Australia: Binna Burra

If I had to name my favourite spot in Australia - admittedly a very difficult task - I would probably pick Lamington National Park, a couple of hours' drive south from Brisbane.

 

The park protects a magnificent, wildlife-laden stretch of temperate rainforest atop a picturesque plateau, the remains of a long-extinct volcano (it's the dark green tongue of forest in the middle distance of the upper photograph).  It is a world away from the dubious pleasures of the nearby Gold Coast and Surfer's Paradise. I spent several days there in 1972 at O'Reilly's Guest House, one of the two well-known lodges at the edge of the park.

Going back was the high point, for me, of our trip to Brisbane in 2011, but this time we took a cabin at the other lodge, Binna Burra. Eileen, Sue and I were joined for the occasion by our friend Mui Ling (on the right) and her daughter Alicia (on the left), who flew up from Melbourne to meet us, and on April 6 we piled into the car and headed off up country.

On the way up I had another reminder of the changes in Australia's wildlife since my last visit: a Magpie Goose (Anseranas semipalmata). Magpie Geese once ranged throughout eastern Australia, but by the 1970s over hunting had largely driven them from all but the tropical north. They have recovered spectacularly, thanks in part to reintroduction programs, and now range once again as far south as Victoria.

The Magpie Goose is certainly the most peculiar duck in the world: so much so that it is now usually placed on its own family, Anseranatidae. Aside from the only partially-webbed feet (something you can also see in the otherwise-unrelated Hawaiian Goose (Branta sandvicensis)), the Magpie Goose is the only waterfowl in the world known to feed its young directly, rather than leading them about and letting them find food for themselves, as other ducks do. It appears to be the last survivor of a once-worldwide lineage of waterfowl that branched off before the evolution of the other living forms, but after the rise of their nearest relatives, the large, vaguely chicken-like screamers (Anhimidae) of South America.

The forest at Lamington is magnificent, and, and on a misty, rainy morning the atmosphere beneath its towering canopy can be almost cathedral-like.

Though not as rich as a truly tropical rain forest, the plant and the variety of forest structure is considerably greater than what you will find in eucalypt woodland.

There are eucalypts, or eucalypt relatives, in plenty, particularly around the forest edge. The flowers of this Red Bloodwood (Corymbia gummifera) behind the main lodge were identified for me by Luke Christiansen, a naturalist guide at Binna Burra.

Inside the forest, however, the dominant trees may include monsters like this Watkin's Fig (Ficus watkinsiana), dwarfing Alicia (who, alone among my traveling companions, braved the forest trails with me). Like many figs, this one starts life as a vine before enveloping and smothering its host tree.

The lower levels of the forest is rich with ferns.

Their variety is considerable - over fifty species have been recorded around Binna Burra, ranging from a series of tree ferns to a cluster of epiphytes.

Birds-nest ferns (Asplenium australasicum) festoon the larger limbs...

...while Fragrant Fern (Microsorum scandens) scrambles up the trunks.

This is one of a number of terrestrial ferns - I am not sure which - whose fronds arise from a rhizome creeping over the forest floor.

This broad, spreading frond belongs to a tree fern - I believe, to Cooper's Tree Fern (Cyathea cooperi).

This understorey plant is not a tree fern but a palm: the Walking Stick Palm (Linospadix monostachya).  Its pendulous necklaces of bright red fruit are most attractive in the dim light; the fruits are edible (but I didn't try one!).

Much less pleasant to encounter are the climbing, vine-like palms of the genus Calamus.  Calamus palms are studded with needle-sharp spines and recurved hooks that latch into your clothing (or skin) at the faintest touch.  In Australia they are generally known as lawyer canes or bush lawyers, because once they get their hooks into you they don't let go.  This one is probably C. muelleri, the appropriately-named Wait-a-while.

Fungi, including these bracket fungi, are common – not surprisingly, given the humid conditions and the amount of standing wood.

I am not even going to try to identify the species I photographed the forest – I am, simply, not a mushroom man. I would be very glad to hear of any identifications. In the meantime, here is a Lamington Fungus Gallery.

I believe the last of these to be a coral fungus (Clavariaceae), but I could very well be wrong!

This is clearly an aroid, but which one I cannot say.  I need to brush up my botany....

