Yes, blowflies! This pesky species is the topic of our latest Bush Bites article.
Click here to read more!
Can you spare some time to participate in this national community survey?
It runs between 21 and 29 October, coinciding with National Bird Week.
We seem to spot the White Ibis everywhere, every day! In our local parks, at shopping centres, on the roadside – they’re very prevalent.
Why not record your sightings and contribute to the survey?
For more info, please click here.
Blowflies are not my favorite photography subject! When one with a bright yellow head and huge compound eyes showed up I took this photo – there was nothing else of interest around!
I had never seen it before so I looked it up and found that it was a Parasitic Snail Blowfly.
Probably Amenia imperialis, though the taxonomists as usual are looking to do more “splitting” so it will probably have a name change soon!
What was interesting is that very little is known about its life history, but what is known is fascinating. It seems that the adult Parasite Snail Blowflies feed on pollen and nectar, and that’s when it gets really interesting.
The females lay well developed larvae rather than eggs. The scientists call that “macrolaviporus” which is so obscure I couldn’t even find in a dictionary!
They lay larvae on land snails, which they eat alive. If they kill the snail before they are fully grown, they still pupate and emerge as small versions of the adult blowfly.
Blowflies are hardly beautiful, but this one is at least a bit different!
STOP IT FROM SEEDING!
Our Catchment abounds with resilient people and amazing stories! …. not to mention postcard-perfect scenery and diverse plant-life and wildlife!
We invite YOU to share your stories in our new online feature called “Bush Bites”.
Tell us about your encounters with wildlife, nature and people, your love of the Catchment and its characters, forgotten pieces of history, stories of today – we have a captive audience!
To start the ball rolling, Ed Frazer has provided some wonderful stories about the myriad of life on his Brookfield property – and he has some amazing photos to go with them!
Take a look! His first piece is a Never-ending Story about his encounters while taking photos of Mistletoe birds – it’s a great read!
Click here and prepare to be entertained!
And if you’d like to share your own story, please send an email to:
[email protected]
Location: The Hut, THECA Headquarters, 47 Fleming Road Chapel Hill
Type: Event
Organiser: Native Plants Queensland
Contact: Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Native Plants Queensland has extended an invitation to MCCG members to join them for what will be an informative and interesting evening. The Western Suburbs branch will meet on Tuesday evening, 7 November. The guest speaker for the evening will be Dale Arvidsson, Curator, Brisbane Botanic Gardens, presenting a talk entitled The Queensland Conservation Collection and Extension to the Botanic Gardens, Mt Coot-tha.
The Brown Honeyeaters are back on the mistletoe and it looks like the recent rains have encouraged them to breed again.
They are chasing the Mistletoebirds off, but I have now found the same mistletoe on other bottlebrushes about 100 metres away and the Mistletoebirds make quick work of flying between these bushes.
My curiosity got the better of me and I started looking into which mistletoe species I was observing. I soon found out that Dr John Moss was the local guru on mistletoes, because of his interest in the Butterflies and Invertebrates Club which he helped to establish.
The connection is that mistletoes are the host of caterpillars of the Jezebel butterflies. John and another butterfly enthusiast Ross Kendall have written a first-class book entitled “The Mistletoes of Sub-tropical Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria“.
From their book I have easily been able to find out that my mistletoe is the Yellow-Flowered or Long-Flowered Mistletoe (Dendrophthoe vittelina) and it is the host plant for the caterpillars of Scarlet, Red-banded and Black Jezebels and a large number of small Blue Azure butterflies.
One of the interesting facts I gleaned from their book is that some species of mistletoe are parasitic often on other mistletoes. This sound reasonable, as if the Mistletoebird has fed on one species and then goes to feed on a different mistletoe, it is quite likely to deposit the sticky undigested seed from the first species and it might grow.
But how did the first species get to a new host tree?
Well, the answer might be that I found the Mistletoebirds I was photographing were attracted to the bottlebushes to take nectar from the flowers and they could have seeds to deposit.
Now I reflect on it I think this all may have happened many years ago as these trees are about 35 years old and the mistletoes look quite old. Probably they were deposited as sticky seeds by Mistletoebirds several generations ago right under my eyes and I never noticed.
I am looking forward to photographing the brilliantly coloured Jezebel butterflies laying eggs on my mistletoes so the never ending story still has more chapters to come!
It is early October and the Mistletoebirds are back. Two males and one female.
The Brown Honeyeaters are still chasing them off, but not as vigorously this year as they haven’t started nesting yet.
The Mistletoebirds are eating the green berries that have formed from the flowers from the August flowering. The Mistletoe is having a small second flowering, which will spread out the availability of fruit over a longer period.
I have at last got my photo of a Mistletoebird eating Mistletoe, but there is still much to find out about the Mistletoebirds in the Bottlebrushes!
Both the male and female spent a lot of time taking nectar from the Bottlebrush flowers and just for a very brief moment moved on to the Mistletoe and shelled a fruit and off they went several hundred metres to where I suspect they have a nest.
And where were these photos taken? Right next to our staff carpark! In the photo below you can see the thicker, lighter green foliage of the Mistletoe in the top right of the Bottlebrush in the front. That’s where I took the photo of the bird shelling the berry.
Mistletoe usually grows 30 metres up the top of Ironbarks and other tall trees well out of easy reach of my cameras, so it has not been easy to get some nice close ups of the colourful Mostletoebirds that feed on their berries. Each winter I have been able to get a few photos when the Mistletoebirds come down to feed on the Broad-leaf Pepper shrubs that have similar size berries, but these are very dense shrubs and it has been difficult to get clear shots of these birds.
I found some Mistletoe on some old, but not very high, Bottlebrushes growing alongside one of our Adavale St ponds, so I staked them out last summer hoping to get some good photos of the Mistletoebirds feeding on the berries.
Unfortunately a pair of Brown Honeyeaters had decided to nest in the Mistletoe and aggressively chased out the Mistletoebirds when they came in so I never got any useful photos. The berries disappeared, however, so they or some other birds or animals must have been successful when I wasn’t watching.
The Mistletoe is flowering now, (late July) and there have been a number of visitors. Brown Honeyeaters, Scarlet Honeyeaters, Striped Honeyeaters, Little Friarbirds, and Spinebills, so the flowers must be a good nectar source.
There are lots of different Mistletoes and I could look this one up and see what the botanists have named it. They would tell me all about it being a type of parasitic plant that has sticky berries that Mistletoebirds deposit in their droppings on new plant hosts.
But I’m more interested in finding out for myself what is feeding, breeding, squabbling over it and when it flowers and fruits.
Will the Brown Honeyeaters nest there again this year?
I wonder which butterflies like Mistletoe flowers?
What about honey bees . . . ?
Location: Teralba Park, Mitchelton
Type: Workshop
Organiser: BCC Creek Catchment Officers
Contact: Anna Bourke: [email protected]
This event is free to catchment group members that have attended at least one of the WHAT series this year (catered event).
