ANPS finds most of the Cypress Pines track dry

The weather forecast for 9 April was not exactly what one would hope for if going bush with rain and showers in prospect.  Thus Plan B was implemented with a shorter walk, closer to Canberra, going to the Cypress Pines Lookout on Mt Tennant.

Indeed the radar was looking most dodgy between 0530 and about 0730 but Ros held faith and didn't pull the pin.  Although the weather looked murky-minus as we drove down (and those that arrived on time got sprinkled) in fact the weather was great for a walk.  Several folk peeled off a layer due to to warmth.

We'll get to the wet bit towards the end of the post.

Time for some images, and there are quite a few.  I attribute this to the recent rain giving the plants a burst of energy before Winter kicks in.

Correa reflexa (green)....
 ... and pink.
This is a sedge Fimbristylis dichotoma.  An interesting case of the enlarging powers of photography revealing how snazzy the flowers are!
 Barbed wire grass, Cymbopogon refractus.  Ibid.
 There were many pads of Astroloma humifusum along the track
 I was very surprised to find Acacia penninervis flowering at this time.
 Micromyrtis ciliatus plus visiting ant.
 Monotoca scoparia - a tad earlier than expected.
 Eucalyptus debatablis or possibly E. discussionus.  Lets bite the bullet and say Eucalyptus sp.
 Isotoma fluviatilis (which was the object of the image) and a bunch of Drosera sp. (which was a large surprise when I looked at the image).
Glycine tabacina
The trackside and surrounding bush was full of Diplodium reflexum.  At a conservative estimate I would have seen close to 50 flowers, sometimes in colonies of 5-8 plants.
 The stem of this specimen was so straight that I tried very hard to turn it into D. fischii but alas the labellum was visible so "just another" D. reflexum
 The other orchid seen today was Eriochilus cucullatus.
 I think this is a lichen rather than a moss.
There were a good lot of fungi, relatively few of which I could identify , but here are the pictures for your enjoyment.  I'll try to ID some more later.

 This one I know Omphalina chromacea!

 This is a puffball but I know no more than that!
 Ramaria anziana
 A large ant.  I suspect that is what may have bitten Frances.
 Up close and personal to a very photographed Botany Bay diamond weevil Chrysolopus spectabilis
 Some colourful galls.  Penny Gullan has advised that  "The colourful galls near the end of your blog are the tubular galls of males of an Apiomorpha species (family Eriococcidae). The females induce much larger galls, often ovoid or conical and in some species with longish "arms". "
Now back to to wet.  In the upper parts the creeks were running well so I tried to get a few evocative images of flowing water. "Flowing" starts with 'F' which is possibly a bit harsh .


 The granite was colourful ....
 ..and large!
This Australian Raven watched us eat lunch and displayed its throat hackles to demonstrate that it wasn't a Little Raven

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

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 recall years ago driving al
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 birds: The view from the top of
Read more