Birds in the scrub

Leopard Ash in vibrant leaf

It was drizzling when I arrived at the Scrub and before I got out of the car there was a short, sharp shower. However this soon cleared away to a cool overcast and the birds came out to enjoy themselves. First of the day and a new one for my surveys was a pair of Red-rumped Parrots. They are ground feeders and one flew up from the paddock to sit in the trees of the Scrub. Once I was in the Scrub down near the dam I saw Spangled Drongo, Little Friarbird, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, an immature Olive-backed Oriole and Noisy Miners. There must have been a hatching of insects in the high canopy because all these birds were feeding, except the Noisy Miners, and there wasn’t any obvious blossom or fruit.

The Oriole is a good mimic and will often confuse you when you hear a variety of calls in the bush. This individual was practising its calls, a weird selection of squawks and trills which were nothing like its beautiful liquid “ori-ori-oriole”. It was being mobbed by Noisy Miners that chased it all over the Scrub but it remained in the area just moving from tree to tree. Perhaps the Oriole made a call that offended the Miners enough to harass it.

Where the Scrub opens out into the grassy bowl there were Striped Honeyeaters, a Rufous Fantail and Superb Fairy-wrens. Brown Honeyeaters were also searching for insects in the Sandalwood Santalum lanceolatum and Brown Thornbills in the Leopard Ash Flindersia collina. The Leopard Ash looked glorious in its washed-clean green finery.

Birds: Brown Quail (1 heard in the quarry area),  
Australian Wood Duck (2 in the trees of the Scrub), Spotted Dove (1 in the Scrub),
Crested Pigeon (1 on a fencepost), 
Little Black Cormorant (2 sitting on a wire going down into the dam), 
Galah (4 overhead), 
Pale-headed Rosella (5 in the flowering eucalypts),  
Red-rumped Parrot (2 in the paddock then 1 flew into Scrub), 
Eastern Koel (1 calling from nearby), 
Laughing Kookaburra (2 laughing in the Scrub), 
Dollarbird (1 sitting on a bare branch), 
Superb Fairy-wren (saw 1 but heard more), 
White-browed Scrubwren (3 following me through the Scrub), 
Yellow-rumped Thornbill (3 on the road), 
Brown Thornbill (2 in the Leopard Ash), 
Noisy Miner (4 chasing an Oriole), 
Brown Honeyeater (3 in the Sandalwood), 
Little Friarbird (1 feeding in the mid-high canopy), 
Striped Honeyeater (4 in the eucalypts), 
Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike (3 feeding in the mid-high canopy), 
Olive-backed Oriole (1immature practising its calls), 
Australian Magpie (2 carolling in the high branches), 
Spangled Drongo (1 feeding in the mid-high canopy), 
Rufous Fantail (1 low in some shrubs), 
Willie Wagtail (1 in the paddock), 
Torresian Crow (4 overhead), 
Magpie-lark (2 on the road verge), 
Golden-headed Cisticola (2 calling from the long grass), 
Silvereye (2 sweetly calling in the mid-canopy), 
Common Myna (5 in a dead sapling further north along Franke Rd), 
Mistletoebird (1 near the fence in the scrub on the Sheehan property).   
Butterflies: Orchard Swallowtail Papilio aegeus (1 flying through the Scrub).
Thank you Lesley for your contribution to our blog.

Spring flowers, birds and butterflies

Two mistletoes are flowering beautifully at Franke scrub this week.

Lucas's mistletoe (Amyema lucasii) is making a great show with its bright yellow flowers, on our favourite leopard ash (Flindersia collina). The Flindersia itself is also flowering, though only
moderately this year.
And the "variable mistletoe", Amyema congener was quite conspicuous.

This plant loves growing on the Boonaree (Alectryon diversifolium) with its holly-like leaves. However it also grows on several other species in the scrub.The flowers on our local Amyema congener are a darker shade of red than the more common variety seen elsewhere.
Expect to see honeyeaters coming for the nectar from these flowers - and, later in the year, mistletoe birds coming for the fruits. Those special butterflies, the beautiful jezebels, which depend on mistletoes for their survival, are beginning to appear in the scrub again as the
weather warms up.
The sandalwoods (Santalum lanceolatum) under the leopard ash are in bud, so we can expect to see flowers there over the next few weeks. It looks as though they will be putting out a good crop of their dark red (edible but please don't eat them) fruits this year.
Trish

Signs of Spring

This Parsonsia vine is a new one for our Franke Scrub plant list.


Sandalwood Santalum lanceolatum galls not fruits. As well as being a handsome shapely small tree, it has a tasty bush tucker fruit. It is a semi-parasitic plant, probably depending on the roots of the grasses (Austrostipa spp.) which grow under it for its good health.