We’ve all seen them!  They’re quite prevalent in our catchment.  They are large, colourful spiders suspended in impressive orb webs which seem to catch the sun’s rays – and which also catch your eye as you’re wandering past! 

These are the Golden Orb Weavers. 

Ed Frazer took a number of photos of Golden Orbs on his property. We consulted with Robert Raven, a respected arachnologist with Queensland Museum, to identify the spiders. 

Robert advised that Golden Orb spiders are of the genus Nephila.  He identified the spiders in Ed’s photos as being one of either two species which occur in our area: Nephila edulis or Nephila plumipes.  The primary difference between the two is a cone that occurs on the sternum near the mouthparts.     

Golden Orbs are virbrantly coloured, often with black and orange banded legs. The females are larger than the males. Their nests are generally placed between trees and shrubs, well above the ground and often littered with dead insects.

There is a wealth of information about Golden Orb Weavers on the web. If you’d like to learn more, Robert suggests visiting the Queensland Museum website. 

Meantime, please enjoy Ed’s photos and stop and take a look next time you see similar spiders in your own travels!

The next two shots are of males:

There is a male and female in the next shot (the smaller male is in the top centre of the photo, silhouetted against the tree):

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Late November 2017

The Brown Honeyeaters are back on the Mistletoe and it looks like the recent rains have encouraged them to breed again.

The connection is that Mistletoes are the host of the 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“.

Scarlet Jezebel taking nectar

FEATHERTAIL GLIDERS ARE THE MOST ATTRACTIVE ANIMALS – warm, energetic, bouncy, enormous eyes, a feather for a tail and able to curl up in the palm of hand.

They glide 20+m between trees. They are hard to find but are actually common in the Moggill Creek catchment.

Our neighbours about a kilometre away had been given a family of Feathertail Gliders that had been rehabilitated for by local Moggill wildlife carers for soft release back into the bush.

Soft releasing involves allowing the gliders to settle into the local environment in an aviary for a number of weeks. They typically feed on local flowering plants, mealworms, etc to build strength in readiness to be released back into the wild.

The aviary is then opened over a succession of nights, allowing them to explore the area but to return if desired for food and shelter during the day. This allows them to transition to fully wild animals quickly, but at their own pace.

But this time we struck an unlikely problem!

After a week or two, the local Boobook Owls (also very common) started visiting nightly. They would sit in front of our neighbour’s aviary and call loudly, surely attracted by the potential food.

It made for great photos of the Owls, but also made it impossible to release the gliders!

I was asked if we could move the gliders to my aviary (remember over a kilometre away) and release them away from the Boobooks.

Wonderful!! … I love gliders and although I had heard Bookbooks regularly calling in the distance, I had never heard them close to my house. After settling the gliders into my aviary, I kept them for two days and then planned to release them.

Soon after dusk on the planned release night, my daughter Nadia came to me and said that she could hear a scary blood curdling screaming sound in our back yard.

When we went to investigate we discovered an incredible family of five amazing Boobook Owls surrounding the aviary almost taunting the gliders to come out and play.

Not the night to release we decided, but I continue to ask myself some questions:

We released the gliders a few nights later and regularly hear the Boobooks in the distance. Now that the gliders have departed, the Boobooks are never as close or loud as the night of the planned release…..

In November 2017 I had another encounter with a cane toad, this time with a Cattle Egret. 

I watched the Egret re-positioning the cane toad and swallowing it. It had quite a battle getting it down!  You can see the bulge in its throat as it struggles to swallow such a large toad. 

I went down to the site and checked to see if it had regurgitated it but there was nothing. It just went on poking in the grass for insects afterwards with no obvious problems as you can see in the last photo. 

I had to take the photos into the sun but you can still see the action!

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I went out early on Christmas morning (2017) and got this sequence.

It appeared to me that the male Pheasant Coucal turned up, mated with the female bird and then gave her a frog.

Quite extraordinary!

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In this Bush Bite, we pose some questions to Vicki and Paul Campbell about their observations of Barking Owls and Boobooks and the owls’ breeding behaviours over many years.  Our heartfelt thanks to Vicki and Paul for sharing their experiences and photos with us! 

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Have you seen where the Boobooks are nesting?

We have two large Eucalypts on our place which have good nest hollows. I think Boobooks have used both trees. The first year of breeding was 2005.  In that year an adult was seen to exit a hollow in one of these trees. The following year two juveniles were seen emerging from a hollow in the other tree. In this case the babies’ begging call (Trill calling) was heard before they emerged from the hollow.

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Have they bred there every year?

Breeding occurred every year from 2005 to 2010. There was no breeding from 2011 to 2014. Trill calling was heard from our yard in 2015 and 2016, but I’m not confident that they bred here as the calling was only heard for one night and three nights respectively. When they breed in our place the trill calling is heard consistently for 4 to 5 weeks, including numerous sightings of daytime roosts.

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How did one lose its eye?

