Natural History-R-Us

There seems to be a lot of Natural History around at the moment.

On my way up to count the Glossodia this morning I swung by a site where I have in past found some small greenhoods.  There they were in all their magnificence: Hymenochilus cycnocephalus!
To put this into scale, the flower is about 10mm long.  A fair bit bigger than a Microtis, but not in Cymbidium class!  The crucial feature is the black 'T' shaped ornament on the labellum.

Here were have a couple of plants showing the flower stalk and the rosette.
 For some reason Australian Painted Ladies are the commonest butterflies around at the moment.  This one even posed nicely - in cooler weather they have to soak up some rays to get energy.
Our second species of Leucopogon, L. virgatus is coming into flower just as L. fletcheri is beginning to calm down.  First a close up of the beardiness ...
 .. then a shot of a whole clump.
 In the afternoon we took ourselves to the 6-mile TSR on Hoskinstown Rd.  We spent a largely  pleasant 30 minutes there.  Quite a few flowers including Leucochrysum albicans ...
 .. Microseris lanceolata
 .. Craspedia variabilis ..
 ... Hardenbergia violacea ...
 .. Bulbine bulbosa (just about ready to burst - the area will be covered in these lilies in a couple of weeks) ..
 and a few Diuris pardina.
 I've got no idea what this is!
Alert readers will have noticed a qualification to the word 'pleasant' above.  A small amount of stress became apparent with the small dog detecting playmates in several spots.  She was, as always on a lead, so no reptiles were harmed in making this blogpost.

First lizzid out of the blocks was this Commo Blue-tounged Lizard: so called for obvious reasons!

Next was a Shingleback which was reluctant to reveal its tongue.  It is fairly clear however why one herpetologist, at a field day, gave its vernacular name as the "Two-headed turd".
Finally we - or at least Tammy - spotted a Blotched Blue-tongued Lizard.
It decided that it didn't like being photographed, even on zoom!  Yep, that's a blue tongue, but I'd call it the Yellow-lipped Pink-mouthed Lizzid!
We did leave pretty smartly after that display.

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