ANPS Collect(or)s Lerida

'Twas not brillig ..

.. when we arrived at Oakdale NR and I will leave to fans of Lewis Caroll to decide if the 6-8 Gang-gangs were emulating Slithy Toves with their gyring and gymbaling in the trees beside the road.

 Obviously Uncle Photoshop paid a visit to that image to ensure this male's bouffy feathers showed up well!

I wandered a little from the group at this early stage and found some well-formed Gymnopilus junonius under a eucalypt.

Later in the walk a large white bracket fungus was observed.

Nearby Ottelia ovalifolia was flowering - unusually for this time of year? - in a small dam.

 As flowers seemed few and far between in this grassy area Haloragis heterophylla was drawn to my attention.  With an amount of zooming it is quite interestingly structured.

 At this point birds intruded again with a raptor.  The jizz was misleading with a flap and glide style making me think of Brown Goshawk.  When perched it was clearly a falcon and due to the size I was initally thinking Peregrine.  However when I eventually got a good look I realised - well after some others - that it an Australian Hobby.  Note the chestnut breast.  From the size it must be a female.

We then got into Mistletoe musing.  This specimen with lotsa berries was referred to as ' the other genus' but  the experts have now concluded it is Muellerina eucalyptoides!

 Here it is with some Amyena pendula in the background.

There was a fair amount of Astroloma humifusum around the Reserve and eventually I found some with flowers. It was no more difficult than usual to get a more or less focused image of the flower.

 A curious looking bug (a True Bug, order Hemiptera) was spotted by Roger ..

and it turned out to have a few friends elsewhere on the plant.  They are Eurymela sp.

 Back at the cars I found some of the Eucalyptus pauciflora (aka Snow Gums - quite appropriate for the weather) had some blossom.

 Moving along the road at the Lerida Reserve we found some Wahlenbergia luteola.  I am unsure how well the yellow back to the petals shows up in this image, but it was very evident in the field.

 This is a beetle (I was only game to go as far as 'insect') ..

 ... and this one is a Leaf Hopper (possibly Ledromorpha planirostris).

 Finally we found some little dumpies (Diplodium truncata).

 One of the was D. t. galerita.  This balanced the record of Cacatua galerita calvus (the Bald Cockie).

 On the way back to the highway these two granite boulders were recorded to represent the many granite tors and boulders scattered about the landscape.

 A little further along the track this shed was noticed.  I find the geometry of this interesting since the roof is clearly pointing in the right direction while the walls look to be under some confusion as to the meaning of the word vertical!