Australia: On the Road Again

On September 22, 2013 our travelling companions returned to Sydney, and Eileen and I were alone again for our last two days in Western Australia.  After some discussion, we decided to rent a car and head northeast of Perth, to New Norcia and then on to explore the wheatbelt country around Moora.

We were no longer in the extremely biodiverse coastal heathlands, but there were still plenty of flowers to see.  Eileen indulged my occasional hops out of the car to see what I could find.  For much of the way, though, native plants like this Blind Grass (Stypandra glauca), a member of the daylily family (Hemerocallidaceae), were outnumbered by introduced weeds.

Weeds, of course (whatever their impact on native ecosystems) can be beautiful, as I hope these photos of the ubiquitous Onion Grass or Guildford Grass (Romulea rosea) demonstrate.

 The flowers of Four o'Clock, or Largeflower Wood Sorrel (Oxalis purpurea), a native of South Africa, are attractive too...

...and a carpet of Capeweed (Arctotheca calendula), another widespread South African import, can be a spectacular sight.

The road north to Moora took us through peaceful-looking farming country. We made a few non-nature-related stops along the way, but the stop I most enjoyed was at a roadside rest area along the Great Northern Highway not far from Perth, beside a quiet pond south of Lake Chittering. 

Here I finally had a chance to find a few Australian dragonflies, insects that had completely eluded me on the rest of our trip (probably because, this early in the spring, it wasn't yet warm enough). Australia has a number of very interesting dragonflies, including several regarded as quite primitive, but only a few have reached the southwest. The two species I found on the stream were members of more widespread genera, with close relatives that I frequently see in Malaysia. 

The larger dragonfly was a Blue Skimmer (Orthetrum caledonicum), a widespread species found throughout Australia and ranging to its surrounding islands.  It looks very much like some of the blue Orthetrums that are among the commonest and most obvious Malaysian dragonflies. 

The smaller species was the Wandering Percher (Diplacodes bipunctata), one of two Australian Diplacodes. This one, which ranges from Indonesia to New Zealand, can be distinguished by the black marks on the side of its abdomen. 

As is often the case, the male Wandering Percher is much the brighter-coloured of the two sexes. Note that this mating pair is being hounded by an intruding male (top photo), a common thing in both dragonflies and damselflies.

Sharing a log with the basking dragonflies was a little, dark brown skink, one of the few lizards we saw on the trip. I find skinks very difficult to identify, so this is either a Common Dwarf Skink (Menetia greyii), a common and widespread Australian species, or it isn't.  Well, it certainly looks like one to me.

Once I had finished enjoying the pond fauna we headed further north to another stop, where I could turn my attention to the roadside flora -this time, mostly native.  Here the common and gorgeous Blue Leschenaultia (Leschenaultia biloba)...

...contrasted with the equally-common red flowers of Coral Vine (Kennedia coccinea).

Here, too were more flowering peas that I couldn't begin to identify...

...and native buttercups (Hibbertia sp.) that I haven't been able to key out either.

By now we were within the range of a very local flower indeed, the Orange Hibbertia or Orange Guinea Flower (Hibbertia miniata).  In the wild it is only found in a tiny area of the wheatbelt between Chittering and Moora.  I didn't realize that when I photographed it, but I was certainly struck by its rich colour.

Moora, though its population is less than 2,000, is a major wheatbelt centre and the host, each September, of the Moora Agricultural Fair. We were just in time to take it in. 

From a natural history point of view you wouldn't expect an agricultural fair to have much to offer, but Moora is in the centre of an Important Bird Area. In recognition of this, a couple of exhibits at the fair were devoted to bird conservation. One urged people to protect the local population of Short-billed Black Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus brevirostris). 

The other was operated by a rescue centre for injured birds of prey, and featured a few of its patients. 

This is an Australian, or Nankeen, Kestrel (Falco cenchroides). The peculiar word "Nankeen" refers to the yellowish-brown color of the bird's back and wings -similar to the colour of nankeen,  a cotton cloth once manufactured in Nanjing (formerly Nanking), China. The Rufous Night-Heron (Nycticorax caledonicus), another Australian species, was once called the Nankeen Night-Heron for the same reason.

