ANPS reports "no vipers at Borroomba Rocks".

I thought I would start this post with a tribute to an article in the Canberra Times citing my description of the behaviour of Crested Pigeons.  While other reptiles were seen, and feature further down,  the only snake seen was of the Red-bellied Black species and that didn't get photographed by me.

In the initially published version of this there will be a fair bit of "Je ne sais pas quoi" but I think it helpful to publish stuff with images first and then update as ID becomes available.  Of course advice and suggestions are welcome!

I will start the business with some of the orchids seen on the walk, beginning with Eriochilus sp - and I will go on a limb and say at least some were E. magenteus,

These were found in several places as were Diplodium decurvum

.. and D. coccinum.

Some Dipodium roseum (Hyancinth orchids) were also seen but they were fairly tatty, and I have included them in other posts this year so they miss out in this one.

In the other flowering plants there were quite a few spiffys around to photograph.  I was going to say 'dicotyledonous plants' but it turns out Blogger has stuck the monocotyledonous Arthropodium minus (Vanilla Lily) in first place!

 Two flavours of tea tree: Leptospermum continentale and

 L. myrtifolium

 On the subject of spiffy, I always photograph the elite plant Lotus australis, because of its great elan.

A very pretty aster Olearia ramulosa. 

 I will conclude the flowers section with the ACT floral emblem, Wahlenbergia gloriosa atka (also tackily known as) the Royal Bluebell.

A couple of species Coprosma hirtella and Dianella tasmanica had moved on in the procreative process to have got their attractive fruit available.

Moving towards the animal kingdom we find fungi waiting for us.  I recorded two definite fungimap target species Omphalina chromacaea (not photographed) and Oudmansiella radicata.

Other fungi photographed today follow, without initial ID.  In a couple of cases I was able to use my discarded truck mirror to capture the underside at the same time.

From reading Fuhrer this seems to be Lycoperdon periatum.

There were a few insects around as well.

 The next two images are of the Mountain 'katydid'  Acripeza reticulata.  They are extremely active beasties and were most uncooperative in allowing me to get good images.  The first is a female.

The second is a male.  I couldn't move fast enough to get the multi-coloured abdomen .  The surface on which it is parading is my arm, upon which it did make sundry deposits..

We now get to skinks, of which there were lots.  Perhaps I should revise my adage as referred to in the Canberra Times to "At it like skinks"? .  Again no further ID is offered for this inital post.

As with the opening to the Meangora post I will close this one with an image of Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoos.  On this occasion about a dozen of them were looming around near the end of the walk and these three posed nicely against the looming clouds.  The yellow tails are a bit cryptic, but the cheek patches show well.