Australia: Two Peoples Bay

It may be hard to explain why I wanted to go to Two Peoples Bay. For a birder, of course, it's almost the only spot for two of Australia's rarest birds, the Western Bristlebird (Dasyornis longirostris) and the famous Noisy Scrub-Bird (Atrichornis clamosus).  However, they are both extraordinary skulkers, and my chance of seeing either of them on a single morning's visit was remote indeed (true to form, and to spare you the suspense, I didn't see either one).  In a way, though, that didn't matter.  The Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve is one of the shrines of avian conservation, and on September 12, 2013, I was on a pilgrimage.

The story goes back to 1961.  Global birding was in its infancy, and the idea that a bird long-thought extinct could come back from the dead - now almost a commonplace - was still extraordinary.  The Noisy Scrub-Bird had not been seen or heard since 1889.  It was gone and, pretty much, forgotten despite extensive searches early in the twentieth century.  Then came the announcement: a population, of what proved to be about 100 birds, had been found at Two Peoples Bay - not in a remote area, but only a short drive east of Albany, within reach of the area's main picnic ground.  The news went round the world, and this obscure, almost flightless little brown bird became the focus of an intense conservation and recovery plan that continues to this day.  This was a place I had to see - and it doesn't hurt that it is a very beautiful spot.

It's also a very popular one - not surprisingly.  Most visitors, of course, come for the beach (at least in warmer weather).

Of course I was more interested in the heathland behind the beach...

...and soon left Eileen to relax at the picnic area while I went off for a it of botanical/ornithological exploration.

Though Two Peoples Bay is famous for its (skulking and very shy) rarities, the only birds I managed to photograph were common ones.  This is a White-browed Scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis), as common here as in eastern Australia.  Note the spotted breast, typical of the western races which were once treated as a separate species, the Spotted Scrubwren (S. maculatus).

And here is the ubiquitous New Holland Honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae).

The heathland behind the beach was impenetrable, packed with densely-grown, often prickly bushes.  This is Wedge-leaved Dryandra (Banksia obovata), a heathland endemic near the western edge of its range.

Coastal Woolly Bush (Adenanthos sericeus) is even more local, found only around Albany and further east near Esperance.  It is one of the few members of the protea family (Proteaceae) with individual flowers, rather than masses of small flowers clumped into a larger inflorescence (as in the Dryandra above).

Blue Smokebush (Conospermum caeruleum) is another member of the Proteaceae endemic to the southwest.  It is one of over fifty species in its genus, all confined to Australia.

Paperbarks (Melaleuca) belong to the Myrtaceae, the same family as Eucalyptus.  Many of them are trees including the infamous M. quinquinerva, a serious invasive pest in Florida. This one, which I think is M. striata, is one of the shrubby species.

I think this is a Melaleuca too, but it is odd to see one with yellow flowers instead of the usual pink, purple or white.

Australia is loaded to the teeth with members of the pea family.  This is, if I have identified it correctly, Hairy Red Pea (Gastrolobium leakeanum, formerly Nemcia leakeana).  It's certainly something similar, but leakeanum is supposed to be a montane plant, restricted to the nearby Stirling Ranges, so it could be a coastal relative.

Painted Lady (Gompholobium scabrum) is another shrubby pea, with very attractive flowers. It is widespread through the Southwest.

 

 Australia has a great many pea flowers that look like this, but I am going to make a guess and say that this is one of the flame peas (Chorizema sp).

I knew that my chances of finding the Noisy Scrub-Bird were pretty much nil, but I had to at least try.  This required a trek up a hillside trail into an area that was supposed to hold Scrub-Bird territories.  Using a tape was, of course, an absolute no-no, so I had a quiet listen first just to give me some idea of what the bird sounded like (beyond the fact that it was, presumably, noisy).

