Category: wildlife

Mum and joey have been around frequently, feeding on a variety of plants, like Acacia melanoxylon, Wilkiea pubescens, Smilax australis, Syzygium oleosum and Bursaria spinosa.

The little one is now climbing quite confidently and often feeding a little away from her mother.

I started to write this blog in February. Now in mid-April, the joey has grown considerably, and on one day we saw it on its own. Most of the time it is still close to mum and cuddling up to her often.

This male spent all day in one tree, about 5 metres from our veranda. Feeding, sunbathing, preening, snoozing, feeding, snoozing, feeding, pooping,…

I had a lazy day, too, watching him for hours. He was briefly joined by a Golden Bowerbird (sorry, no acceptable photograph) and some Satin Bowerbirds.

Who says that birdwatching is supposed to be hard?! And imagine, what great photographs someone with a better camera than my little Canon SX70 could take!

Over the last few days a lot more of the Symplocos fruit have ripened, the birds are spoilt for choice.

This male might have already finished breeding, there are a few juvenile doves around. Another male is sharing incubating duties with his mate in a nest nearby. He is sitting tight from about 9 am to 4.30pm. The female has the longer night shift.

There are doves calling almost all day long, it is difficult to estimate how many are here now. They should have plenty of fruits for another month.

Finally the Superb Fruit-doves are back in droves! Their favourite fruits here ( Symplocos cochinchinensis, which grow as a small understorey tree) are starting to ripen and we should see and hear a lot more of them over the next few weeks.

We enjoy hearing their deep ‘whoops’ and ‘ooms’ all over the forest.

For more information and photographs/short videos about those beautful small doves, have a look at our previous blog:

Superb Fruit-Doves

Most cicada species spend many years living as nymphs in the soil, feeding on plant roots. Depending on the species, and probably external conditions, there are mass hatchings in some years, when thousands emerge from the ground and hatch into the relatively short-lived (days to weeks) adult stage.

This summer is  such a year, not just for the Red Roarers (Psaltoda aurora), but also the Northern Double Drummers (Thopha sessiliba). The Northern Green Grocers (Cyclochita virens) are quite abundant every year, but they only call for about 15 minutes at dusk.  All three species are 60-70mm long – quite large!

Red Roarer and Northern Greengrocer

You can tell the difference between males and females by the difference in size of their opercula, which cover their sound organs.

Males have a mainly hollow abdomen and large sound organs.

Cicada-killer Wasps obviously can tell the difference between males, which are full of air, and females which are full of eggs, as they always catch females to drag into their burrows as food for their offspring.

To give you an idea how noisy Red Roares can be (and they call all day!), listen to this, with the volume on maximum:

If you’d like to hear the songs of, for example, the Deafening Cherrynose, the Sprinkler Squeaker or the Jungle Grinder, go to Dr Lindsay Popple’s website: