Paluma Nature Notes Contributions to the PDCA Newsletter, Turkey Talk, 2011-2018
by Roy MacKay
Compiled by Jamie Oliver
Roy Mackay – Nature Notes Compilation
Introduction Roy Mackay first moved to Paluma in 1987 having had a varied and successful career in Australia and PNG working as taxidermist, curator wildlife park director, photographer and book author. He was a highly skilled naturalist, with a keen interest in all plants and animals (especially in the tropics).
Through his regular walks in and around Paluma and avid reading of the literature, Roy quickly became Paluma’s resident expert on the wildlife and natural history of the area. With the establishment of Paluma’s regular newsletter, Turkey Talk, Roy found an effective way to share this wealth of knowledge.
His first contributions, starting with issue 28, dealt with short notes related to natural history (eg. announcements of new species lists, book reviews etc.) but by Issue 39, with an article entitled “Nature Notes” he concentrated on recording new and interesting observations from Paluma and nearby areas.
With the exception of a series of 4 articles titled “Roy's Rovings” (under a different Turkey Talk editor), and the occasional missed article due to absence or ill health, and one article named “Paluma in the Clouds” Roy’s contributions were simply labelled “Nature Notes” and they became a much-read part of virtually all issues of Turkey Talk from number 45 onwards. In total he wrote 78 articles.
All of these are reproduced below.
Jamie Oliver December, 2019
Page 2
Contents
Each Nature Notes article has been extracted from an issue of the newsletter of the Paluma & District Community Association (Turkey Talk – abbreviated at TT throughout).
TT 28 – May 2002 ...... 5 TT 69 September 2010 .. 26 TT 103 April 2016 ...... 49 TT 31 –November 2002 .... 5 TT 71 February 2011 ...... 27 TT 104 June 2016 ...... 50 TT 34 –June 2003 ...... 5 TT 72 March 2011 ...... 28 TT 105 September 2016 . 50 T 36 – October 2003 ...... 6 TT 73 May 2011 ...... 29 TT 106 October 2016 ...... 51 T 37 – November 2003 ..... 6 TT 74 July 2011 ...... 30 TT 107 November 2016 .. 51 TT 39 April 2004 ...... 7 TT 75 August 2011 ...... 30 TT 109 March 2017 ...... 52 TT 45 June 2005 ...... 7 TT 76 November 2011 .... 31 TT 110 April 2017 ...... 52 TT 46 September 2006 ..... 8 TT 77 March 2012 ...... 32 TT 111 May 2017 ...... 53 TT 47 November 2005 ...... 9 TT 78 April 2012 ...... 33 TT 112 June 2017 ...... 54 TT 48 Feb 2006 ...... 9 TT 79 May 2012 ...... 34 TT 113 August 2017 ...... 54 TT 49 March 2006 ...... 10 TT 80 June 2012 ...... 35 TT 114 October 2017 ...... 55 TT 50 May 2006 ...... 11 TT 81 August 2012 ...... 35 TT 115 December 2017 .. 55 TT 51 July 2006 ...... 12 TT 83 November 2012 .... 36 TT 116 February 2018 ... 56 TT 51a September 2006 . 12 TT 84 March 2013 ...... 37 TT 118 June 2018 ...... 56 TT 52 February 2007 ...... 13 TT 85 April 2013 ...... 37 TT 119 August 2018 ...... 57 TT 53 April 2007 ...... 13 TT 86 July 2013 ...... 38 TT 120 October 2018 . 58 TT 54 June 2007 ...... 14 TT 87 September 2013 ... 39 TT 55 April 2008 ...... 15 TT 88 December 2013 .... 40 TT 56, May 2008 ...... 16 TT 89 February 2014 ...... 40 TT 57 October 2008 ...... 17 TT 90 March 2014 ...... 41 TT 58 October 2008 ...... 17 TT 91 May 2014 ...... 42 TT 59 February 2009 ..... 18 TT 92 June 2014 ...... 43 TT 60 March 2009 ...... 19 TT 93 August 2014 ...... 43 TT 61 April 2009 ...... 20 TT 94 September 2014 .. 44 TT 62 July 2009 ...... 20 TT 95 November 2014 .... 45 TT 63 September 2009 ... 21 TT 96 February 2015 ...... 45 TT 64 November 2009 .... 22 TT 97 April 2015 ...... 46 TT 65 March 2010 . 23 TT 98 May 2015 ...... 47 TT 66 April 2010 ...... 24 TT 99 August 2015 ...... 47 TT 67 June 2010 ...... 25 TT 100 October 2015 ..... 48 TT 68 July 2010 ...... 26 TT 102 February 2016 ..... 49
Page 3
Subject Index
Amphibians frogs, 10, 11, 14, 22, 23, 27, 46, 48, 49, 50, 56 Bettong, 8, 12, 17 Birds Bowerbird, 22, 28, 29, 32, 34, 39, 41, 42, 48, 57 Cassowary, 5, 10, 11, 13, 20, 22, 32, 33, 36, 37, 41, 49, 51, 53 Currawong, 9, 12, 17, 30, 31, 35, 46, 48 Goshawk, 38, 41, 53 Honeyeaters, 9, 16, 17, 26, 28, 29, 30, 39, 42, 43, 48, 49 migration, 9, 16, 27, 44, 51, 54, 55, 56 new record, 6, 23 Owl, 28, 57 Parrots, 6, 28, 51, 56 Quail, 15, 18, 29 Red-necked Crake, 24 Riflebird, 28, 29, 34, 36, 41, 42, 43, 48, 51 Top-knot Pigeons, 27 Turkey, 11, 16, 19, 21, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55 Dingo, 7, 8, 12, 27, 36, 53 Echidna, 20, 21, 38 Fall, 21, 23, 24 Frogs, 10, 11, 14, 22, 23, 27, 46, 48, 49, 50, 56 Fungi, 8, 9, 15 Gecko, 6, 14, 27, 47, 48 Hibernation, 8, 36, 39, 47, 53, 54, 55, 56 Koala, 10 Lizards, 6, 8, 18, 27, 37, 38, 39, 41, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55 Orchids, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 36, 41, 44, 45 Pademelon, 9, 12, 17, 18 Platypus, 5, 12, 19, 34, 35, 45 Reptiles, 5, 6, 12, 13, 24, 27, 30, 38, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57 Skinks, 6, 13, 47, 49, 55, 56, 58 Snakes Python, 7, 11, 14, 18, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 38, 40, 46, 47, 49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 Red-bellied Black, 10, 22, 25, 31, 35, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56 Spring, 8, 14, 22, 27, 31, 32, 39, 44, 48, 51, 55 Summer, 20, 22, 47, 52, 56, 58 Water Dragon, 26 Wet-season, 13 Winter, 5, 8, 14, 16, 17, 32, 35, 36, 38, 50, 54, 56
Page 4
TT 28 – May 2002 Cassowaries & Platypus If you have any records of sightings of Cassowaries or Platypus in the Paluma area and surrounding territory, please give them to Roy Mackay who sends these records to Nature Search headquarters in Brisbane. Nature Search is concerned about the status of these species in our area and whether they are common or rare here. Please note date, precise locality, time of day, whether solitary or with young or whether feeding. Please also write down your name as the recorder. Old records are welcome. Roy Mackay TT 31 – November 2002 Cassowary Awards It seems that few people in the village are aware of the honour awarded to one of our long term residents. Let it be recorded (to coin a phrase) that on Saturday 24th August, in Cairns, our Paluma bird authority, Andreé Griffin, was presented with a Cassowary Award by the Wet Tropics Management Authority for her work in recording the calls of birds, especially in the tropics. You will recall that Andreé produced three cassettes of bird calls – “Tropical Queensland", "Cape York" & "Queensland's Coast”. This was largely pioneering work in the area. The cassettes are now unprocurable but many of the recorded calls are in collections by other sound recordists. The ceremony for presenting the awards was sponsored by Cairns City Council, Queensland Tourism & the Department of Industry Science & Resources. The awards are given to persons from this region who have worked selflessly for a greener future for our region. The award included a framed certificate of the of the award and a gold broach/pendant of the neck of a Cassowary in a circle. Andreé now ranks among many other well-known and highly regarded recipients of this award such as Margaret Thorsbone, Aila Keto, John Winter, Tony lrvine, Davey Lawrence, Garraway Elders, Graham Harrington and others.
