A week of walks: Episode 2 - Tallaganda by day

Today's (6 April) walk was an ANPS function which I had suggested after visiting the area as we planned for the Powerful owl Hunt (scheduled for tomorrow evening).  There seemed to be a good lot of plant diversity around so I suggested this as a Wednesday walk venue.  It turned out to be an excellent walk with lots of fungi and lots of orchids plus quite a wide range of habitats.

I'll begin with the orchids.  The first sighted was a Spiranthes alticola found at the crossing of Palarang Rd and Yandiguinula Creek.

Nearby was a Greenhood Diplodium decurvum (in the opinion of orchid specialists).

After moving up the hill about 3km we found a rather decrepid Dipodium roseum (Spotted Hyacinth Orchid) which I didn't photograph.  After going down a fire trail for about 500m we found a large colony of Chiloglottis trilabra (Long-clubbed Wasp Orchid).

A little later as we walked along another section of the Bald Hills Fire Trail we found what looked (to the others- I have enough trouble with Sun-orchids when they have flowers) like some spent Thelymitra.  A few other 'gone over' orchids were also found by others, 

There were also many fungi found here and there.  As usual I could identify very few of them.  I shall begin with those I could identify with some level of certainty.  At the highest point we visited, some Calostoma fuscum (Common Prettymouth -a Fungimap target species) were growing in the track.  Note the discarded caps as well as the mouthed parts.

In a very dry area there were several colonies of Coral Fungi.  I believe these to be Ramaria anziana.

An attractive bracket fungus was possibly Trametes versicolor.

The remainder I cannot identify but look pretty (or interesting) so here they are.  The mauve job appeared - from an older and battered speciment - to have brown gills. (I now think that was probably Cortinarius archeri). The second image shows a very large fruiting body (perhaps 20cm high).

There were also quite a few other flowers still around.  First up was a nice Viola hederacea in a clearing in a damp gully.

Quite a lot of Monotoca scoparia was flowering in a drier heathier area.

 This was also where we found Persoonia asperula (yellow) and Choretrum pauciflorum a relative of Exocarpus (white)

In addition to the flowers there were a few interesting fruits around.  I didn't snap the Exocarpus fruit (still in their green stage)  but these colourful Billardia berries are nice.  The purple (in focus) one is B. longiflora (or B.  macrantha depending on which taxonomist you believe)while the larger, green and out of focus ones are possibly B. mutablis.

Moving in to the Animal kingdom it was surprising that there were very few insects around.  The only one I photographed was this nice hairy caterpillar with a red mite adhering to it.  It has been identified - thus far - as in the family Lymantridae. The second image shows the caterpillars feet!

Birds were also reasonably un-evident.  I recorded 23 species in total, which might reflect my finding a lot of interesting plants and fungi so didn't pay as much attention as I might have done.  The highlight was a colourful, albeit brief, view of a Spotted quail-thrush, closely followed by hearing a Shining Bronze-Cuckoo (which really should be brushing up on its Pidgin or Bahasa at this time of year).