Category: wildlife

Cassowary Surprise

August 27, 2013 Christina

After mating throughout June our male cassowary (“dad”) disappeared, presumably sitting on a new clutch of eggs, while the local female continued to visit our garden infrequently.

She was here a few days ago, and after eating some palm fruits and lilly-pillies, made a deep, booming call. Shortly after that, there were two adult cassowaries drinking from our pond – dad was back!

Apparently he had been off his nest for a few days, abandoning it – maybe driven away by the pigs, which have been around recently.

Something looked strange about the female, and then we realized she was a stranger! She is at least as tall as “Missy”, our resident female, but with a taller casque and dark blotches on her two red wattles, one of which has two tips.

She might be the one who had a fight with Missy near “Cassowary House” recently.

Presently we are seeing dad always in the company of the new female, while Missy has been busy chasing the 10-month-old juvenile, which is, surprisingly, still visiting the area.

There does not seem to be a lot of ripe fruit available in the forest at the moment, but cassowaries also eat fungi and animals like worms, grasshoppers, mice and lizards.

Hopefully, dad will be able to put on enough weight to sustain him through another period of brooding. Male cassowaries sit on eggs for about 2 months without feeding.

dad and new female:

new female:

juvenile cassowary:

The September issue of the “National Geographic” magazine has an article on our ‘Big Birds’, with more photos of Dad, Missy, and last season’s chicks.

Cassowary Mating Season 2013

June 15, 2013January 12, 2020 Christina

How wonderful to be living in a place, where cassowaries do not only visit our garden almost daily for most of the year, but where one can even observe them mating (also see our blog from May 2012).

This year the local male cassowary raised three chicks, which were 7 months old when the female started to seek out his company at the beginning of May. Initially, he wasn’t interested in her advances, but by mid May the family had separated. We now have a single juvenile, and the other two travelling together, visiting. The adults started courting and mating in early June. This morning they performed in our garden, unperturbed by the noisy truck on Black Mountain Road (our local council is presently repairing the road, and we do fear for the cassowaries, who are frequently crossing. The juveniles are not as wary of traffic as the adults).

Sometimes we can tell that cassowary mating has taken place, without having actually witnessed it. Have a look at theses skid marks:

Minutes after this morning’s mating, the adults had just disappeared into the forest (we could still hear one of them booming several times in the distance), the single juvenile showed up for its breakfast of palm fruits. Several of our palm trees are providing a feast for wompoo and superb fruit-doves, catbirds, spectacled flying- foxes, white-tailed rats and cassowaries.

Butterflies May 2013

May 20, 2013January 29, 2020 Christina

North Queensland is particularly rich in butterflies, with more than 270 of Australia’s 420 described species occurring here. The Wet Tropics rainforests are the best places to find butterflies, and many species complete several generations per year, so most can be found throughout the year, but many adults are most abundant at the end of the wet season.

The largest species is the Cairns Birdwing (Ornithoptera euphorion), with the females reaching a wingspan of 125mm.

They are laying their eggs on a very small number of Aristolochia and Parastolochia species, of which we have many specimen in our garden and forest. Often, a male can be seen following a female:

The caterpillars incorporate the plant toxins in their bodies, and the adult butterfly is distasteful to predators, too, which allows them to sail leisurely through the air, whereas the Ulysses butterfly (Papilio ulysses) has a fast, erratic flight and always closes its wings when resting, exposing only the cryptically patterned underside.

I was very lucky to observe this one, which must have just emerged from its pupa: it sat for several minutes with outstretched wings, and when it flew off, it fluttered rather clumsily low to the ground.

A short time later, she was discovered by a male!

Blue Triangle (Graphium sarpedon) and Green-spotted Triangle (G.agamemnon) rarely stop to settle, flying powerfully and erratically.

Another common, larger butterfly is the Cruiser (Vindula arsinoe). Males establish a territory by perching high on a leaf in bright sunlight,

the same behaviour is shown by the male Varied Eggfly (Hypolimnas bolina):

The Large Green-banded Blue (Danis danis), a smaller species, prefers the darker, shady areas of the forest.

The aptly named Orchid Flash (Hypolycaena danis) can often be seen around our Dendrobium and Cattleya orchids. The caterpillars are short and chubby and have exactly the bright green colour of the leaves, so are very hard to spot. Usually, I only discover them when the damage to the plant becomes obvious.

This pretty flutterer is not a butterfly at all, but a day-flying moth, Milionia queenslandica

Since we do not want to harm all those beautiful butterflies by catching them with a net, identification is a slow process, but we will not run out of new species to add to our list for a long time.

For more details on the biology of the Birdwing butterfly, see the Wet Tropics Management Authority’s factsheet:

www.wettropics.gov.au/site/user-assets/docs/birdwingbutterflies.pdf

New Year’s eve in the Wet Tropics, January 2013

January 1, 2013January 29, 2020 Christina

We’ve had hardly any rain for the last 5 months and the frogs’ sex drive seem to have reached monsoonal levels, the weather pattern has not. Many frogs have started to call from their hiding places during the day (mainly Litoria caerulea, common green tree frogs and Litoria infrafrenata, white-lipped tree frogs, but also Litoria rothii, northern laughing tree frogs and Litoria jungguy, northern stony creek frog) for the last few weeks.

Michel, who visited from Switzerland a year ago, was surprised that Australian frogs are only active at night, not like the European frogs. (I think, here they avoid the harsh sunlight).

Yesterday, we finally got more than a drizzle, about 16mm over 20 hours, and we had a very different New Year’s evening party in our garden and forest:

The male in the photo was already successful in attracting a female, but the other two nearby called through the night, usually well-synchronized, taking turns, sometimes calling more than 100 times before stopping for a recharge.

Later in the night they were joined by Dainty Green Tree Frogs (Litoria gracilenta), and in the morning we found a lot of spawn in our pond.The eggs of those 2 species look very similar, floating in small rafts on the surface.

Amongst the birdseed in our feeder, there was a different egg: this morning a chestnut-breasted mannikin (Lonchura castaneathorax) lost(?) one there. How/why does that happen?

Many bird species are feeding their fledglings at the moment,

Graceful Honeyeaters (Meliphaga graclis), Mistletoe Birds (Dicaeum hirundinaceum), Pale-yellow Robins (Tregellasia capito) and Wompoo Fruit-Doves (Ptilinopus magnificus) are just some of them.

The young pademelon female (Thylogale stigmatica), presented in our “pademelon courtship” blog 5 months ago, now has a pouch young, which should soon be big enough to explore the world on its own feet.

Cassowary dad visits daily with his chicks, leaving droppings behind everywhere. They contain many seeds, e.g. Kuranda Quandong (Elaeocarpus bancroftii), Black Palm (Normanbya normanbyi) and Northern White Beech(Gmelina fasciculiflora).

Wishing you all a happy and fertile new year:

New Cassowary Chicks, December 2012

December 11, 2012January 29, 2020 Christina

“Our” cassowary made an appearance, with his 3 two-month-old chicks, one week ago.
The chicks are inquisitive, yet still keep very close to dad.
They all look very healthy and well fed. Quite a few trees are fruiting; several species of figs and laurels, Black Palms (Normanbya normanbyi) and Kuranda Quandongs (Elaeocarpus bancroftii)- the latter two might still be a bit too large for the chicks to swallow.
Unfortunately,”our” cassowary’s core territory , he had his nest there, is under threat:
the 28 ha rainforest property between us and Kuranda National Park has been advertised for sale.
Without interest and support from governments we are trying to raise funds to purchase and conserve said property in perpetuity.