Roy Mackay
TT 34 –June 2003 No heading REPTILES LIST I have visited Mt Zero Station many times over the past 15 years and have LIST : kept records of the birds, mammals and reptiles and amphibians seen there. l have just presented to the Manager of the Mt Zero project, Mr Ernest Dunwoody, a list of the reptiles and amphibians recorded there and a list of those which could be found there in the future as visitors and researchers record their sightings and collections (under permits).
BIRDS OF MT ZERO An Easter weekend campout for the North Queensland Branch of “Birds Australia” was held at the new conservation park at Mt Zero Station. Twenty birders attended and a remarkable 82 species of birds were observed in the three days. This list included a pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles which have a hunting territory including a large part of both Mt Zero and Taravale Stations. Just on dusk on the Sunday an Australian Hobby swiftly passed over our campsite.
BIRDS A meeting between Thuringowa Council representatives, Debra Hilton and BROCHURE: Megan Dixon and six or so representatives of bird watching organizations, was held in the Community Hall in April to discuss the production of a brochure on the Birds of the Paluma Range. Submissions were
Page 5
gathered by the Council representatives for consideration by the Council. The Council also had in mind to produce a brochure on the birds of Thuringowa. It is understood that the latter brochure would now incorporate the Paluma Range in the list of many sites in the Thuringowa area as prime Birdwatching sites. It is also thought that Fact Sheets/ Bird Lists may be available at each site for visiting birdwatchers. A good plan for all concerned. Watch this space for developments.
Roy Mackay
TT 36 – October 2003 A new Bird for the Paluma Area A report of the sighting of the Blue-faced Parrot Finch at Birthday Creek Falls by Mr. Peter Irwin of the National Parks and Wildlife Service came to me from Helen McLaughlin of the Natural Resources Management. I was asked if I could confirm this – no I couldn’t. Andreé and myself went twice to Birthday Creek Falls and the grassy area around the forestry hut but, alas, no sighting. It has not been seen here before. Closest record to Paluma area is Kirrama, almost 100kms from here. Not impossible, so keep your eyes open.
Roy Mackay
TT 37 – November 2003 Book Review A complete Guide to Reptiles of Australia, by Steve Wilson & Gerry Swan ; Price $50
This is a long needed guide. Cogger’s Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia (known among herpetologists as “The Book” is the ultimate reference but is too big to take to the field. Now we have a guide to take with us into the field, in your car, backpack of picnic basket. This latest book, octavo, softcover, is fully illustrated and therefore shows you those little skink lizards around the garden, which you couldn’t identify (no, not the big water skink; we all know that one and, yes, he is in there too). It also shows you how difficult it is to identify these small skinks when so many have a red throat or a red stripe on the side or a white stripe from nose to tail or…
If you know your reptiles to any degree you will find quite a few scientific name changes. Do not be discouraged by this. You know what you saw and if it is called Phyllurus cornutus in one book and Saltuarius cornutus in this book it still remains the Northern Leaf-Tailed Gecko. Using the text, the maps and the illustrations together you should do well in your identifications. Speaking of illustrations, yours truly has two snake photos in the book, so you will have to buy… [remainder of text lost due to missing pages in this issue of Turkey Talk].
Roy Mackay
Page 6
TT 39 - April 2004 Nature Notes 18/03/04 – Two adult and 4 juvenile Metallic Starlings were seen in the trees between Sid Roveda’s and Graham Barr’s homes courtesy of Linda Venn and her clutch of juvenile bird watchers. Metallic Starlings have been recorded in Paluma before, but not for many years.
16/03/04 – Andreé Griffin and Roy Mackay spotted four Glossy Black Cockatoos feeding in Allocasuarina torulosa trees about one kilometre west of Taravale turnoff on the Ewan Road. The Glossys have been known in the area for only the last five years. They have been arriving in April and leaving in August after breeding and rearing young.
Congratulations are in order for Bonnie McLennan, Martin Morelli and Ian Clayton for the production of the first Hidden Valley/ Running River Area Birdlist. 110 birds are listed (as at January 2004). For a Copy of the list, contact Bonnie on 47708 088.
Since our rubbish tip was closed to domestic rubbish, Dingoes have virtually vanished from our area, It is now noticed that the red-legged wallabies are coming back here. Two were spotted together on the Paluma Range Road above Mountain Creek at 10:00pm on 17/03/04 by Roy and Andreé.
Did you know? … the Army (Australian Defense Force) has several qualified Environmental Officers in the Townsville area monitoring army training operations in the areas for the effects of training on the land. These officers have the power to influence where and when training can take place depending on the sensitivity of the environments and the fauna and flora there. The army is very serious about the conservation of the environment on its own and leased properties. Note also that last year the army eliminated 300 feral pigs from their area. For further information, contact: Jutta Jaunsemis, Regional Environmental Officer, Department of Defense, Lavarack Barracks, Townsville – Ph 47717011
Wildlife Preservation Society in Townsville on 17/03/04.
Roy Mackay
TT 45 - June 2005 Nature Notes Climatic changes, new fire regimes (legal and illegal), increased human activity, introduced animals (incl. Dingo) and plants, all have detrimental effects on our wildlife and native vegetation. Since I arrived in Paluma in 1987 I have seen the demise of several species of animals and plants (e. g. Death Adders and Slaty-grey snakes and Spotted Pythons on the Range Road and Melomys rats in and around Paluma) and the rise of others (e.g. Toads). Also other species coming closer to Paluma Village (e.g. Taipan).
Taipans are not rare on our coastal lowlands but finding Taipans very close to our village on the western side is worth noting. Over the past couple of years, two large Taipans, one at the beginning the Taravale Rd and the other on the Ewan Rd, a bit further past the Taravale turnoff. One other was found by Kelly Davis when mowing near the entrance to Hussey Rd. A fourth was found by the writer and later by Kelly Davis on the Mt. Spec Rd, between the water treatment track and the rubbish tip. So be aware and be careful.
Page 7
lt may be the drought we have been experiencing that allowed us some sightings of Northern Bettongs in and around Paloma. The writer saw one cross the road (Lennox Crescent) near our water tank turnoff. This was only a few weeks ago. Only a week or so ago, another was seen by Gayle Anderson, near Hyland‘s block and Graham Pope saw a group of them near his block.
Have you noticed in recent years that more Red- legged Wallabies have been seen in and near Paluma? One reason would be the closure of our rubbish tip and consequently few Dingoes. Dingoes were introduced by man. They have been, and still are, major killers of our native wildlife. We have a ‘pet’ Dingo in the village, said to be 98% pure. It is now pregnant, having mated with one of the village dogs and it is soon to drop its pups. Through kindness, the Dingo was rescued from death by tick bite. Whichever way you view this situation, it is not right that we should have a half a dozen or so crossbred dogs running wild in our environment. Maybe we should all meet to solve this problem.
Today, 19th June, three Brolgas landed on Don Battersby’s block on Hussey Rd. They stayed for several hours on that and nearby blocks and were seen by yours truly, Andre Griffith, Don Battersby, Jo Wieneke, Kelly Davis and Graham Pope.
Roy Mackay
TT 46 - September 2006 Nature Notes
The Spring is sprung, The grass is riz, The Yellow Robin nesting is.
Andreé Griffin and I saw a Yellow Robin finishing off a neat nest in a regenerating Casuarina tree off the Taravale road. This was on Friday, 25th August. Not waiting for the official date for Spring, 1st September, Cock Robin prepared the connubial nest about 3m above ground, well protected from the winds deep in the tall Rose Gum forest. Watch this spot for developments.
So, Spring is here??? Maybe. Certainly we have had the mildest of winters. So much so that snakes and lizards came out of hibernation for short periods on those many lovely sunny days we have had this Winter. And even some of those odourous fungi have been seen — or smelt. Linda Venn saw and photographed one of the Stinkhorn fungi recently. These usually appear in the warmer wet season months on undisturbed mulch or compost heaps. Two of the commonest species of these Stinkhorn or Crinoline Fungi of the Genus Phallus (what else) are usually detected by their fetid smell. The one most often seen in Paluma has a lace-like skirt around the phallus-like stem, hence the name Crinoline Fungi. Andreé and I recorded our first sighting of the Great Crested Grebe on Lake Paluma on 26th July. It is a rare bird in the tropical north of Australia but occurs through Eurasia, Africa and Australia but not in S-E Asia, Indonesia or PNG.
