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.

A morning visit

The first delight of the morning was the sighting of a pair of Buff-banded Rail and their fluffy black chick at the first dam on Franke Road. Not Franke Scrub itself, I know, but it’s still lovely to see such a wary bird. As we parked the car we were greeted by Yellow-rumped Thornbills twittering in the shrubs beside the Leopard Ash. They sounded so happy as they foraged for insects.

The White-browed Scrubwrens were the bird of the morning. They seemed to follow me as I wandered through the patch, hopping about on the ground in front of me. Then they would make their chittering racket as they flew from one bush to another. In fact it was quite noisy this morning with the Dollarbirds cackling, a Willie Wagtail and a Rufous Fantail tinkling, and a Rufous Whistler whistling her heart out, glad it was such a bright day.

There were plenty of butterflies about and I think I would have seen about 8-9 different species although I can only identify 6; Common Aeroplane Phaedyma shepherdi, Yellow-spotted Jezebel Delias nysa, Orchard Swallowtail Papilio aegus, Cabbage White Pieris rapae, Caper White Belenois java, Wanderer Danaus plexippus.

an unidentified butterfly

thanks to Lesley for this.

A New Plant in our Scrub

A new plant has been found in Franke Scrub.

It is a tiny little mistletoe called Korthalsella japonica forma rubra. You can see why it is known as "zygocactus mistletoe".

This mistletoe grows on a number of different dry rainforest plant species, and in our case it's growing on a Yellow Condoo tree, Pouteria cotinifolia.

Korthalsella species (of which there are probably two on the Downs) are the only known host plants for the Yellow-spotted Jezebel butterfly. We have seen this butterfly in Franke Scrub. You wouldn't imagine that such a small plant could host very many caterpillars, but it must be doing the trick! Our little jezebel population may be a thing of our very own, possibly isolated from any other likely source of host plants, now that clearing has reduced our local evergreen vine thickets to such small remnant pieces.

Summer in Franke Scrub

Another species to add to the list, Bar-shouldered Dove. It was sitting in a thicket of vine on the eastern side of the scrub calling forlornly. The only bird that answered was the resident Spotted Dove. I now make the bird list 51 species of which 41 have been recorded in Franke Scrub, and 10 more species recorded on the road reserve, adjacent areas or flying overhead.

As usual butterflies were everywhere, mainly Orchard Swallowtail, Black Jezabel and Caper White though there were a couple of other Whites flying around that I didn’t identify although I think one was the Chalk (or Striated Pearl) White.

The Flying Foxes are still there, although I only saw three, hanging in the same tree as last month.

Cheers, Lesley

P.S. Can either of you tell me what the large, high canopy tree is that is flowering in the centre of the scrub at the moment? Birds don't seem to be too attracted to it though the Scarlet Honeyeater was calling from the high branches.

More on Franke Scrub

For those of you who do not regularly follow the Toowoomba Plants blog, our local plants gardner has a couple of recent items of interest to us.

Butterflies at Franke Scrub and

White-root

Lobelia purpurescens (Pratia purpurescens)

Autumn in Franke Scrub

Went to Franke Scrub on Tuesday. Beautiful weather with plenty of bird and butterfly activity. In fact it was difficult to pick out the birds because the butterflies were everywhere. Especially Yellow-spotted Jezabel Delias nysa I took a couple of photos.

Just as I arrived a couple of Magpies flushed something large from the upper canopy. All I got was an impression of grey and large. It may have been an Australian Goshawk, but don't quote me on that. Another one to not quote me is a female Rose Robin. I quite distinctly heard a robin 'tick' call and saw the face with it's pale rimmed eye. It likes moist gullies so Franke is perfect habitat. However I didn't see enough of the bird to give it a positive identification.

Rufous fantail taken by William Jolly.

The changing season

For a birdo the change of season is not so much the cooler weather, shorter days or changing leaf colour. It is the birds that disappear or reappear. Franke Scrub is the home to a pair of Rufous Fantails Rhipidura rufifrons from Spring to Autumn but as soon as April arrives they depart. They tend to leave us for warmer climes moving away from the Great Divide to the coast or inland to about Chinchilla, or north with some even crossing to New Guinea. There are individuals that will stay over winter but the majority of Rufous Fantails are hugging the coast north of the Queensland border. In summer they can be found as far south as the South Australia/Victoria border.

They are such chirpy residents and I miss seeing the flash of rufous as they search through the mid-canopy after insects. However, nature always compensates and a Grey Fantail Rhipidura fuliginosa has moved in to replace them. A close cousin to the Rufous Fantail, the Grey is just as active but has a sharper, more scolding call. In fact one of it's bush names is Cranky Fan. Though often seen in our area throughout the year, the majority of Grey Fantails spend their summers south of the Queensland/NSW border returning to Queensland in large numbers for the winter. Who can blame them?

Lesley
President
Toowoomba Field Naturalist Club Inc

Have you seen our blog? http://toowoombafieldnaturalists.blogspot.com/

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

A prowl in early August found -

We didn't have enough time at our working bee last week for a good prowl around in the scrub to see what was there. There were a few things worthy of comment, however.

Two more plants to tick off, on our original plant list - native nettles, Urtica incisa, and native spinach, Tetragonia tetragonioides, which hadn't been recently confirmed.

Two new species to add to the list.
Further poking about in the scrub turned up a second new vine for our list, the Burney Vine,
Malaisia scandens, and Variable Mistletoe, Amyema congener, on a Scrub Boonaree, Alectryon diversifolium.
This mistletoe is just coming into flower, confirming my ID with its characteristic green and red flowers. Our plants are a little unusual in that the red bases of the flowers are a very deep shade of red.

I collected a chrysalis off one of the mistletoes, expecting it to of a jezabel butterfly, (as this species normally breeds on mistletoes). Sure enough, the adult emerged a few days later and was a beautiful black Jezabel, Delias nigrina.

Other finds:

Scrub Wilga, Geijera salicifolia, is in bud, and will soon be in flower. Don't forget to crush a leaf and enjoy the fragrance as you go past.

Bead Bush, Spartothamnella juncea, thick with its little orange fruits.

Spiny Acalypha Acalypha capillipes, in flower. Not particularly showy,
but nonetheless interesting to see.

The bright blue fruits of Elaeocarpus obovatus are scattered about on the forest floor, still quite fresh.
[contributed by Trish]