Category: wildlife

It has been a good wet season here, nothing dramatic like in many parts across northern Australia, but regular, moderate rainfall. After about 1.5 metres of rain since October, it is nice to see the sun for a whole day!

The bridging planks across our little creek have been submerged for a while.

Most of our frogs do not breed in fast-flowing, deep water, they prefer the shallow ‘creek’ that forms along our driveway. The Orange-thighed Treefrogs had an excellent season, with noisy orgies almost every night for weeks.

The finches love to bath in the shallow water:

Summer is the best time to see insects, like this Spiny Forest Katydid nymph.

It is also the season for cicadas. This summer we had especially many Golden Emperors:

Spiders are plentiful, too, like this tiny Jumping Spider. 6 of him would fit easily onto my fingernail:

Velvet Worms are not uncommon, but very secretive and seldomly seen. Humid conditions bring them to the surface:

They are not worms at all, and their stumpy legs are filled with fluid. For more interesting facts about them, have a look at this website: https://www.wettropics.gov.au/the-velvet-worm

New shoots everywhere:

Many birds are now showing their offspring around. Laughing Kookaburras are only occasional visitors here:

Bassian Thrushes are secretive, but youngsters sometimes do unexpected things, like perching high on a branch:

The latest addition to our group of Red-legged Pademelons:

 

Many of our guests have high-quality camera equipment and are excellent photographers.

Here is a selection of their images, taken while staying at the cabin:

 

More images are to be found in the bird gallery on our “birds and birding’ page.

Peter Day took some good video footage:

 

There are orchids to be found in bloom throughout the year, but spring seems to be a particularly good time.

From the possibly tiniest flower (1-1.5mm),

to our most spectacular

orchids are to be found in many places.

Since our last orchid blog a year ago, we added a few more species to our property’s list:

Tree Spider Orchid, Dendrobium tetragonum, by Julia Sumerling

Visiting nature photographer Julia Sumerling introduced me to seeing the natural world in a new light: Many birds and insects can see in the UV spectrum, and Julia patiently took this image under UV light with an elaborate set-up:

 

daylight                                                                                         UV light

I was hooked, and bought a small UV torch. Lichen, especially, change their appearance dramatically: these images were taken by our friend Manfred Schoeler:

daylight                                                                                      UV light

A walk through a nearby forest revealed more flowering orchid species. New to us was this Creeping Brittle Orchid.

It seems to be a good year for orchids: many species are flowering abundantly, in the dry Herberton Hills as well as in the rainforest.

For a few more orchid images from our property, check out our orchid gallery on the flora page.

It appears that the most common species of Lilly-Pilly here (Syzygium smithii , Creek Satinash) flowers and fruits most profusely every second year. In 2020, they attracted many bowerbirds (see my blogs from June and July 2020), and it is the same again this year.

“Birdwatching isn’t supposed to be that easy”,

4 Bowerbird species feeding together

A few weeks ago, our resident Satin Bowerbirds were joined by a couple of Spotted Catbirds, and now by Tooth-billed and Golden Bowerbirds. The latter seem to be juvenile birds: the Tooth-billed BB still has a yellow/orange gape and the Golden BB’s iris looks more brown than the female’s yellowish one.

Ian Wardell stayed in our cabin recently and kindly provided the bowerbird  photographs for this blog.

 

Our 3 resident mature Victoria’s Riflebirds have been joined by 2 more (we haven’t seen 5 black ones together before), and are taking turns with immature males on various display post and branches. We even saw two pairs of immatures displaying to each other close together! Unfortunately, they are often taking flight when one of the Grey Goshawks appears.

 

Dad Cassowary has paired up with Wattle, the dominant female, now, but is still not taking up her invitations to mate, when she sits down and patiently waits for him to approach. But she is persistent and follows him (almost) everywhere.

 

Zero, the 15 month old youngster, now has to avoid the adult birds, as they chase her/him with much vigour. This morning we listened to them crashing through the forest and splashing through the creek.

We named her/him ‘Zero”, because it doesn’t have any wattles (there was an injury to the area on the neck where the wattles should have developed when she/he was still very young)

 

The dominant male cassowary (“Dad”) in our area feels quite relaxed around us. So much so, that sometimes he sits down and dozes off for a while.

You wouldn’t really want to sit down on the forest floor at the moment, as there are still quite a few leeches. But what can a cassowary do?

Maybe keep the feet off the ground?

Quite impressive, those Velociraptor feet!

No, that’s how they often sit, it might be are more relaxing pose than it appears.

And then he slowly closed his eyes to take a few catnaps.