In a clearing in the forest I found one of the Australian grass-trees (Xanthorrhoea), peculiar cousins of the daylilies.  The likely species at Lamington is X. glauca.  Notice the cattail-like flowering spike in the middle - source (along with their blackened trunks, not visible here) of the unfortunate older name for these plants, "blackboy".  It is supposed to recall an aboriginal's spear, and it was actually used as a spear handle in days gone by.

I didn't see many wildflowers (it was autumn, after all), but this rather prickly-looking plant, with its showy white flowers, is probably one of the Australian heaths (Epacris).

This delicate little wildflower is a lobelia, possibly Forest Lobelia (Lobelia trigonocaulis).

At dusk, after a long day in the forest, I watched the sunlight filtering through the trees...

And all of us, non-naturalists included, enjoyed the spectacular Lamington sunsets.  What a place!

Australia - Brisbane Birdlife

Brisbane, like Sydney, has seen a considerable change in its urban birdlife since I first visited it on a boiling hot Christmas in 1972.  A few small birds still hold their own, including this Willie Wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys) near the ponds on the University of Quernsland campus (see previous entry), but by and large they have been supplanted by bigger, aggressive species. 

One of the most surprising of the commoner birds on the University campus was this one, the Australian Brush Turkey (Alectura lathami).  This is a bird guaranteed, despite its rather ungainly appearance, to set non-Australian birders' hearts a-flutter, and finding it stalking about on a campus lawn was unexpected to say the least.   Residents like it far less.

The Brush Turkey's allure is its breeding behavior. It is not a turkey, but a megapode - a member of a largely Australasian family (there is one species on a few offshore islets in Malaysia) that bear the distinction of being the only birds in the world that do not incubate their eggs or care for their young. Instead (depending on the species) they bury their eggs in sandy soil or in a mound of rotting vegetation. The young hatch pretty much able to fly, dig themselves free and are on their own thereafter. 

That doesn't mean that megapodes lack parental care - far from it. The mound-building species like the Brush Turkey tend their mounds with fanatical devotion, adding and removing vegetation to keep the interior at just the right temperature for their developing eggs. The mound scraped together by a pair of Brush Turkeys can be enormous: up to 6 metres across and a metre and a half high.  That explains its unpopularity among suburban Brisbaneites: the birds are excellent at converting one's back garden into a miniature mountain of compost.

Cockatoos have proliferated in Brisbane. This is my favourite, a Galah (Eolophus roseicapillus), stalking purposefully across a tennis court. 

Here a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) challenges me (and any rivals on the area) from a treetop. 

Around the university ponds I found a gang of Little Corellas (Cacatua sanguinea), birds I used to associate with the Australian interior.   Their numbers may be augmented by escapees from captivity.

They were completely uninterested in my presence, and were a delight to watch. 

Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) were as abundant in the gardens of Brisbane as in Sydney. 

Also common were Scaly-breasted Lorikeets (Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus), a species at the extreme end of its range further south in Sydney. 

The abundant and aggressive Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala) dominates the urban birdscape in Brisbane as thoroughly as it does in Sydney. This appears to be a young bird.

There are plenty of crows in the city too, but these are not the same as the Sydney birds. Instead of Australian Ravens (Corvus coronoides), here there are Torresian Crows (Corvus orru), a common species across much of the northern half of Australia. I saw them in numbers - they roam about in flocks after the breeding season. 

The members of the Cracticidae - bell-magpies, currawongs and butcherbirds - are not just aggressive towards small birds, but predatory (as the name "butcherbird" might imply). They are also birds with a great deal of personality and, for the magpies and butcherbirds at least, magnificent voices. 

Australian Magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) are really just large terrestrial butcherbirds with social lifestyles (including choral singing), and these days are often included in the butcherbird genus Cracticus. 

Young magpies are considerably more mottled that their seniors.

Grey Butcherbirds (Cracticus torquatus) are widespread over much of Australia. They are aggressive hunters after smaller birds, and have a habit of wedging their kills into the forks of branches as storage for later on (rather like the habit of impaling birds on thorns practiced by shrikes (Laniidae), birds absent from Australia but probably the first to which the colloquial name "butcherbird" was applied).  They are handsome birds and fine singers, but around Brisbane they are, I think, outdone in both departments by a close relative. 

The Pied Butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis) is one of the finest songsters and best mimics in Australia. 

This bird had gotten used to a daily handout from Sue's son Lawrence, and if this didn't appear on time it would wait impatiently at the kitchen window until the matter was remedied.