We don’t know how one of the juveniles lost its eye but one of two juveniles was located on the ground in 2010 after our attention was drawn by Pied Butcherbirds. It is quite possible that the butcherbirds were responsible for the eye loss.

Could it still feed itself?

The juvenile with the missing eye would still have been fed by the adults when the photo was taken.

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How long did they feed their young?

• In 2010 trill calling was heard from 20 November til 31st December. I assume the adults were still feeding the young at the end of this period.
• In 2006 trill calling was heard from 3rd December till 11 January 2007. There was a sighting of a juvenile catching its own food at the end of this period.

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Did the Blue-faced Honeyeaters drive them off?

The daytime roosts were often located by the mobbing activities and calls of Blue-faced Honeyeaters, Pied Butcherbirds, Pied Currawongs and Noisy Miners. Generally the owls stayed put.

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How close could you get to them?

We could get fairly close to the birds. Their favourite roost was the lower branches of anaxe-handle wood tree, Aphananthe philppinensis. This was just above head height and could be viewed easily due to the slope going down to the creek.

Do they keep you awake at night with their calling?

Trill calling started just on dusk and was sometimes heard during the evening but it did seem to cease. Maybe the birds moved away for part of the night. We certainly weren’t kept awake by their calls.

 

Did they stay around when the Barking Owl arrived?

The Barking Owls preceded the Boobook Owl breeding records. The Barking Owls were in our yard and along Moggill Creek from October 2004 til July 2005. That was a joyous time!

Have you seen what they are feeding their young?

No real observations of food were seen. We did find the remains of a Noisy Miner under one of our Eucs which I suspect was a food item. On one occasion one of the juveniles was seen to catch something small, presumably an insect.You may also be interested to know that there were usually two juveniles, but only one on two occasions and three on one occasion.

 

Two species of Wallaby are common in the Moggill Creek Catchment area. They are the Red-necked Wallaby and the Swamp Wallaby.

The Swamp Wallaby is a little smaller than the Red-necked, and on our property they occupy different areas.

The Swamp Wallaby lives in the more heavily covered areas and is seldom seen during the daytime. It feeds on a wide range of shrubs and weeds and also takes fungi and some grasses. It is usually on its own or seen as a mother with its joey.

The Red-necked Wallaby grazes on grasses and weeds in the more open areas at dawn and dusk, and it will keep on feeding into the daylight in overcast weather and during drought when there is little succulent grass or weeds.  The Red-necked Wallaby is more sociable and in seen in small groups of females that are probably previous offspring.

The two species are easily distinguishable. The Swamp Wallaby can be identified by the ‘Robber’s Mask’ on its face and its white-tipped tail.  From a distance the Swamp Wallaby travels in a more horizontal position than the Red-necked Wallaby.

 

The Red-necked Wallaby

 

Both Wallabies were captured on my Infra-red cameras feeding in the dark as late as 11pm at night.

When we came to Brookfield in the early 1970s we thought we had Pretty-faced Wallabies (now commonly called Whiptails). Gordon Grigg said there used to be a group living up Gold Creek Road near Brian Leahy’s property. It would be interesting to hear if anyone has them on their property. They have a stronger white stripe on the face and white ear-tips.

Gordon says there are Red-necked Pademelons, smaller than the other wallabies, near the Gold Creek Reservoir. I have seen one on our property at Adavale Street, but it disappeared under the Lantana before I could photograph it.

A close-up shot of the Swamp Wallaby:

Do you ever feel you are being watched? Hanging out in the bush, I often do!

Sometimes I look around and see a Swamp Wallaby staring from the darkest undergrowth, a Yellow Robin hanging on to a vertical tree or a Water Dragon watching from a distance ….

One day at my home in Brookfield, I looked around and found an amazing face watching me from the inside of a glider box, a classic cute face – soft, round, with disproportionately large eyes ….

At first I thought it was a Squirrel Glider but eventually worked out it was a special bird of the night, an Owlet Nightjar.

Owlet Nightjars are related to Frogmouths and occur across all of Australia. They spend their day in hollows and are most common in dry wooded areas. They are common in the Moggill Creek Catchment. At night, they feed on the wing on live insects, like a nocturnal Willy Wagtail.

I have come to learn that Owlet Nightjars are resident at our Brookfield home year around. In my yard, they have about six different hollow homes that they rotate between – some natural and some artificial boxes. I often find one of them at the entrance of the hollow in the day discretely sunning itself. Their call is a soft churring sound and once I came to recognise their calls, I have the pleasure of hearing them regularly both day and night.

My learnings:

• Protect every hollow tree, they are extremely precious to our native animals & birds;
• Take time to be present when in nature in Moggill Creek Catchment, there are special surprises everywhere; and
• Leave a legacy by putting up as many artificial nest boxes as possible.

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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!

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Late November 2017

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“.

Scarlet Jezebel taking nectar

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!

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Early  October 2017

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.

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Late July 2017

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 . . . ?

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