All posts by Joe Lipson

About Joe Lipson

I live near Garigal National Park

Golden Crowned Snake

Animals, , , ,

Cacophis squamulosus

My wife found this snake under a house brick while gardening in the back yard.  My 5 year old daughter identified it as a white crowned snake after reading a snake book that our neighbors had given her a few weeks earlier  She was pretty damn close! After more consultation with the book we were confident this is actually a golden crowned snake. The crown marking on it’s head is quite distinctive, unlike the white crowned snake the golden crowned’s crown has a gap at the back of the head near the neck.

It’s quite small, it would have been about 30cm long and about 1cm thick in the body just behind the head. It hung around for a few minutes after it was disturbed then calmly slithered away to hide under a nearby wood pile. We don’t often see snakes near the house, we were happy to have seen it, and it was great to be able to identify it too.

Golden Crowned Snake
Found in the backyard while gardening. Jessie identified it from a snake book the neighbors gave her! They are venomous but not considered dangerous to people.

Golden crowned snakes are found along much of the east coast of Australia from Queensland to NSW. They are not large growing to a maximum length of 75cm. Although they are venomous they are not considered dangerous to people, they are nocturnal and feed mostly on small lizards, frogs and blind snakes.

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Kookaburras attacking the house

Animals, , , ,

A few days ago a pair of Kookaburras started attacking an old steel air conditioner on the side of the house. They sit on a branch and take turns flying right at the thing, hitting it hard with their beaks. It makes a loud clang, sometimes they get their beaks stuck between the slats.

Kookaburras watching, waiting..
These are the 2 kookaburras that have been attacking the side of the house for the past few days. Don’t know why they’re doing it. They’re hitting an old steel air conditioner really hard with their beaks, sometimes their beaks get stuck between the slats

It’s not happened before in the 3 years we’ve been here. Not sure what it going on, I thought there might be something living inside the aircon box that they’re going after, or maybe they’re just sharpening their beaks? They tend to do it at the crack of dawn which is 5am this time of year.

Others have seen this behavior, there are a number of people having problems with Kookaburras repeatedly trying to attack their reflection in windows too.

I’ve been shining a bright light at them, it makes them fly away, they sometimes come back after a while though. Any other suggestions welcome!

These two have been attacking an old air conditioner on the side of our house for the past few days, they take it in turns!

Cycad Time Lapse

Plants, , ,

Last year the big cycad in the front yard sprouted a bowling ball sized sphere from it’s center. It was bizarre looking, almost as if it was giving birth! The sphere eventually spread out and turned into a new generation of coralloid roots. It was quite amazing seeing it emerge so quickly, especially because apart from that there’s been no visible growth in over 2 years.

This year I noticed the spear heads of a new generation of leaves sprouting from the center and decided to try and take a photo every day. Amazing to see it grow so fast. I wonder where all the matter to build those huge leaves was coming from so quickly, could it be taken from the soil and air on the fly or has the plant been building up some sort of reservoir over 2 years that can quickly be converted into rapid new growth?

Cycad Time Lapse
Time lapse of a cycad sprouting a new generation of leaves taken over 35 days

 

Cycad coralloid roots
Cycad with a new generation of coralloid roots sprouting from the center
Cycad sprouting new leaves
Close up of the new leaves

Monster Moth – Helena Emperor Moth

Animals, , ,

Opodiphthera helena

Jess spotted this huge moth on the rock ledge out the back one evening. It was just sitting there slowly beating it’s wings. It didn’t look injured, I wondered if it had recently emerged from it cocoon and was drying or stretching it’s wings.

Check out the match stick for some scale, it’s body was just monstrous.

I’ve been trying to work out what species this is. CSIRO’s what bug it that site looks comprehensive, but it is soooo slooow it’s excruciating. I’d usually click about quickly and explore but it takes over a full minute for a page to load, the site is unusable.

Google has a fantastic new image search feature where you can give it a picture and have it return similar pictures from all over the web. To use it go to Google Image Search, and drag a picture onto the search box. I tried it out with one of the moth pictures, it returned a bunch of images of similar colour and shape, but none of them were moths 🙁 You can also type in a search word next to the picture, I tried “moth”, bingo! The pictures that came back were of somthing called the Polyphemus Moth. It looked close but not quite the same, a quick lookup on Wikipedia showed it was only found in Central and North America, damn. The article also said it’s a member of the Saturniidae family.

Now that I had an idea what to look for I went back to the CSIRO site and found a link to a Saturniidae page! The pictures there still weren’t a great match though. A narrower search on Google for “saturniidae australia” brought up some much more promising links. The closest I’ve found is Opodiphthera helena, commonly called the “Helena Gum Moth” or the “Helena Emperor Moth”

It matches on looks and location. I think this is it! Woohoo, the Internet does it again!

Helena Emperor Moth
This is one monster moth, check the size of it's body.
Helena Emperor Moth
Helena Emperor Moth. It was sitting there calmly beating it's wings.

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