You must buy it! A new book, booklet or A4 size publication — call it what you will, Rare and Threatened Plants of the Townsville, Thuringowa Region, by Dr. Greg Calvert, Dr. Con Lokkers and Russell Cummings, $20.00. Contact Greg on 477 146 23. It is beautifully illustrated and mentions Paluma frequently, e.g. The
Page 8
Paluma Yellow Bloodwood and Betsy’s Wattle (maybe that should be renamed??). Greg tells me that he has not actually seen the rare White-flowered Potato Orchid (Gastrodia urceolata) which I found in our Rose Gum forests near the Taravale turnoff and which was written up in a paper by Bill Lavarack, Roy Maclcay and Steve Pearson in I996. I hope to show it to Greg in the flowering period, Oct-Nov. In fact, if I find it, I will organize a visit for Palumanians to see it. Do not bank on it. Because of repeated fires and pigs, I have not seen it for three years. Keep watching Nature Notes.
Roy Mackay
TT 47 - November 2005 Nature Notes We (Andreé and I) found no evidence that the Yellow Robins, mentioned in last issue, were successful in raining young. On our last visit to the area, two adults only were seen. Young Yellow Robins were seen elsewhere.
We sighted a semi-albino Currawong in Andreé’s garden amongst the plague of Currawongs over wintering here. It had a white head with black flecking, very pale bill and pale legs. All other parts were normal.
The skin and some bone parts of a Red-legged Pademelon were found on the back lawn of Peter Klumpp’s house. I wonder what could have killed it? There is a domestic cat roaming freely in the village. Tut tut! No the done thing in a village in the Wet Tropics Management Area.
Snakes are out and about. Beware the harmless Keelback Snake Tropidonophis maairii. It frequents waterways here and around Lake Paluma. It is very easy to confuse this snake with the very dangerous, potentially deadly, Rough-scaled Snake Tropidechis carinatus. They are similar in colour and pattern, similar in length, both have a keel or ridge on each scale, both are uncommon. If you find a dead snake which you think may be on or other of these snakes, you can tell the difference yourself. If it has an extra scale (known as the loreal) between the scale in front of the eye and the nostril scale, if is the harmless Keelback.
The migrant birds are returning. Already the Drongo, the Channel-billed Cuckoo, Rainbow Bee-eaters and large numbers of Scarlet Honeyeaters are here. Soon we should see Koels, Dollarbirds, Spinetail Swifts, Forktailed Swifts and Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfishers here. Watch for the latter bird if you go down the Range Road early in the morning after November 4th.
Roy Mackay
TT 48 - Feb 2006 WILDLIFE MATTERS Other than toads and weeds and *pest trees and some fungi and etc etc - we have no introduced wildlife here - forget about garden plants. So! astonishment, when seven Peafowl (immature and/or females) paraded through the village area on their way West. They were seen by many of the villagers. Last report I had was that the Peafowl were passing through Blackfriars. Look out Hidden Valley!
Page 9
Last issue I described the similarity between two snakes, the Keelback and the much rarer Rough-scaled Snake. On Jan. 20th I found a young Rough-scaled Snake crossing the Ewan Road near the end of the bitumen. Nearby there was a young Red-bellied Black Snake dead and a dead Whipsnake. Yes, the warm, wet weather has brought the snakes out. I have also seen two large gravid female Red-bellied Black Snakes, one on the Paluma Dam Road and one at Twin Falls. Do not approach any of the snakes you see alive and please try not to drive over snakes deliberately. They have a vital role in the balance of wildlife.
I have prepared a new Bird List for the Paluma Range area which is available from me - free, gratis and for nothing. It includes over 200 species recorded in the area - one quarter of the bird species recorded in Australia. This is not surprising when you consider the wide range of habitats in this area. I have also tried to make this list contiguous with the Bird List of the Hidden Valley. I have included the species recorded from Little Crystal Creek to Sunset Gap and from Lake Paluma to Taravale and the Upper Star Valley. There are more species to be confirmed - so keep watching.
Roy Mackay
Addendum from Ross & Sonya:
CASSOWARY SIGHTING: We were taking a walk recently when a cassowary strutted across the road just beyond the end of the° village close to the “Beware of Cassowaries” sign . Checking it out maybe. Roy has also seen it at the lookout end of the village around the same time.
TT 49 - March 2006 WILDLIFE MATTERS Well, strike me up a gum tree. A Koala at Hidden Valley. On 11 Jan 2006 Bonnie McLennan saw and photographed a Koala up a River Red Gum along Running River. Great observation, Bonnie. Koalas have been recorded as far north as Chillagoe. Laurie Guild, when he ran Taravale Station, had seen Koalas in forests south of the station house. It appears that Koalas are sparsely distributed in the north. So, observers, take note (Roy and Andreé in particular), and open your eyes a bit more.
Just below culvert 75 on the Range Road, Lennie Cook saw a Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher on 6/3/06 in trees close to the road. That is a late observation. They usually come to the Range Road area early November and depart in February. However, there are records of individuals over wintering in the breedãing areas. So, keep your eyes on the road first and maybe glance around culvert 75. Another gem of the Kingfishers is the Little Kingfisher. There are very few sightings of this bird up here but Andreé and I saw one closely at the big pool at the bottom of the Hyland's block. It is a very beautiful bird of very deep blue on the back and vivid white on the front. It stands about 10 cms on the ground - so it is tiny and remarkably camouflaged when sitting on the ground.
In the 1980s two species of frogs became extinct in the Paluma area - Litoria nannotis and Litoria rheocola. They exist in small numbers at low altitudes elsewhere. This extinction was part of a global extinction of a great many high country frogs throughout the world and caused by a Chytrid fungus. Now we have a new threat to our frogs - the Redlynch virus. So far this virus is confined to the Cairns area. It is virulent. If you see large numbers of dead frogs or tadpoles in or around ponds and dams please contact
Page 10
myself or Linda Venn who can contact the Frog Hospital staff in Cairns and other researchers. Signs to look for -
The largest tadpoles are dead in the water. The tadpoles in the water can all be dead in one week. Lots of frogs calling frequently at the water body but no tadpoles to be found in the water
So far, the only tadpoles found after regular searches in parts of the Cairns area are the smallest ones. Yes, the virus is deadly to Cane Toad tadpoles too. This virus may be restricted to the Cairns area but has the potential for widespread devastation
Roy Mackay
TT 50 - May 2006 Nature Notes With the rainfall over the monsoon average there has been little opportunity to observe nature other than rainfall and watching grass grow. However, I digress. A taipan was seen to cross the road [successfully] just west of the last house in the village [mine]. As at other times of long periods of rain, ants, by the millions, come inside the house and so did the Yellow footed Pouched Mouse (Antechinus flavipes). The latter was trapped and relocated; the former were discouraged from coming back. On two of the few sunny days since the last “Turkey Talk” a very large Amethyst Python, Rock Python, Scrub Python (Morelia amesthistina), what-you-will was seen at Bill & Lyn's place and later, presumably the same one, was found coiled up in the grass at Ted & Anne's property on the five acres. It was BIG. It was not disturbed so I do not know how long it was/ is.
We are lucky that we had no big landslips this wet season but there were quite a few trees down, cleared away by Main Roads, Thuringowa Council and Kelly Davis. But did you notice the flowering of the Casuarinas and the native Hibiscus and the native Ground Orchid (Dipodeum ensifolium) - on the roadside at The Saddle. Some years ago there was a proposal to install a tree walk at the Star Valley Lookout. We really only wanted the regrowth cleared away so our visitors could see the marvelous view over the Star Valley, Dotswood Station [now the Army training reserve] and as far as the Mingela Range and almost to Charters Towers. Now, we can see the weeds and regrowth - a bit more from the elevation of a high car. ls it any wonder that some of us would like to have a chain saw to clear away the weeds and regrowth ? No I do not have a chain saw!
Hey, what about that a sugar glider photographed by Bill Siivonin in his backyard. Well, how many of us look about the forest frorn our back veranda at night? Very few. There is an old advertising signboard near the roadside outside my house. Most nights a Papuan Frogmouth sits on the signboard and catches the insects attracted by the nearby streetlight. Next time you are passing by my house at night, stop and look at the bottom of one of the signboard posts and see the number of pats of the Elephant Beetle there. On 24th April Andreé and I saw a cassowary on the Hidden Valley road about 1km beyond the Lake Paluma turnoff.
