Category Archives: Animals

Satin Bowerbird

Animals

Ptilonorhynchus violaceus

The family spent the long weekend at Wombeyan Caves.  They are a group of a few hundred limestone caves set in the Wombeyan Karst Conservation Reserve located about 70Km west of Mittagong.

It’s a remote location, there’s a lot of wildlife in the area, we saw a few  different species of kangaroo and a lot of birds.

On of them was the Satin Bowerbird. I noticed one loitering around under the camp table during the day, one of our friends we were with identified it. As usual a new one for me. The one near the table was a male, all black with a brilliant blue sheen. I’d noticed a group of dusky green birds cavorting around in the early morning, it turns out they were the females.

Female Satin Bowerbird. I only saw the girls in the early morning, flying excitedly about in groups

Satin Bower Birds are meant to live all up and down the east coast of Australia from Cooktown in northern Queensland down to near Melbourne in Victoria. I’ve not seen one before, or at least not recognized one.

Male Satin Bowerbird. Only saw this one male, I think he was picking up scraps from near the table, or he might have been looking for blue things to decorate his bower

As with many birds Satin Bowerbirds display strong sexual dimorphism, the males are black with a glossy blue-purple sheen. The females have a dusky olive green head and back with cream and olive green speckles on their necks and chest. Their wings and tail are brown. Both male and female satin bowerbirds have bright lilac-blue eyes.

Bowerbirds have an interesting courting ritual. The male builds a bower which consists of an avenue of sticks and twigs oriented in a north – south direction. He then decorates it charcoal and saliva, at the platforms at each end he places any blue objects that he can collect. In natural environments these can be feathers and berries, nearer to civilization bower ornaments can consist of any number of blue plastics and other man made materials.

Prospective mates are attracted by the males creations, the male will strut about his bower making hissing and chattering noises and offering up some of his blue collections. If the female is impressed enough she’ll proceed into the bower to mate, then leave to make a nest and rear her young on her own.

I used to read a book to the kids called “Bushranger Bill” I’m pretty sure Bill is a Satin Bowerbird

Resources and references

Spitfire Caterpillar

Animals, , , , ,

Perga dorsalis

First up it’s not a caterpillar, it totally looks like one but it’s not! It took a bit of searching to find it’s actually a Steel Blue Sawfly Larvae. Sawflys are large flying insects that are closely related to wasps. Caterpillars on the other hand are the larvae of butterflies and moths. The Steel Blue Sawfly Larvae is commonly known as a “spitfire” or “spitfire caterpillar”.

A sawfly larvae, AKA spitfire, on my hand. Just after the photo it had a big “spit” of yucky yellow fluid onto my hand

I found this one out the back while putting the clothes on the line. It was crawling on the grass near a small hole that looked like it had been recently dug by a bandicoot. Spitfires are distinctive looking, quite a chunky things growing up to 8cm long. Their bodies are black and covered by sparse tufts of short white hairs. They have six large distinctive legs near the front of their body, this gives the larvae the appearance of having a long tail. The tip of the tail is yellow.

Steel blue sawfly larvae
Spitfire head and legs. The hairs are softer than they look.

The Spitfire name comes from the larvaes behaviour of excreting a smelly yellow liquid from it’s mouth as a defence when disturbed. Growing up we were always told that it would burn and cause an irritating “bite”, this one had a spit in my hand when I picked it up and it didn’t do anything. It was pretty yuck though, I wiped it off.

Spitfires like to clump together in groups during the day, presumably for protection, then at night they venture out alone to feed. By coincidence I’d observed a clump of them on a small shrub only 2 weekends ago while visiting Leura in the Blue Mountains. I took a photo because it looked interesting but at the time I didn’t know what they were.

Spitfire clump. They clump together during the day for protection then split up at night to feed.

Spitfires are active during late winter and spring, after which they burrow into the soil to make a cocoon and pupate. They can remain in the soil for two or three years before emerging as an adult saw fly. I think the one I found was trying to bury itself or had just been dug up. I had no idea what it was at the time, so after picking it up and taking the photos I placed it in a Banksia tree. It would have been double pissed at that because they only eat eucalyptus leaves! Oh well, hope it found it’s way back down to the ground.

unhappy spitfire caterpillar
Look at the size of those legs! It was arching it’s back, I don’t think it was happy

I couldn’t find much information of where they live but it looks like they are considered to be an Australian native. From the various sites and Atlas of Living Australia occurrences they are at least found in Eastern Australia from Brisbane in the north down through Victoria in the south

Resources and References

Black Cockies Make Their Visit

Animals

It happens every year around this time, this year it was yesterday ( August 13th, Jessie’s birthday! ) They were in the Banksia out the back but had gone by the time I got the camera. They’re usually just here for a just one day per year, I’ve not been able to find any information on their migration habits, or even if they migrate at all. But where do they go for the rest of the year!

Here they were last year.

Fan-tailed cuckoo

Animals, , ,

Cacomantis flabelliformis

After the big storms a few weeks ago we had another wet weekend. It didn’t stop us from getting outside though, the two boys agreed to brave the leeches for a walk down to the river to see the flood damage and see what birds we could spot.

The creeks were running high but still crossable, it was clear from the debris and flow patterns how high the water had been.

Bird wise it was pretty quiet, but near the river just past Murrumba waterfall a Fan-tailed cuckoo flew overhead from one tree to another. Yet again I couldn’t identify it until I got back and studied the photo, hopefully I’ll get it next time.

Fan-tailed cuckoo’s are a common bird found all down the east coast of Australia, south and all the way through to southern west Australia. They are also found on other nearby Pacific islands of New Caledonia, New Guinea, Fiji, New Zealand.

They are a medium sized bird with a slate grey head, wings and back, it’s breast is a lighter grey, tail is horizontally striped with black and white. A clear identifier of the Fan-tailed cuckoo is the yellow ring around its eyes.

Fan-tailed cuckoo near Middle Harbour river – note the yellow eye ring, a good way to identify the bird.

Cuckoos have an interesting and brutal way of child rearing. The cuckoo mother lays it’s eggs in the nests of other species of birds. It ejects one of the existing eggs then leaves. The cuckoo eggs often hatch first and the chick then proceeds to push the other eggs out of the nest. The presumably unsuspecting host bird then raises the cuckoo chick as it’s own! What a bastard!

Notes and Sources