Updated bird list

This bird list of Franke Scrub and the road reserve has been compiled by Lesley.

Bee-eater, Rainbow

Boobook, Southern

Butcherbird, Grey

Butcherbird, Pied

Cisticola, Golden-headed

Crow, Torresian

Cuckoo, Channel-billed

Cuckoo-shrike, Black-faced

Cuckoo-shrike, Ground

Currawong, Pied

Dollarbird

Dove, Bar-shouldered

Dove, Spotted

Duck, Pacific Black

Duck, Wood or Maned

Fairy-wren, Superb

Fantail, Grey

Fantail, Rufous

Figbird

Finch, Double-barred

Finch, Zebra

Friarbird, Noisy

Galah

Gerygone, White-throated

Grebe, Australasian

Heron, White-faced

Honeyeater, Brown

Honeyeater, Lewin’s

Honeyeater, Scarlet

Honeyeater, Striped

Ibis, Australian White

Ibis, Straw-necked

Kestrel, Nankeen

Kingfisher, Sacred

Kookaburra, Laughing

Lapwing, Masked

Lorikeet, Little

Lorikeet, Rainbow

Magpie, Australian

Magpie-lark

Mistletoebird

Myna, Common

Pardalote, Striated

Pigeon, Crested

Robin, Rose

Rosella, Pale-headed

Scrubwren, White-browed

Silvereye

Sparrow, House

Thornbill, Brown

Thornbill, Striated

Thornbill, Yellow

Thornbill, Yellow-rumped

Weebill

Willie Wagtail

Whistler, Golden

Whistler, Rufous

Whistler sp.

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.

Open Day at Crows Nest Nursery

The Council nursery at Crows Nest is having an Open Day on Saturday 3rd December from 8 am until 1 pm. It is in Depot Road in the Crows Nest Industrial Estate on the right as you approach from Toowoomba.
This is a great opportunity to obtain good local native plants for your garden at a very reasonable price.
If you are interested in propagating plants, you can also volunteer there on Thursday mornings.
For more information on growing local native plants in your garden, see Toowoomba Plants blog which is regularly updated.

Peacehaven Botanic Park

We work closely with Peacehaven Botanic Park which is just up the hill from us.
Many of us are friends of both.
Franke Scrub shows our local vegetation in its natural state while Peacehaven is a collection of labelled plants arranged to inform us as well as being a pleasant park to visit.
Peacehaven has a small nursery where local native plants are available at modest prices. It is open Thursday and Saturday mornings.
Peacehaven now has a blog site friendsofpeacehaven.blogspot.com which features the native plumbago found in our scrub.

Well spotted

While looking for our new mistletoe yesterday, we found some large asparagus vines which had either been missed in the past or had grown very rapidly. Small ones are continuing to germinate and elongate towards the canopy.
We also found another small patch of cats claw creeper, so we will need to remain vigilant and regular with our weeding.
If you are not keen on weeding, we could do with a spotter!
In fact we did not manage to locate our new mistletoe so we will need to return soon.

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.

Mistletoe Regrowth

Amyema lucasii
We were distressed to find, last summer, that some person unknown had been ripping the Lucas Mistletoe off our beautiful Leopard Ash tree. Various theories were propounded: that it was an piece of ordinary mindless vandalism; that it was the act of a “do-gooder” who believed that he or she was actually helping the tree; and that it was a case of theft by some greedy person who wanted the wood for wood-turning, and saw no reason not to steal public property.
Whatever the cause, it left a large branch looking bare and ugly, as it has no other leaf growth than that of mistletoes.

So it’s a relief to see it regrowing. We can expect the mistletoe to behave like any other plant after a severe pruning. It may miss flowering this season, but will be refreshed and look more beautiful than ever.


It has also been rather interesting to discover that the branch itself is still alive, despite the absence of any of its own leaves.
Meanwhile, the rest of the tree is demonstrating the ability that trees have, of killing off mistletoes when under stress. You will notice that it is carrying quite a few dead mistletoes. They were probably been killed off as the tree closed down the water supply to its smaller branches, something that all drought-hardy trees can do whenever they are stressed for lack of water.
I may be wrong, though. Mistletoes have a short life-span compared to that of trees like this one, and they may simply have reached their use-by date.
We have been noticing that this tree carried a rather heavy load of mistletoes, and wondering whether they were stressing the tree during the long drought. It seems we don’t have to worry, as Nature has taken care of the problem. We will probably see renewed vigour in the canopy as a result, and may be able to look forward to a beautiful flowering season this October.
Trish Gardner