Roy Mackay
Page 11
TT 51 - July 2006 Roy’s Rovings A whole week of sunshine – wonderful! Good for reptiles too. Don Battersby killed a Common Brown Snake near his house the other day. I've heard of 'Brown Snakes' being seen in Paluma before but this is the first time I have seen one here myself. When is a Brown snake not a brown snake? - When it is a Taipan. They are here too. A very fine Red- Bellied Black Snake was searching for food in my garden on 4tn June. lt seemed to be a female - small head, fat body, slim tail. lt was about 1.4m long. I let it go on its way.
Speaking of the weather you may be interested in these statistics. The average rainfall for the first five months of the year over nearly 30 years of records for Paluma is just over 1.8m. This year we have had almost 2m for the same period. And yes, Lake Paluma is overflowing Paluma Dam. Average annual rainfall for Paluma is about 2.5m.
Andreé Griffin and l went birdwatching along one of the forestry tracks along Chic's Road and what did Andreé find? A small patch of Greenhood Orchids. They are a different species from the one on the big boulders near the end of the bitumen. You haven't seen those?! Better hurry - it is the end of the flowering season. There have been more sightings of Rufous and Northern Bettongs lately on the Taravale Road and along the Mt Spec - Ewan Road right into Paluma. Don't confuse them with the Red-Legged Pademelon which is only slightly bigger than the Bettongs. These three Macropods are increasing their numbers since Dingoes have gone from the area.
There seems to be only two Currawongs resident in Paluma this 'dry' season. One is too many. However it would be interesting to know what brings them here for the dry season. About 10 years ago, we had a flush of 105 Currawongs in one dry season and that was 104 too many here. Many thanks to those people who have given me Cassowary sightings.
Roy Mackay
TT 51a - September 2006 Roy’s Rovings On 12.07.06, with Don Battersby, I watched a young platypus swimming and diving in Don's dam. It was there for two or three days. With the good rains we had had in June it seems the Platypus had followed up the swollen nearby creek and the overflow from Don's dam. on Thursday 27th July there was a gathering of kindred souls at Peter and Pam's Taravale house and Mt. Zero-Taravale Wildlife Sanctuary HQ. Bill and Roz Pyne, Tom Connors, Andreé Griffin, Roy Mackay were present to exchange information about the wartime timber camp on the Sanctuary's land and other related matters. Tom was the star of the meeting showing photos and documents supported with maps brought along by Bill Pyne. We understood the layout of the camp and the names of the timbermen (including Tom’s dad). Some readers will know of the commemorative memorial on the right hand side of Tararavale Road about 1 km in from the Mt Spec-Ewan road where the camp was established. Go thus far along that road and no further unless you have authorization. One photo showed a dead Tiger Quoll (33 Inches long) which had been killed in the area. To my knowledge, there have been no further records of the Tiger Quoll in our areas
Page 12
since then. An interesting comment from Tom was that, as far as he knew, no-one had seen a Cassowary in the Paluma area during the life of the timber camp. Thanks, Pam and Peter, for a great lunch.
Michael Drew, Paul Radford, Don Battersby and yours truly, did a walk along the forest track which branches off to the right between Paluma and Windy Corner on the Range Road. There are quite a few fallen logs and much Lawyer Cane across the track (road) but it is amazing how good that track is. The culverts, pitching, guttering and gradient of the road are in very good condition making walking comparatively easy - even for a 78 year old! About 1 km along the track is an area covered by Lantana, native raspberry and lawyer cane which was the main timber camp for that area and a telltale bottle dump is nearby. We walked about 12 km along the track before returning to where Michael Drew, 15 years earlier, had blazed a tree and laid a stone marker denoting an old mule track leading down close to Michael and Donna Drew's house near The Saddle. We followed this track down the mountainside with Roy falling on his rear end now and then on the steep loose rock slope. It was a good exploration walk. We heard many different birds and a young (brownish) cassowary was seen. Wasn't there going to be some sort of Sanatorium built along this track some years ago? Gosh, I'm sure I could think of a few candidates (inmates) for that' Look in a mirror' Mackay!
Roy Mackay
TT 52 - February 2007 Roy’s Rovings Don Battersby went a-roving with an American film crew up and down the Queensland coast and at present is afloat around Brisbane. It is reported that Don has a very small part in the film, tentatively called 'Fool's Gold". Don is due back home late February.
And in other news …
This has been the best year for cicadas for years - but not so good for people with hearing aids walking in the forest. At least four species have been stridulating throughout the rainforest and especially in the Eucalyptus grandis forest for two months now. One is known as a Bee Cicada - bigger than a bee but much smaller than a Green Grocer or Double Drummer?
Roy Mackay
TT 53 - April 2007 Roy’s Rovings We are nearing the end of the Wet season and most of the birds, mammals and reptiles we should see at this time have been here. The migrants are now leaving. The water skinks in my garden have produced a good crop of young ones and a couple of snakes have passed through and have reduced the population of water skinks back to the normal number of ten here. Did you know that reptiles have paired genitals? Only one side works at copulation. Decisions, decisions...
Page 13
Last year I referred to the flowering of the local Potato Orchid. If did flower late in November. In some areas they have vanished due to the depradations of pigs - a fear of the authors (incl yours truly) of a paper on the finding of this species in our area.
Rabbits in Paluma! Well, yes. Over the last 20 years there has been the occasional rabbit on our lawns in Paluma and until recent years you could still see some bunny poo on two lawns on the corners of Lennox Crescent - eastern end. On 17 Nov. last on the Mt Spec Rd near the end of the old bitumen strip and about IOO m before the new bitumen, one flat wet and soggy bunny - almost fresh.
I wonder if we should start a competition for the first person to report the first sighting of the Red-eyed Tree Frog (Litorio xanthomera) in Spring. Remember it was only discovered and named in 1986. It is found only in the ranges above Bluewater; through Paluma up to the Big Tableland behind Cooktown. It usually appears and becomes vociferous of the first big rains around November.
Did you know? In the drier country west of Paluma there is a very rare plant named for a Paluma house owner - 'our' Botanist; Betsey Jackes. It is an Acacia, and described as Betsey’s Wattle (Acacia jackesiana) and it is found from Cape Palmerston, south of Mackay, up to Greenvale and including Mognetic Island.
History: Our indefagitable water supply supervisor, Council roadside mower and carpenter extraordinaire, Kelly Davis, is a great - grandson of Rock Davis, a famous shipbuilder, whose shipyard was at Blackwell near Gosford in Brisbane water, NSW in the 1880's to the 1890’s. Rock Davis built over 165 ships from small ketches to 277Ton steamships and including a steam launch, the 'Bonito', which featured in the Australosian Geographic Society's 1885 expedition to New Guinea. Yours truly has written a book on this very little known expedition and it is ready for publication - if I can find a publisher who does not want me to put up a year’s pension up front to publish it!
Roy Mackay
TT 54 - June 2007 Roy’s Rovings The warm weather has continued through May but not for much longer (as at May 30th). There is a coolness in the evenings heralding the Winter/Dry Season. Snakes are still about (Kelly Davis saw an Amethyst (Rock) Python almost three metres long a few days ago).
Roy found the introduced Asian House Gecko in the verandah roof the other day. This makes the 3rd or 4th record of this species in Paluma. It is very seldom found anywhere else but in houses. lt was first found in Australia in Brisbane in the 1980s so has spread along the Queensland coastal areas very swiftly. It is very vocal and you will know it is in your house when you hear its' chuck...chuck...chuck' call. You know what to do - the same as you do with toads.
The only recent unusual bird notes I have are a Masked Plover, seen by Linda Venn on the 24th May on the Paluma Environment Education School lawns, a Wompoo Pigeon seen by Roy and Andreé on the Paluma Dam road on 25th May and Roy saw a Peaceful Dove on his lawn on 27th May. The Peaceful Dove is quite common below Little Crystal Creek but rare in Paluma. ln relation to the number of dead Antechinus there are around at the moment, one possibility is that it is a natural phenomenon of their life cycle. The males live only eighteen months to two years. ln that time
Page 14
they have only one sexual frenzy and mate with as many females as they can find - and then drop dead. What a way to . . . But I digress. I have been out in my garden after one of these times of excitement and found a couple of dead Antechinus on the lawn. (A way of checking is to sex the dead ones to tell if this is likely a natural phenomena).