  I was particularly delighted to see this Barking Owl (Ninox connivens), a species I have never seen in the wild. This is the "intermediate" species among Australia's three widespread Ninox owls, midway in size between the common Southern Boobook (N. novaehollandiae) and the much larger Powerful Owl (N. strenua).

By now we were getting a little nervous about where we were going to spend the night.  Thanks to the Agricultural Fair, every bit of accommodation around Moora was fully booked.  We did not want to drive after dark (collisions with kangaroos are so common that rental car insurers in Western Australia will not cover night drivers in rural areas). We were told that there was a caravan park not far to the west in Dandaragan, but it turned out to be intended for (and fully occupied by) local mine workers.  However, the owners, Gaylene and Evan, had a trailer that served as staff quarters but was empty that night - and they very kindly let us use it for free, even setting us up with a TV and a movie ('The World's Fastest Indian", a lovely film BTW). 

It gave us both a very warm feeling - and we had a better night than I have spent at many a hotel.

I even managed to get on close terms with a lovely male Splendid Fairy-Wren (Malurus splendens) outside our caravan...

...and, set for the night thanks to our hosts' generosity and kindness, we both enjoyed watching our last Western Australian sunset.

Australia: Rottnest Island

Rottnest Island, in the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, is a popular destination for campers, beach-lovers and day-trippers. There are lots of places like that, I suppose - but Rottnest has a particular fascination for naturalists, and I was delighted when circumstances near the end of our trip, on September 21, 2013, opened up a chance for me to catch a ferry from the Fremantle wharf and head out for a day on the island. 

The word 'Rottnest' is a corruption of the Dutch for 'rat's nest' - not, you might think, a particularly alluring name, but it is in fact a tribute to the island's most famous inhabitant (and a naturalist's chief reason for wanting to go there). Rottnest is, for all intents and purposes, the last refuge of the Quokka (Setonix brachyurus), a distinctive (and, I suppose, vaguely rat-like) little kangaroo that (like so many of Australia's small mammals) has been almost completely driven from the mainland by introduced foxes and other man-made threats. There are still mainland populations at places like Two Peoples Bay, but the animals in them are excessively shy, keep to heavy brush, and are almost impossible to see. If you want to see a Quokka in the wild, Rottnest Island is the place to go.

A few of our little group decided, at the very end of our trip, to brave the seas to Rottnest. They may not have shared my enthusiasm for smallish marsupials, but it was certainly with visions of Quokkas dancing in my head that I left Eileen and our less boat-friendly companions to shop in Fremantle, and boarded the ferry for a wave-tossed crossing.

Don't let the placid waters in the upper photograph  fool you – that was a rough trip! Anyway, once I got my legs again I decided that the best way to explore the island was by renting a bicycle. Now, I don't mind telling you that it's been a long time since I've ridden a bicycle, but I did manage, somehow, to  find my way out of the small island port and set off on the road to the salt lakes just behind it.

The salt lakes support large populations of brine shrimp, and this makes them excellent places to look for water birds (especially as the road follows right along the lake edge).

 The reddish vegetation crowding onto the Salt Lake Beach is samphire, a salt-resistant member of the goosefoot family (Chenopodiaceae), At least two species of Sarcocornia and one or two Tecticornia grow on the island; I will hazard a guess that the reddish plants you see here are Shrubby Samphire (Tecticornia halocnemioides).

Rottnest is not alien-free; this is Onion Weed or Hollow-stemmed Asphodel (Asphodelus fistulosus), a Mediterranean plant established as a weed in many parts of Australia.

Among the birds visiting the salt lakes are Australian Shelduck (Tadorna tadornoides).  This is a male. lacking the white marking around the eyes of females.

Islands in the lake are protected nesting grounds for the Fairy Tern (Sternula nereis), a declining species listed as Vulnerable by Birdlife International, but I saw none on my visit.

The birding highlights of Rottnest, however, are so identified with the island that they are known locally as Rottnest Snipe. It was to see them that I entrusted myself to my long-forgotten cycling skills.