And I did, I think, hear one, from the dense shrubbery alongside the trail.  It was close by, but impossible to see (actually getting a look at one can take days of effort).  Here is my iPhone recording, slightly edited, with Henrik Grönvold's painting of the bird from Mathews' Birds of Australia - it certainly sounds like recordings of the species I have heard, but perhaps someone who knows better can confirm my tentative ID?  If so, it may be the closest I have gotten, not just to this species, but to the entire family Atrichornithidae (consisting, mind you, of only two species, this and the Rufous Scrub-Bird (Atrichornis rufescens) that I have repeatedly missed in Queensland.  It was an encounter, even by sound alone, worth cherishing.

Singing Scrub-Birds (if that's what they were) aside, the hillside trail was worth it for the flowers. In older books this flower is listed as Milkmaids (Burchardia umbellata), but that species has been subsumed into another (B. congesta).  That may be what this is, or it could be the similar, but narrower-petalled, B. multiflora, which also occurs near Albany.  Anyway, Burchardia is a member of the autumn-crocus family (Colchicaceae).

This is certainly a Goodenia, and I think it is the widespread G. berardeana.  There are, however, an awful lot of Goodenias in Western Australia, and I haven't ploughed through them all. 

There are a lot of Pimeleas, too, but I think this handsome flower is Banjine (Pimelea longiflora).  Pimelea is a member of the Thymelaeaceae, a diverse family that includes garden shrubs like Daphne and the ramins (Gonostylus), tropical Asian rainforest trees now hard pressed by illegal loggers.

I think these are a sort of banjine too, but I have no idea which one.

This may be a species of Conostylis, a member of the kangaroo paw family (Haemadoraceae), but to be honest I'm not at all sure. It's flowers aren't exactly like anything in my guidebooks, and they don't match any photos I've found on the web either. Can anyone out there lend a hand?

These I do know; in fact I featured them in my last posting. They are flower heads of the peculiar Drumsticks (Dasypogon bromeliifolius), a member of the altogether peculiar Australian family Dasypogonaceae. 
 

Grasses, sedges and the like, dominant though they may be in the world's flora, are usually not a focus for a wildflower watcher. Most are wind-pollinated, have (as a consequence, since they aren't trying to attract anything) unobtrusive flowers, and are miserable for a non-expert (and, as I have repeatedly declared here, 'non-expert' describes me to a T when it comes to botany) to identify. 

There is one group, however, that I find quite fascinating and, often, very beautiful. These are the restios (Restionaceae) and their relatives, frequently spectacular-looking rushes with a centre of distribution in Southern Africa and Madagascar. There are about 150 species in Australia and a few others scattered through the Southern Hemisphere, so the family looks like another Gondwanaland relic (despite the fact that the single species in South America may be a wind-blown recent arrival from New Guinea. 

A few southwest Australian restio-like plants are placed in a family of their own, the Anarthriaceae.  This is one of them, a member of Anarthria itself, one of only three genera the family. 

All the plants in this series of photographs appear to be Anarthia scabra.  The drooping inflorescences on the first two are apparently typical of a male plant, with the remainder being the upright inflorescences of the female (yellow when young, reddish when older).

Creamy Candles (Stackhousia monogyna) was formerly placed, with a few other genera, in the tiny family Stackhousiaceae, but recent reclassifications have dumped it (with its relatives) into the much larger bittersweet family (Celastraceae). 

These clusters of colourful stamens are typical Eucalyptus flowers, possibly of Bell-fruited Mallee (E. preissiana) but don't quote me.

Mountain Kunzea (Kunzea montana) is a localized endemic found only in the Albany region and its surrounding mountains.  Like Melaleuca, it is a member of the myrtle family (Myrtaceae).  Kunzea is a large genus confined to Australia (except for two species in New Zealand), with most of its species in the southwest.

The aptly named Southern Cross (Xanthosia rotundifolia) is an austral member of the carrot family (Apiaceae, or Umbelliferae as we used to call it). It  is one of the most distinctive southwestern flowers - or, to be more accurate, inflorescences, as the structure that catches your eye is not the flower but a set of bracts decorating the whorled flower head, or umbel. The flowers themselves are the small structures at the centre of each arm of the 'cross'. 

