Superb Lyrebird mimicry: recording!

I've previously posted about the Superb Lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) in our garden, with the promise that one day I'd upload audio. Today is that day!

Since we've been living here, the lyrebirds have become increasing common and less fearful. Their increased abundance is probably due in part to cat and fox baiting in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park which anecdotally has increased populations of a range of other native fauna, including the Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), the endangered Southern Brown Bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus obesulus) and the Australian Brush-turkey (Alectura lathami), all of which visit our place. I suspect that the lyrebirds are particularly attracted to our garden because I do a lot of mulching, grow only native plants, and avoid the use of pesticides, so there are plenty of leaf litter invertebrates for them to feast on.

Foreground: a juvenile male.
Background: a female.

A male.

This is a recording I made this morning using my phone. Since then I've been fiddling about, converting the sound file to an .mp3, finding a host to upload it to, and sourcing a widget. I hope it plays okay on your computer. It does on mine (huzzah!).



All the sounds you can hear are the lyrebird's song, mimicking other species, with the exception of the "dock" sound, which is the call of a Striped Marsh Frog (Limnodynastes peronii) in the pond. Among the birds it's mimicking are an Eastern Whipbird (Psophodes olivaceus) and a Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae). At 18 seconds is a sound in the repertoire I haven't been able to identify. It doesn't sound like a bird....

The Bird and the Spider.

No particular theme today, but two animals that caught my fancy.

The first is a black house spider, Badumna insignis. It's a common sight in Australian gardens and houses. While not too dangerous, it is poisonous and can badly affect sensitive folk. I'm trying to improve my skills in photographing arthropods, but it isn't easy! Focus, lighting....

The second species is becoming a frequent visitor to Sydney gardens, particularly since baiting of foxes (one of Australia's many mammal weeds!) is starting to take effect. While brush turkeys (Alectura lathami) are well known for foraging in mulch, building mounds in inconvenient spots and generally causing general garden chaos, few realise that at night they roost in trees. That our garden is a popular place for them to roost is evidenced by the chunky piles of brush turkey poo we regularly find on our car.

I just took this shot, at dusk. It's remarkable that such a large bird (weighing around just under 2 kg) can roost so happily on what are really quite narrow branches.

Here's one I prepared earlier:

Spring flowers, summer edition.

A few weeks ago, I posted photos of inflorescences of Banksia serrata and Ceratopetalum gummiferum from our garden, with the promise of updated images as they matured.

Here they are:

The small flowers within the banksia inflorescences are hugely attractive to local birds, particularly tiny pardalotes and wrens. In a few months, they'll have formed into follicles on the woody axis. They'll eventually open, releasing seed, but that process is much assisted by the heat of bushfire.

As you can see from the earlier photo of this plant, the flower has changed from white to red. In fact, the red "petals" are actually the bracts, which remain on the flower well after the petals have gone. The bushland here is dotted these flaming red trees, and are very much a part of a Sydney summer, hence the common name of Ceratopetalum gummiferum, New South Wales Christmas Bush.

Frog update: I've seen some tadpoles in the pond! Don't know what species, but I don't think they're Limnodynastes peronii (which is the frog I heard calling there recently) because its spawn is readily identifiable, floating in a mass on the water surface. I didn't see any spawn at all, which suggests it was submerged. I guess I'll just have to wait till they grow up to find out what they are. Deeply good.

STOP PRESS: The male Brush Turkey (Alectura lathami) who lives near us was just in the back garden, with a mate! I've posted this pic before, but here he is again. Just imagine him now: much the same, but with a big grin on his face. :)

Who's got a girlfriend, then?

I'll go and visit his mound soon. When she's laid her eggs, she'll bugger off and it'll be his job to tend the mound, maintaining it at the right temperature, till the eggs hatch. Then they're on their own.

The Brush Turkeys Descend

(As opposed to the Bush turkey. To visit Sydney, do you really need all this? "Two 747s, one of which is the celebrated Air Force One; it is bolstered by several transport planes, one of which will carry two helicopters, not to mention more than a dozen vehicles, including two bulletproof Cadillacs for the purposes of motoring with confidence through Sydney streets while an angry mob of high-school truants chucks eggs and chants 'Hey, hey! Ho, ho! George Bush has got to go!'" It adds up to "total greenhouse emissions of 57,886 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, or to put it another way, the amount produced by 2000 average Australians over the course of a whole year," according to Annabel Crabb in the Sydney Morning Herald. But that's not what this post is about.)

A while ago, I mentioned that Brush Turkeys (Alectura lathami) breed in our area. Well, it looks like they're getting ready to do just that. We've had a few sightings in the last few days, including this, just outside the sunroom window:







It's a little hard from these photos to get a sense of just how big this bird is. But it's around the size of a medium-sized dog. It's around 70 cm long. So we're not talking a mere chook here.

Having just planted my spring/summer crops (tomatoes, potatoes and strawberries), I am hoping my fences are sufficient to keep this gorgeous creature in the right part of the garden....

Uni Daze

This week, I visited Macquarie University to put in the application for the first course in my BSc in Conservation and Biodiversity.

Culture shock, frankly.

It occurred to me that it's now *cough* thirty years since I started my first degrees (Arts/Law). Thirty years?! Okay, so I've had a very full and satisfying life in those years--marriage(s), a baby now a big girl, a career in screenwriting and stage and a minute or so in law, travelling around the world a few times, plant stuff--but still, it's a bit spooky.

The place has changed a lot. Everything, of course, is digitalised now. The uni even has an on-campus wireless service (note to self: buy laptop). PCs didn't even exist when I started uni. I thought I was so hi-tech because I wrote my essays on an electric typewriter with a daisy wheel and a very exciting innovation--the eraser ribbon.

The old union cafetaria now resembles a Westfield foodhall. (It's not allowed to be called a "union" any longer in these politically correct Howard days. "Union" is a dirty word. Any minute now it'll be expunged from the Anglican marriage service.) There's not much sign of politics there nowadays. In the seventies, the walls were covered in political posters, but now, there are lots of ads for various Christian groups. Ugh.

The old Jughouse Theatre where I spent a huge chunk of my youth has been replaced by a motorway, and the on-campus house I shared with various mates in Culloden Road is no more. The uni now sprawls with dozens of new buildings, but the architecture and landscaping look great. I'd have loved a lake like this when I was there first time round....



This photo is from Macquarie's website, taken by Damian Moran. Browse the pics. They're really lovely.

Looking through the staff directory, I can find none of my old lecturers and tutors. I guess they're all retired or dead! But an old mate, Andrew Simpson is there. We were undergraduates together, and now he's Dr Simpson, Director, Museum Studies Program, Division of Environmental and Life Sciences. It'll be good to catch up with him for some ancient gossip.

Another deluge of rain this weekend, this time, landing on the catchment for Warragamba Dam. The dam stats are going to look better than they've been for ages. Unfortunately, the rain is heavy in the Central Coast region which is still flooding from last weekend.

I keep looking anxiously at the trees in our garden, but they're hanging on. There's a waterfall behind our neighbour's house, and I took this photo this morning.

Buckets of the wet stuff!


















While I was down there, I spotted this sign....














It'll be wonderful seeing brush turkeys (Alectura lathami) active during the breeding season. I wonder if my new plants will survive.

At some point, I hope I'll be able to take a photo to show you, but in the meantime, here's an image from the Canberra Ornithologists Group.

And here's Mungo, a magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) that has adopted us. It seems he might have been hand raised, because he's ridiculously tame. His flight feathers are cut, so someone is obviously "keeping" him. After the last storm, he vanished for a few days but now he's back.


But I do wish he'd get out of the rain.