Through the good graces of Bill Pyne and friends we now have the old historical signs stating the altitude of Paluma - on the left as you enter the village and opposite the new restaurant - redressed and painted. The other sign tells you what will happen if you do not do the right thing in Paluma. Many thanks Bill and friends.
Roy Mackay
TT 55 - April 2008 Nature Notes Looking out the back window over the garden as I write this, I see a Red-backed Quail fossicking for seeds. Two or three species of quail make a stop-over in Paluma each and every wet season. The largest and most common species here is the Brown Quail and that is the one we mostly see on the roadsides at this time of the year.
Here in Paluma, I’ve been for over 20 years, after having produced the photographs [with Margaret] for the book on the Orchids of Papua New Guinea and I did not know until yesterday [24th March] that I had one of the smaller of these orchids in my front garden - Hyppeophyllum sp. I won’t describe it, come and see it. It is in flower now. It also occurs on Ted & Anne’s block.
Bill Pyne follows up a lot of Paluma’s history. Bill & Roz showed me a photo of a guide-post in the middle of the road near Windy Corner, apparently taken in the 1930’s, I suppose. Bill & Roz then took me to Michael Drew’s block on Hussey Road where Michael, Bill & Roz showed me the original post with the “Keep Left” direction still showing clearly. Bill can also show you trees on the way to Star Valley look-out carved with the mileage [not the kilometerage -if that is a word] from the bottom of the Range. One clearly shows that it was carved in 1934 - howsat!
This is far from the wettest wet season in Paluma’s history but it has produced good flowering in the rainforest. Shortly we should see crops of Autumn fungi fruiting bodies, from new bracket fungi, to luminous fungi and those unmentionable kinds, some of which have gay lacy skirts. And talk about smell, phew ! At the beginning of the wet season there was a great crop of unmentionable fungi in the mulch under the trees fronting the main road at the Paluma Environmental Education Centre. I’m sure it is called Phallus sp - what else ? No, I did not name it.
Let me take this opportunity to thank all of you who contributed to make my 80th birthday such a wonderful event. It is true the people and places you love are with you always.
Roy Mackay
Page 15
TT 56 - May 2008 Nature Notes This will probably be my last nature epistle for “Turkey Talk”. As most of you know I will be leaving Paluma mid-June.
The cold weather is upon us but the birds are still with us. I get big-headed a bit when villagers and visitors ring to fit a call to or identify a bird from a description by phone. I am often wrong, but also often right. One phone description lately led me to identify one bird as a possible rufous fantail. The bird was injured with a damaged eye and was caught and brought down to me. It was a fantail cuckoo...well we got the fantail bit right didn’t we ? The fantail cuckoo visits Paluma for the winter [dry season ]. It is rufous underneath and spreads its tail but is at least twice the size of a rufous fantail. The call of a fantail cuckoo is very distinctive - a long downward trill, often repeated. Like most other cuckoos it does not make a nest but lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. It feeds mostly on caterpillars and other insects.
One phone call described the call of a bird heard in the garden behind me. It seems the call was probably the white-cheeked honeyeater. The thing is, I was prompted to remember that this call itself was mainly given early morning and late afternoon. It is a strong whistle-like “Wist-to-woo” repeated ad infinitum. The bird will often be seen sitting on an exposed branch to give this call. Look for it. It is a common resident in Paluma and is a bully to other birds.
The northern migrants have flown back up north and the southern ones have arrived. The most common migrant from south is the grey fantail, now here in large numbers. There are more yellow faced honeyeaters too. Remember there is a grey fantail, much darker than the migrant, which is a permanent resident in the rainforest. Similarly we have a permanent residential population of yellow- faced honeyeaters and a migrant population – in the flooded gum [grandis] area particularly.
The village of Paluma is changing and I am pleased to see that many of the new people are keen on the natural history of the region and they walk the trails looking for the golden bower bird or its bower and other special items of our wildlife. This augurs well for the future.
Have you noticed that the “willie wagtails” and peewees have visited us in numbers this year - particularly out at Hussey’s Road. They do not visit every year, but it is great to see them - go and have a look. In your wanderings see if you can find the home of the birdeating spider. This is one of the giant spiders which live in a tunnel or funnel in the ground often 30 cms deep and without a web. Often it builds a wall of leaves around the funnel to prevent rainwater from spilling into its home. It is big enough to span a saucer but is not as hairy as the famous tarantula of South America. It is poisonous but not usually considered deadly. Yes, even in the village they occur. They do not usually catch birds but they can. Having been bitten twice by one of them in PNG I am here to tell you about it. Nevertheless it is dangerous. It is best seen at night when it sits at the ground surface entrance to its funnel.
To all, I wish you a long life and happiness and I hope you enjoy Paluma as much as I have.
Roy Mackay
Page 16
TT 57 - October 2008 Nature Notes lf you feed the birds at a food-table on your property, you may have noticed that Macleay's Honeyeaters, White Cheeked Honeyeaters and even Lewin's Honeyeaters are much more common during, and for a while after, long periods of rain. These birds have a hard time when the nectar they prefer to feed on is diluted from the flowers by rain and they need to work harder to get enough to survive. So they are more numerous when they get a free handout on the food table.
Check it out. I'm sure you have noticed the great difference in the numbers of Currawongs which stop over in Paluma each winter. Just now there seems to be only two of these birds in Paluma. About 10 years ago I counted 105 +/- 5 in the village. It is not necessarily the state of the weather or climate in Paluma's winter. It could be the state of the weather or climate inland that determines whether the Currawongs stay or venture to other areas.
One of the wonders of the invertebrates is the Peripatus or Velvet Worm. It’s ancestry goes back 550 million years [give or take 5 million years] in the Cambrian era. The wonder is they occur in Paluma. They live in the hot humid tropical forests of the world. They look like a soft velvety caterpillar. They have soft, unsegmented, lobe-like feet - about 16 pairs - and they live in damp leaf litter, rotting timber and at night will walkabout on wet tree trunks and fallen branches looking for food. They feed on very small insects, snails and worms. The head is not differentiated from the body and has a pair of soft thickish antennae. Those I have seen in and around Paluma were about 50 mm long. I have read that one of the 70 species in the world is 200 mm long. Now that l would like to see. Yes, you could find one of the small ones in your garden as I have seen them on the trunks of trees at night along the Witt's Lookout track or in the accumulated moist bits of bark, leaves and twigs at the base of the Rose Gums (E. grandis). The wet season is the time to look for them. There is a bottle of Red for the first person to show me one they have found in the Paluma area. l can show you a picture of what you would be looking for. Those I have seen had two wiggly pink stripes down their backs and that was before I had drunk any Red.
Maybe l am getting the wrong picture, but it seems to me that leeches have almost disappeared from the Paluma area. I have only had one on me in the past year and I go into the bush more than most people in Paluma. I have never had them identified as to species and it may only be my imagination but I believed there was a small one different to a larger one. So the next ones I find will go to the museum for identification. You might find them first!
Did you know that besides living in a fascinating and lovely bit of OZ that between the Bruce Highway and Hidden Valley you could see 6 species of Kangaroo and Wallaby plus 4 other species of Bettong, Pademelon and Hare Wallaby? Most will be seen at night when the majority of Australia's mammals are abroad. Get to know the wildlife around you.
Roy Mackay
TT 58 - October 2008 Nature Notes Remember, November is Potato Orchid time, so, if you have not seen one yet, call on me then. It is also the month to go a little slower down the Range Road and look out for the Buff breasted Paradise
Page 17
Kingfisher. They arrive from about the 4th November and seek out termite mounds into which the birds burrow out a nesting site. They find these mounds between Little Crystal Creek and Paluma.
Already the Golden Bower birds and the Tooth-billed Bower Birds are refurbishing their bower or display ground. It was rumoured that the bower seen close to the Birthday Creek walking track had been damaged. No, it is not damaged. I have taken two parties to see it recently and it is in good shape with the bird coming down to the already well decorated bower to add more moss and seed pods.