From the height of the trail I could look out from the Scrub-Bird's territory over the bay (which is called Two Peoples, by the way, not in reference to native Australians but (according to Wikipedia) to an 1803 incident in which an American and a French vessel anchored here at the same time).

Before we headed back to Albany to resume our route, I came across a sign that although I had seen none, I was not the only large mammal in the vicinity. A Western Grey Kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus) had passed this way, probably the night before. By dusk it would be active again, hopping along the trails where I had walked, but by then Eileen and I would be away to the north.

Australia: Giant Trees and Windswept Coasts

On September 11, 2013, our second full day in the far southwest of Australia, we drove eastwards from Walpole, with its attractive views of the Southern Ocean, to Albany, passing from the humid karri belt into the slightly drier jarrah.  If the trees here were not, in general, a match for the towering karri, we were still in a true land of giants.  Here were some of the largest deciduous trees in the world.
 

You can get from Walpole to Albany on a highway. We decided instead to take the inland route, along Hill Top Drive past one of Western Australia's most well-known tourist attractions, the Valley of the Giants in the Tingle State Forest. 

The trees here, though there are still Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor) among them, are not the majestic columns that we saw further west.  This is slightly drier, more open forest, and the trees are somewhat more gnarled.

That doesn't mean that they are small.  This is the home of the Red Tingle (Eucalyptus jacksonii), and along the Ancient Empire boardwalk there are some enormous ones.  The biggest are tourist attractions in themselves, and the boardwalk surrounds them as much to protect the tree as to provide access.

 

The Red Tingle is a highly-localized species, its former range hemmed in as drier conditions extended into the southwest.  This forest, part of the Walpole-Nornalup National Park, is its stronghold.  The largest trees have heavy, butttressed trunks sixteen metres and more around at the base.

The most famous is the Giant Tingle, an astonishing 24 metres around at the base and some 400 years old.  That is not old by the standards of some trees, but this is supposed to be the oldest living eucalypt on Earth.  Its centre has been hollowed out by forest fires (a not uncommon thing for tingles), but it still stands.

The tingle forest has a number of specialties (including endemic frogs and spiders), but in the understorey we found some of the same plants we had seen at Beedelup Falls:

White Clematis (Clematis pubescens)...

and Tassel Flower (Leucopogon verticillatus), this time in full bloom.

We decided not to take the well-known canopy walk (well, it started to rain just as we got there and we had little desire to pay for the privilege of standing in a a rainstorm 40 metres up on a metal walkway), but I did poke around the parking lot a bit.  This Australian Raven (Corvus coronoides) seemed to be doing the same thing.

 

This White-browed Scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis) preferred, instead, to prowl around the edges.

Proof, I'm afraid, that not everyone appreciates birds... (it's actually an ad for a car rental company)

 As we continued further to the east the tall forest fell behind us, and we entered a belt of mallee, a type of woodland in which the trees usually lack any sort of central trunk - a considerable contrast with the columnar trees of the karri and tingle forests. This is dry, open, sunny country, and here we started to see larger numbers of of wildflowers along the roadside verges. 

A dense layer of shrubbery surrounded the trees, decorated with sprays of yellow and white flowers.

Among the bushes we found the Showy Dryandra (Banksia formosa), its flower heads still not fully open.  This is another of the proteas.  It is a far southwestern endemic, but one frequently planted in Australian gardens.  This plant used to be called Dryandra formosa, but all the dryandras were moved to the large genus Banksia in 2007.

Beneath the shrubs was an array of wildflowers.  This is one of Australia's many pink-and-orange pea flowers, but I am not sure which one.

  

 In any part of the world where a burst of spring wildflowers follows a long dry season, including both southwestern Australia and the South African Cape region, bulbous  plants, which can store nourishment during long periods of dormancy, are important parts of the flora. This is an example. It is a member of the Australasian genus Patersonia, the native irises (Family Iridaceae).

