ANPS Points Hut

A top walk.  Brilliant weather, lotsa pretty flowers and three species of bird breeding (and one pair of insects attempting to).

I'll begin with some habitat shots.  First off. a panorama of the Brindabellas from Point Hut.  Thanks again Roger for alerting me to this facility in the camera.
 The Murrumbidgee was quite still around the start.
 It was well decorated with Acacia sp. as we moved North.
As the rapids (or at less 'less-slows') showed here, despite the recent dry period there was a good flow in the river.
 This gave rise to some interesting foam patterns in the water.
 To plants!  We found several very large clumps of Lissanthe strigosa.
 A few flowers were out in one specimen.
The ground near the mornos spot was well endowed with these tiny flowers.  Unfortunately no-one could attach any Latin (nor even any Strine) to them.
 During the ingestion of morning tea a large patch of white was spotted up the hill.  So I staggered upto get some Leucopogon attenuatus which turned out to carpet areas much closer to the track further on!
 Cryptandra amara was initially just in snowball buds ...
 .. but was eventually found in flower.
 Another Cryptandra: C. speciosa.
 Hovea heterophylla
 The first of the Grevilleas: G. lanigera.
 There were a number of well developed bushes of G lanigera.  Surprisingly they were not infested with nectar feeding insects nor honeyeaters.
 After a brief zone of what were thought to be hybrids we then encountered a good array of G. juniperina.
 Hakea microcarpa showing the carpels to indeed be pretty small!
 The award for most typo-prone name of the day went to Phebalium squamulosum ozothamnoides.
 This is the very rare Muehlenbeckia tuggeranong.
 As a change from worrying about the mistletoe species in eucalypts, today we were treated to a good array of the Casuarina cunninghamiana-mimicking Amyema cambagei.
At lunch some members pointed out some flowering mistletoe well up in a she-oke.  A 40X zoom got a bit of an image.
 Then one was spotted at head height about 1m off the path!
 Birds were pretty good also with 26 species written down.

Australian Ravens are not rare but this one displayed its hackles rather well.
 A Pied Currawong was busy building its nest at Point Hut.
This snap of a Wedge-tailed Eagle is a bit blurry, but it was several 100m up in the air and soaring quite briskly so I reckon its a fair record shot.
At Pine Island a nesting White-winged Chough was spotted.   (There was a second nest about 5m away from this one, which I suspect was last years work. )
 A member spotted a curious red insect.  In fact it is a mite (probably  velvet mite -Trombidium sp) and thus an arachnid rather than an insect.  Whatever: there were two of them and I suspect quite a few more will be in the offing , should the female stop running away!
This was the first image I took, but I thought putting it first might turn people off!  Nice art, poor door closer!
Thanks to Mike for taking this one of a geriatric Sundance Kid in the Leucopogon!

Comments

sandra h said…
Saw lots of the Hovea along the track at Molonglo Gorge. Those choughs at Pine Island have nested in same general area at end of the car park for several years
Sandra H
29 August 2013 at 07:05:00 GMT+10
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