It was great the other day when Beth Snewin, from Smith Crescent, just behind my place, came running up to inform me that a painted Button Quail was in my garden. Although it was listed as a bird seen occasionally in Paluma by Andreé Griffin I had not seen it here, so, thanks Beth. Another “first” for me was seeing a Tooth-billed Bower bird carrying a leaf, as long and as wide as the bird itself, to take down to its display ground at the Birthday Creek parking area.
A couple of weeks ago, Beth Snewin and Elna Kershaw showed me a 4m plus Amethystine (Rock) Python coiled up at the edge of their land. It is always good to see these big pythons around Paluma as the too frequent [?] forest fires of the past have killed so many of these snakes that they have become an endangered species in our area.
Two pink-tongued lizards were seen by the Ryles in the lovely house they are building along Hussey’s Road. These beautiful big lizards are not often seen but are a natural species for the Paluma Area.
In the past year or so, it has been a pleasure to get more reports of the sighting of the Red-legged Pademelon. The last report was on 11th October on the Paluma Dam Road. As reported some time ago, when the village rubbish tip was closed and the dingos which regularly fed there disappeared, the smaller wallabies were seen more frequently. You read it here.
The last Cassowary sighting I have recorded is of a bird recently seen at Little Crystal Creek. I was shown photos of it on a digital camera. Now that I am staying here in Paluma such records will continue to be kept by me. First record for Paluma. Kelly Davis - 14th October 08 - up early, looked out of his window and saw a Magpie Goose. It was honking. He then went to take a shower and looked out of the window again and saw it, still honking. That makes 202 species of birds seen in the Paluma area.
Roy Mackay
TT 59 - February 2009 Paluma in the clouds Paluma has certainly had its head in the clouds lately with rainfall that Adelaide would envy. January is a bit more than halfway through yet we have had over 1000mm of rain. We have not had that much rain for all of January since 1998. As I write this (24 Jan.) there have been no landslips over the road. Plenty of trees, branches and a few rocks fell onto the road. The road to Paluma was closed for a day while the road workers very efficiently cleared the debris.
Wildlife is very important to our lifestyle here. There have been several reports of seeing the Buff- breasted Paradise Kingfisher crossing the Range Road between Little Crystal Creek and Paluma and, for at least one full day, a flock of Wandering Whistleducks were wandering our back streets, probably, wondering too, why they landed here instead of Lake Paluma.
Page 18
Well, haven't the gardens (and the weeds) done well out of this rain. Outside my back window I have a six metre Baeckia virgata in full white bloom - a picture to behold and remarked upon by visitors. Of course the strong winds have caused some damage to our gardens and now we are forced to do the pruning that we should have done in the last dry season.
Being on top of the Range we do not get flooding. However, all the waterfalls down the Range Road were in full spate and even some waterfalls we had not seen running for yvears. We did have over two days of power outage but we expect that as part of living in paradise. PS I had a harmless Green Tree Snake take a casual crawl across my driveway the other day. Anne and Andy Bishop are hosts to some small bats (maybe Pipistrelles) under their verandah roof. While the Topknot Pigeons are seen in most wet seasons, they seem to be in much larger flocks this year and all fly westwards in the evenings, supposedly to a communal roosting site. lf you are getting any webs growing between your toes don't worry, we all get that each wet season (only joking).
Roy Mackay
TT 60 - March 2009 Nature Notes Yes, we are still getting lots of rain in Paluma - 3201.5 mm so far this year ; well beyond the year’s average. Records since 1969 show that our record year was 1981 with 4755 mm.
A large Cassowary was sighted by a few people below Windy Corner on the Range Road just a couple of weeks back. This year is a record for the population of Brush Turkeys. Never in the last 20 years have I seen so many adults and so many very young hatchlings after the breeding season - Sept-Feb. While we do consider them a nuisance(pest?) we must remember this is their territory.
I have been invaded by Antechinus flavipes, the pouched mouse, common from the SW corner of WA, inland Victoria and NSW and along the coast & ranges of Queensland as far as Cooktown. I have trapped several in my house and have released them a couple of km away in the rainforest.
Huw Evans, of Paluma, a few weeks ago was driving down the Range Road headed for Rollingstone. He noticed the petrol gauge declining at an alarming rate but he managed to get to Rollingstone. It was discovered that a rat had chewed through his fuel line. His car was towed to Townsville where, after a few days it was found that a replacement was not to be found in Australia. Three weeks later the part still hasn’t come!
On Sunday March 15 a platypus was spotted on Ryle’s property - on the five acre blocks. Thanks to the flowing stream it worked its way across their block and into Don Battersby’s dam where it spent time foraging in the reeds before heading down the headwaters of Ethel Creek.
Roy Mackay
Page 19
TT 61 - April 2009 Nature Notes Letʼs start with the weather again. Two weeks a er March 20, with virtually no rain, we get 89.5 mm in one night - 9th April. The evenings are getting cooler. With changes in the season we get some change in the birds.
The Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher has reared its summer nestlings and moved north to PNG. Very soon we will be getting very large numbers of Grey Fantails moving up from southern climes. It is no exaggeration when I tell you that 30 pairs of these birds can be seen in the Husseyʼs Road paddocks in the dry season.
Recently we have had sightings of cassowaries near Little Crystal Creek and up the Range Road by Peter and Margaret Young and Huw Evans : take note that we do see cassowaries now and then in the Paluma area but we can not take you to any place here where we can guarantee that you will see a cassowary. Sightings are by chance. Other notable birds seen recently by Linda Venn are the Peaceful Dove - seldom seen as high as Paluma village - and three white browed robins.
Felicity Moore, working in the Paluma Environmental Education Centre, found a young echidna crossing the road near Little Crystal Creek picnic grounds. She stopped to put it back in the bush nearby, but it was determined to cross the road “to get to the other side”, I suppose ! Anyway, Felicity brought it up to me. Well, how coincidental ; new resident Colwyn Campbell is an illustrator and her current project is to do the illustrations for a childrensʼ book on the echidna. So - lights, camera, sketching pad.....action. In the meantime, what do you do for the animalʼs health ? It was obviously too thin for its size. We had no glucose and it would not eat mealworms and it seemed a bit lethargic. After due consideration, I decided to take it to animal carers in Townsville who had had several successful experiences in raising echidnas. More on this when I hear from Eleanor.
In the rainforest rim around the houses in Paluma we have a morning and evening chorus of calls from the chowchillas. The sound is joyous and bubbling and smothers any other bird calls around. These calls are our dawn chorus. The birds forage over the rainforest floor for insects and other vertebrates with alternate sideways sweeps of their feet. The move through the forest in groups of about ten and will continue to feed if you are near and keep still.
Did you know that the common [ introduced ] Garden snail is hermaphrodite ? Both reproductive organs are carried, usually on the right side and when mating a pair will move round and round each other on a right hand circle, each firing a sperm dart into the others egg sac. See photo on p 99 in “New Guinea ; The Worldʼs wild places” / Time Life series by yours truly.
Roy Mackay
TT 62 - July 2009 Nature Notes Just when you think you have listed all the birds of the Paluma Area as well as those that could be seen here, another one turns up - the Black Butcherbird. While we have listed over 200 species in the Paluma region, a lot of them are only occasional visitors, Iike the four brolgas (two adults and two young) seen on Ryle's property on Hussey Road on 28th May. Kelly Davis saw and heard the Black Butcherbird – in
Page 20
Paluma on-15th June. Bird sightings have been recorded in Paluma for approximately 30 years. Another rarity for Paluma was the finding of a freshly killed Red-necked Rail on my lawn by Colwyn Campbell while she was walking the dog.
Bill & Roz Pyne and Don Battersby have been taking small groups of Paluma residents along some of the old mining and_timber tracks to see where they lead. There is supposed to be a track joining the end of Hussey Road through the rainforest to Smith's Crescent in Paluma village. So far they have found several more branch tracks but not the one to Paluma. One track to ail old tin mine on the upper tributaries of Blue Gum Creek was the venue for one such trek. lt branches off the Paluma Ewan Road and after a couple of hundred meters plunges down a long, long steep slope to one of the tributaries. As you plunge down you pass from rainforest through an ecotone area of wonderful tall Turpentine trees and then pass on to a more open forest of Casuarinas, Banksias, native ginger, Hibbertia and many other open forest plants. The old mine area is evidenced by the many old shafts, a deal of these areas obscured by leaf and twig litter, so it can be dangerous walking there. There is one waterfall with a fall of about 25 metres with a small grove of Alexandra palms. At the mine site there are a few relics of the mining there - an enamel bowl, the foot of an old one-stamp battery that operated there, other bits of iron and a very long water race channel. It is an interesting historic site. The only dismal part of the trek is the very steep 244 metre altitude climb back up to the main road. I really felt it. At the top of the climb before you come to the road there is an old logging ramp. One of our climbers, Colwyn Campbell, raised her eyes add noticed a date carved in a big tree: 1967 in roman numerals. ln a previous issue of "Turkey Talk" I mentioned the finding of a young echidna which we passed on to a carer in Townsville. We have-just been told that it is now well and healthy and we will be putting it back in the bush where it came from shortly.