Ornithologists call them Banded Stilt (Cladorhynchus leucocephalus), and they are certainly the most unusual of the small stilt and avocet family (Recurvirostridae).  I had only seen them once before, on a birding trip to the salt pans near Adelaide, South Australia, in 1970.

It is not that Banded Stilts are particularly unusual-looking. In fact, they are very beautiful birds. It is their life history that has attracted attention, and, in particular, their habit of breeding in a immense numbers on ephemeral waters in the Australian interior. Because the very existence of such waters is unpredictable, nesting banded stilts are particularly hard birds to find.

In fact, it wasn't until 1930 that a nesting colony was finally found by an ornithologist. How the birds know which of the usually empty lake beds in the desert back country hold water in any given year is still something of a mystery.  At Rottnest, they are only non-breeding visitors, arriving after the inland lakes dry up in the summer heat.

Feeding among the Banded Stilts were a few White-headed Stilts (Himantopus leucocephalus), Australian representatives of the "typical" stilts found in other parts of the world. Among other things, you can tell them apart by their black backs and much longer legs.

I watched the stilts for some time, until they apparently grew tired of me and flew off to the middle of the lake.

Banded Stilts, by the way, swim well despite their long legs, and are seemingly adept at snatching morsels of food from the water's surface.

Finally (persuaded by a bit of rain) I decided it was time to head back to town.  I took a brief rest in the small Rottnest Island Cemetery, which contains only a few nineteenth-century headstones (the cemetery was for white people; around 350 aboriginals were buried elsewhere, in unmarked graves).

There were some attractive flowers around, but they were, I'm afraid, mostly weeds; the upper photo is of One-leaf Cape tulip (Moraea flaccida), an import from South Africa.

The town, I was told, was the best place to find Quokkas (notice, for example the little bump in the centre of the road ahead of me).

Unlike their mainland cousins, they have taken advantage of (and seem quite unconcerned by) our presence.

They certainly don't see us as a threat (they are now popular subjects for selfies), though they risk being harmed by our interest in them.  It is illegal to touch, or hug, one, and vegemite makes them sick.  Well, I don't care for it myself.  Anyway, at least it's been some years since brain-dead idiots used the animals as targets for 'quokka soccer', though some recent quokka deaths suggest that vicious morons still get to the island occasionally.

Probably the best way to appreciate them is to take the afternoon Quokka walk, in our case led by an enthusiastic (despite the rain) local guide.

This gave me not only a chance to get better acquainted with the Quokkas, but to see a bit more of the island's countryside.  That included a bit of its remnant woodland, which is dominated today by Melaleuca lanceolata and Callitris preissii, known respectively as Rottnest Island Teatree and Rottnest Island Pine though both grow widely on the mainland.  This web site provides a good introduction to the island's fauna and flora (including the Quokkas), if you want to know more.

Of course there are exotics too, like this Common Fig (Ficus carica).

I was able to get close to a few birds, too: here is an Australian Pied Oystercatcher (Haematopus longirostris) patrolling the edge of a lagoon.

The Australian Raven (Corvus coronoides) is ubiquitous, and tame, on the island.

We had no trouble finding Quokkas, including these two grazing placidly on a nearby sward.  Despite the domestic impression this photo may give you, Quokkas appear to be promiscuous, with the larger males battling each other for access to the smaller females.  According to the latest volume of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World, "After copulation males often lose interest in the female, and she may then mate with additional males".  Sort of like humans.

Even their droppings were everywhere.

Quokkas are, in fact, quite urban creatures on Rottnest: the vegetarian equivalent of raccoons.  This one shares the photo with another largely urbanized creature, a Pacific Black Duck (Anas superciliosa).

If they are not eating the harmful things that humans aren't supposed to give them, Quokkas live on seeds, leaves, stems and other vegetable matter; on Rottnest they have been reported to dine on forty different species of plants.

I hope that the Quokka comes back in numbers on the mainland, where intense conservation programmes are now under way.  In the meantime, the Rottnest population, though it fluctuates with the seasons (and may in fact be too high at times for the surrounding vegetation), remains as both a bulwark for the species and a tourist attraction.  Treat them with care and respect (they are as harmless and charming as animals get) and they are certainly worth the trip to the island.