloides, which looks like the one the nymphs are all sitting on in Ed’s picture below:
Females lay batches of eggs on the undersides of leaves and guard them by sitting on top of them until they hatch.
All bugs have tubular piercing and sucking mouthparts (called a rostrum) under their head and they insert that into the plant to suck out the sap as food, as in the following photo:
Here’s a different type of bug. We’ve included it because it is showing off the rostrum beneath it’s head very well:
A Stilida indecora bug cleaning its rostrum – photo courtesy of Ed Frazer This is a bug called Stilida indecora and it feeds only on trees of the family Sapindaceae. It seems this one is feeding on a Cupaniopsis, which is the right family. This bug is cleaning its rostrum by wiping the sharp tip of it with its front feet.
Most bugs have a smelly secretion which they can squirt out through gland apertures which open on the back of the nymphs and on the underside of the thorax of adults.
Cantao is no exception and they will readily squirt this out when handled. It is designed to prevent predators, especially birds, from eating them.
Their bright colour is “warning colouration” designed to make birds, who get a mouthful of burning smelly secretion, remember not to try to eat another bug that looks like that!
But Cantao has another spectacular trick!
Most insects hide away during winter to avoid being eaten during their hibernating non-feeding winter siesta. By the time winter comes all Cantao have progressed from the nymphal stage to the extra brightly coloured adult stage, as in the one feeding on the fruit in the photo below:
In winter all these adults come together into big clusters of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of individuals which all cling to the top foliage of a tree where they form a big round brilliantly coloured ball which can be the size of a soccer ball.
They then sit quietly in this position all through winter until spring comes and they disperse and go back to Mallotus trees to mate and lay their eggs for the next summer generation to get under way.
What they are doing in these big winter clusters is practicing ‘safety in numbers’ where, with their combined defensive smell capacity, no bird or animal would dare attack them. The trees they cluster on are not usually their Mallotus food plant trees and more usually are some taller tree. I’ve often seen their clusters in the high branches of hoop pines.
Editor’s note: Many thanks to Geoff, Ed and Prue for providing such an insight into just a small part of the microscopic world that surrounds us. Not sure what our readers’ reaction is, but I find it somewhat remarkable and gratifying that such tiny insects have such highly developed and sophisticated behaviours!