Have you heard of the Plantpot Snake? No joke. It is one of the blind snakes Rhamphotyphlops braminus. It is only about 170 mm long and looks like a black earthworm. It is also the snake with the widest distribution-in the world being found in coastal areas and islands from Africa to India and Australia to the west coast of Central America. Its real home is South-east Asia but it has been transported to these other countries via ships' cargoes of earth and the like. ln Australia it is known from Darwin and the East Coast of Cape York to Townsville. The most interesting thing about this snake is that it is the only parthenogenetic snake in the world. So, it only needs one of these snakes to be transported to a new location to start a new colony - and one of these colonies is in the Townsville- Magnetic lsland region.
TT 63 - September 2009 Nature Notes This year of 2009 is both the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the NOTES 150th anniversary of the publication of his monumental book “The Origin of Species”. This revealing book gave us a much clearer understanding of our place on earth and our relationship to other life on earth. Charles Darwin’s theory is now known to be fact, especially as we come to understand genes and heredity. In knowing this and how evolution works, we can marvel at nature and seeing how each and every bit of the natural world fits together.
One of the marvellous sights in Paluma’s natural world is the Cassowary. There have been four sightings of this giant bird in recent weeks between the eastern end of Paluma Village and Windy Corner. One: Ted
Page 21
Furber saw one on August 10 near the quarry. Two: Elizabeth Davis saw one near the same quarry on September 4. Three: Wilfred Karnol saw one near Windy Corner on August 20 & Four: Kyle and Ian Marshall saw one at Windy Corner.
On 3rd August I registered 2.0 mm of rain and that was enough to get two species of frogs to start calling. Already snakes are about. In the backyard of my neighbours house two large Red-bellied black snakes were eyeing off each other before crawling into some shrubbery [preparatory to twining around each other in mating bliss ?] At the bottom of the range road on August 26 I saw a 1.8 m Taipan and a Green Tree snake. On Sunday September 6 in Paluma near Gumburu Environmental Education Centre a 2.5 m Amethystine Python lay halfway across the road. It was rescued and, after showing it to school children the next day, it was released into the rainforest.
We are used to seeing Marsupial Mice, Melomys rats, Bush Rats, White-tailed rats and Bandicoots in our properties but when one of our residents caught eight White-tailed rats in and around her laundry in two months it makes one think that there must be some attraction there. At this stage we do not know what the attraction is. As reported before they chew the wire and fuel cables of cars and most wheelie-bins in Paluma have holes or toothmarks from these rats, occasionally resulting in expensive repairs. All the same they are beautiful creatures and we can live with them.
Not seen in Paluma but, on the way to Tully the other day, I and others saw an emu standing in the middle of a recently cut cane field barely 100m away from the Bruce Highway. Now that was a surprise sighting!
Roy Mackay
TT 64 - November 2009 Nature Notes During the past few months I have reported many sightings of cassowaries. There have been no sightings recently but an occasional cassowary pat has been seen in the Hussey Road area. Since the reportings many drivers and their passengers have been keeping their eyes open, especially near Windy Corner. Is it Windy Corner or is it Windy Corner. It is both to me. Your guess is as anyone else's’. It is Windy and it is Windy. Work that one out !!!
The spring and summer migrants have arrived and either dispersed in our area or have gone further north or south as is their wont. Grey fantails are moving south. Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfishers arrive here from Cape York [4th-14th Nov]. Drongos (not the human kind), Koels, Channel-billed Cuckoos, Figbirds and Dollar Birds have either come to stay around Paluma for a while or have visited us along the way.
Tooth-billed Bowerbirds have new courtship display grounds in many places in our rainforests. While walking through the the rainforest in the Mt Spec area recently we saw one display ground which was probably made by a young bird learning, as many of the leaves displayed were the wrong side up or were shrivelled up and should have been tossed aside. But the bird itself was calling loudly and intensely while several of us watched it through binoculars. Incidentally, two regular visitors to Paluma - Beth Snewin & Elna Hershaw - have been surveying the number and distribution of Tooth-billed Bowerbird display
Page 22
grounds in the Paluma area and they are particularly keen to of any lower altitude than Paluma where the display grounds occur in our area. Let me know if you find one. Also on the Mt Spec walk we found a carpet snake coiled up below Wilfred’s lookout. Rain has come.
In the months June to September we had only 32mm - none in August. However we had 74.5mm in October. We hope for a good wet season The devastating fires on the upside of the Range Road from Little Crystal Creek to the Bruce Highway will regenerate naturally with many grasses, not necessarily native species, and with shrubs and new trees. However, as in the past, we will not see this forest as good as it was before the next fire comes. Many trees will fall and the cracked soil will allow more boulders to fall onto the road. Take extra care on our road in the wet season. The greatest devastation is in the total loss of many species of frogs, snakes, insects, birds and mammals in that area. In the 22 years I have been in this area, more and more species are not seen again, mainly due to fires, often lit by mindless arsonists. We humans really are the most destructive animals of our own environment than any other species on earth.
On Sunday 8th November 2009 at 23.30 hrs [11.30pm] driving home from watching TV at Colwyn Campbell’s house - there, to my amazed gaze, at the turn-around entrance to my driveway - ten Wandering Whistleducks. In the thick mist I almost ran into them., I slowly reversed and went back to pick up Colwyn and brought her to see them. We watched as they mingled among themselves and decided there were only nine. On return from driving Colwyn home the birds had flown. A new record for Paluma the Plumed Whistleduck has been recorded before but not this species.
Roy Mackay
TT 65 - March 2010 Nature Notes Cyclone Olga wasn’t shy in giving us all good rainfalls. In Paluma we had 854.5 mm of rain in January which is about average. Total rainfall for 2009 was the second highest annual rainfall since records began in 1969 and that was 4026.5 mm. The highest rainfall was recorded in 1981 at 4675mm. Mean average annual rainfall is 2600 mm. Over the past month or so there have been many very misty mornings and evenings where the clouds are literally sitting on Paluma and at least as far down the Range Road as halfway to Little Crystal Creek Bridge. So drivers have had to slow down considerably. No accidents happened at these times but it is a reminder that we, including visitors, should take care at all times on the road. It is only about 10 years ago that more reflectors and roadside edge posts were installed. Before that, on those misty mornings and evenings we had to drive with our head out the window to keep the edge of the bitumen in view. We could still do with a few more reflectors closer to the village.
The recent warmth and rainfall brought out interesting wildlife and plants. Before Xmas several residents noted small groups of fireflies passing through the trees close on dusk. By the way, fireflies are actually beetles. Then, also before Christmas, the Ryles on Hussey’s Road found a brown tree snake in their woodshed. Yours truly caught the snake and relocated it in the rainforest further away. They are not deadly but can cause a lot of pain and illness to children.
For many years we used to see hundreds [thousands ?] of small insectivorous bats clustered on the ceiling of a disused wartime concrete igloo in the village. In the last year or so we have not seen them there.
Page 23
Many small bats are still seen around our street lights but where do they roost in the daytime ? About half a kilometer down the road from Paluma there is a tunnel under the road. The story goes that this tunnel was to be set with explosives to be set off if the Japanese landed and were coming up the road. The tunnel, still there, but no explosives, is the roost for some bats, maybe 20 or 30, but not the hundreds we used to see in the igloo. One species from the tunnel has been identified as the Eastern Horseshoe Bat.