 

 

 

There are a number of species in the  Southwest, all with very similar-looking flowers, and though I had first identified this one as the most widespread, Purple Flags (Patersonia occidentalis), it could be one of the others. I am not at all sure that this is the same species as the one in the previous pair of photographs. The area we were driving through is also the center of the range for another species, Patersonia babianoides,  and I am not sure how to tell the two apart.

Some of the Southwestern specialties are downright odd. This is a dry flower head of Drumsticks (Dasypogon bromeliifolius), surely an appropriate floral name if ever there was one (it is also known as Pineapple Bush).

   

Here is a flower head in full bloom.  Dasypogon used to be included in the Family Xanthorrhoeaceae, with the equally odd-looking Australian grass trees.  Molecular studies have, however, shown that it is only distantly related to the grass trees, and it has now been moved, with a few other genera, into a new family, Dasypogonaceae.  In case you want to know, the Dasypogonaceae differs from the Xanthorrhoeaceae "in absence of flavonols, leaves with anomocytic stomata and lacking secretory cavities, the ovary unilocular or trilocular with only one ovule per locule, the seed testa without phytomelan, and the coeoptile-less seedling".  There you have it.

 A few of the most spectaular roadside plants of the southwest don't actually belong there.  This is Bulbil Watsonia or Bugle Lily (Watsonia meriana var. bulbillifera), a garden escapee from that other great repository of Southern Hemisphere wildflowers, the Cape Region of South Africa.

 

The name 'bulbil' refers to a peculiarity of this species (as opposed to other Watsonias).  Clusters of small corms (not bulbs) sprout along the internodes of the stem, each capable of sprouting into a new plant.  Perhaps they are a key to its success as an invader.

By now we were out of the forest, and back in open farm and pasture country.  We began to see a few water birds in the wetter patches of grass, including one of the handsomest of the heron family, the Pacific or White-necked Heron (Ardea pacifica).

In most of Australia the Yellow-billed Spoonbill (Platalea flavipes) is the less common of the continent's two spoonbills, but not in the southwest.

We arrived in Albany late in the afternoon.  With only a bit of daylight to spare, we decided to make a quick run to Torndirrup National Park, on the rocky peninsula that protects Albany's harbour from the open sea.

Torndirrup is famous for its boulder-strewn coastal scenery, but it is a place to watch your step.  Apparently hardly a year goes by without someone being swept to their deaths from the windy sea-cliffs (a fact that Eileen continually brought to my attention).  We stuck to the paths.

Well, pretty much.

The best proof of the power of the sea gales here is the vegetation.  What shrub cover there is clings to the ground, with twisted trunks and branches that crawl over the rocks away from the force of the wind.

Where a shrub has suffered some damage, you can see its wind-adapted structure more clearly: many-branched stems terminating in clumps of densely-packed leaves, the better to keep the wind away from the plant's interior.

In more sheltered areas the bushes can be more open, but still have to deal with salt spray.  Plants with larger leaves cover them with a thick, waxy cuticle for added protection.

A few hardy herbaceous pants manage to survive here too.  This is Coastal Pigface (Carpobrotus virescens), one of a group of plants (Family Aizoaceae) with thick, succulent leaves that can handle salt spray along coasts or the solar heat of deserts.

Pelargonium littorale, as its specific name might suggest, is another coastal specialist, though it does occur inland.  It is a member of the same genus as the common houseplant (which is referred to as a geranium in North America, but a pelargonium elsewhere), though the wild ancestor of that plant comes from South Africa where some 90% of the species in the genus are found.

We had time to visit the two most famous viewing points in Torndirrup before it got too dark to see.  At the Gap, we watched the sea rush into a chasm between the granite cliffs from a precarious-looking, if well-barricaded, sightseeing platform)...

... and, from a nearby point, admired a natural bridge carved by wave action from the rocks.

It's a remarkable, if cold and windswept, place.  If you go, bring good footwear and dress warmly!