October in the paddocks

My dad used to have a phrase "After the Lord Mayor's Show." which he applied when a temporary magnificent event was followed by a return to 'normal'. It was a specific reference to the spectacle of the parade for the Lord Mayor's procession to the Guildhall being followed by a cart and a couple of guys with shovels cleaning up after the horses. 

After the brilliant display in the heaths of the East Gippsland coast our dry little tablelands block feels a little the same way.  At least until one starts to look a bit closer!

The 'peas' - ie members of the family Fabaceae - are beginning to flower.  I shall try to learn their specific characteristics.    The first specimen is Dillwynia sericea.
Note the small thin leaves, for comparison with those of Pultanaea procumbens.
Moving away from peas, our local Brachyloma daphnoides is now starting to flower after months of swollen buds.
While the earliest heaths (Melicrus and Leucopogon fletcherii) have petty much finished, as well as the Brachyloma, Leucopogon virgatus is appearing in large clumps. A detail shot is also included.

The greatest excitement was finding that our crop of Glossodia major has finally appeared.  I don't know if this was an 'overnight eruption' but the second image gives an idea of the density of the flowers in a couple of areas (perhaps 200 plants in total).
Also in the Orchid familyI found our first Diurus chryseopsis on the place this year.  It is just about 2 weeks after spotting one at Mulligans Flat.
This year I have noticed for the first time many flowers of (what I believe to be) Poranthera microphylla.
The warmer weather and increasing profusion of flowers is starting to bring the insects out.  Note the yellow pollen grains all over this native bee, on the petals of a Yam Daisy (Microseris lanceolata)
I also found this intricately patterned insect feeding on a Leucochrysum albicans.  I think it is a true bug, possibly a member of the family Orsillinae.
Finally I have begun to punish myself in attempting to photograph Eastern Spinebills again.  This one was astonishingly cooperative in exposing itself many times as it dined on a planted grevillea.  However the light was ungood so this was the best image to be collected.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more