We are all familiar with the road toll on wildlife. No trip to Townsville or Ingham and back to Paluma can be taken without seeing something new dead on the road. Coucals, Black Kites, Peewees, Grey Kangaroos, Agile Wallabies, Pythons, Green Tree snakes etc.etc. have all been seen as victims. Many birds are agile enough to fly out of the way in time - not so the pythons and echidnas. Driving home on Wednesday March 3rd, I saw a black lump in the middle of the road near the Balgal turnoff. I stopped on the side of the road and walked back to check it out. It was Long-necked Tortoise. Why it wasn’t flattened was a wonder. I picked it up to show school children in Paluma and then it will be relocated near the catch site. The writer is a taxidermist and although he is 82 years old, he teaches volunteers at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville in this craft so that they can mount or make study skins of the many road kills sent to the museum. There is a suggestion that a small part of the museum will be fitted to allow public demonstrations of this craft. I will let you know if or when this eventuates.
Roy Mackay
TT 66 - April 2010 Nature Notes Lots of birds are considered rare because they are seldom seen. Among the many species fitting this category is the Red-necked Crake Rallina tricolor. In Paluma, during the wet season, this bird is often recognised in the area by its call, a repetitious “keck” sound, “diminishing in sound and clarity” according to the bird books. A recent sighting of one with young in the area of the Rainforest Inn sparked action in the birding fraternity here. Several sightings were made including my own of an adult with three almost fully grown, but not fully plumaged, young at the other end of the village.
While the Red-necked Crake was a delight to see, the Brush Turkey is the only real blot on the Paluma landscape. It seems to have evolved or to have been provided by a not-so-benevolent God, to frustrate, anger, derange, unsettle and unhinge gardeners. They (the birds) are as ugly as sin and are so inventive in spoiling your Turkey-preventive measures that you give up trying to thwart them – until the next time. It seems there are no guns in the village and no-one admits to tasting these birds. It has been a particularly good breeding season for Turkeys and aggravation is at an all-time high among the villagers.
Yes, we are still getting Cassowary sightings including one four and a half kilometres down the Range Road sighted by our stalwart Postie, Robert Zander, on Tuesday 6th April. (No, not on the 1st April).
In my 23 years residence in Paluma I have seen the rise and fall of several attempts to practice a mosaic fire-regime in the Paluma Range National Park area, with little beneficial result. We, in the Paluma area, have seen the decline in numbers of mammals, birds, and reptiles just on the road alone. Between the bottom of the Range Road and Little Crystal Creek, where the drier vegetation is, fires are started by
Page 24
vandals, nihilists, angry property owners and even National Park fires which get out of control. Nature giveth and man taketh away.
Becoming a rare species in the Paluma area, the Amethyst Python (or Scrub Python), when it is seen is an occasion to say “Well, it is not extinct here yet.” Located by the Priester family(Ted, Anne, Nerida & Rowan), on their property near Hussey Road, a 10 kg, 4.2 m(13ft 6 in) Python was found dead without showing any external damage. It looked as though it had recently eaten by the swelling of its belly where its last meal slept, but nothing but parasitic worms were seen when the snake was opened.
Birds Australia is to have their annual AGM and Campout in the Townsville area in May. There will be flocks of birdwatchers watching birds in the rainforests, around the dams, ponds, rivers, dry scrubs and on the beaches. We will always see them. Paluma is one of the major areas to be visited. Birds Australia is the premier bird-watching organisation, consulted by the Government frequently. If you see a birder peeping over your fence with binoculars or scope, don’t ring the police. He or she is quite harmless – unless you disagree on the identity of a bird. Then watch the feathers fly. I’ll report on this campout later particularly as it relates to Paluma
Roy Mackay
TT 67 - June 2010 Nature Notes Every day, in or around Paluma, there is something new to see, something new to take note of, something new to learn about. Last weekend (22 May) a full-grown Cassowary was seen in the paddock adjoining the rainforest on the Ryle’s block on Hussey Road. On the Range Road last week, Felicity Moore saw a very large/long Amethyst Python stretched across the road. She managed to stop her car and wait for the snake to leisurely finish crossing the road. Last night (28 May), a group of us stopped our car to watch a metre and a half long Carpet Python clamber up the bank on the Range Road. Today (29 May) Bill Pyne saw a Red-bellied Black Snake crossing his backyard. He said it was looking very shiny, was very fat and about one and a half metres long.
Remember what I said last Nature Notes? Several of us examined the eggs of the Eastern Water Dragon, previously mentioned, buried in the soil in a hollow concrete block in Bill’s backyard. The eggs were laid/buried on 13 January and now they are very much swollen in size and, according to the literature, they should have hatched in 80 to 120 days. Now, at 135 days and not hatched, it may be that our much cooler climate has extended the gestation period. We will let you know of the birthday.
Besides the regular morning and evening garrulous calls of the Chowchillas we now have the calls of the Eastern Whipbirds as they hunt for food in our gardens.
Most people know that there have been ice-ages now and again in the history of our planet. This knowledge has been gained from the study of growth rings of fossil trees, from coral reef borings and from Antarctic ice cores. From these studies it is known that wet tropical type rainforest once covered nearly all of the top half of Australia. The last ice-age was only about 8000 to 12000 years ago. The seas were about 120 metres lower then and left a land-bridge from Cape York to southern New Guinea. So it is no wonder that if you dropped down onto the Trans-Fly area of southern New Guinea – and I have done
Page 25
that – you would think that you were in western Cape York or northern Northern Territory – same trees, same fauna.
Since the last ice-age the earth has been getting warmer, exacerbated by man’s industrialisation producing gases causing the greenhouse effect. That in turn is encouraging our rainforests to encroach further south. Evidence of this is to be seen in the Paluma area where the rainforest is spreading into the Flooded Gum forests – and rainforest birds are moving in with it. By a campground on the northern side of Lake Paluma, and elsewhere, you can see a Strangler Fig tree (a rainforest species) strangling a Flooded Gum (an ecotone/woodland species. The evidence is there for us all to see, as Betsy Jackes, the Botanist, and Peter Stanton, the Ecologist, have pointed out to us. We will have to adapt to climatic changes too – over much more time than our individual lifetimes. By the way, did you know that Australia is moving North at the rate of about two centimetres per year? I haven’t felt a thing. More next time.
Roy Mackay
TT 68 - July 2010 Nature Notes Yes, re Cape York: (see Nature Notes in Turkey Talk, June 2010 – Australia moving north). You all know about Gondwanaland. Well, many millions of years ago, Gondwanaland included India, South America, Africa and Australia. Then the land started to break up and move north on its own tectonic plate. India was the first to move off; Australia the last. They are all still moving and Australia is still pushing New Guinea against the Pacific Plate at a rate of approximately two centimetres per year.
Further to the Water Dragon story. The remaining three eggs all hatched: one on the 149th day and the other two on the 150th day. During that time the eggs had swollen from 23 x 8 mm to 45 x 28mm. Many thanks to Bill and Roz Pyne for keeping tabs on the water dragon eggs.
A couple of rare sightings made this month or so were the White-eared Flycatcher and the Chestnut- breasted Finch. It is not unusual to see the latter birds at the bottom of the Range and coastal areas but the open paddocks of the Hussey Road five acre blocks are an attraction for many birds not seen in the village. A long way from our area but worth noting, our postman saw three brolgas standing in the middle of the road to Mount Moss Mine, west of Paluma – far away from any standing water.
The writer has recently spent a week in hospital and his room looked out on a tree-lined courtyard. Of course, he birdwatched there too – Brush turkeys, Bridled Honeyeaters, White-lined Honeyeaters and of course, Indian Mynas. And Colwyn Campbell sighted a Cassowary at the beginning of the H Track on Saturday July 10.
Roy Mackay
TT 69 September 2010 Nature Notes For the past week or so we have had rain and almost rain, so I have not been able to mow the grass. Oh, what a relief! But, being kept inside the house or garage brought my attention to spiders. Now spiders are
Page 26
not everyone’s favourite animals but really they are very interesting and of infinite variety. Infinite in the sense that not all the species are named. I know of one large trapdoor spider which I am sure is not named. I look for it now and again but it seems to be rare. It is the biggest trapdoor spider I have seen and with a trapdoor to its funnel that is eliptic and with the widest parts of the elipse being attenuated to points. It can be found in the ground or even in the hollow fork of a sapling. Did you know that if you find a new species of spider, it can be named after you - through the museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville ? By the way the Daddy Long-legs spider in your garage is not deadly. In fact its fangs are not large enough to go through human skin and the venom is too weak to cause harm to us anyway. I have a lizard named after me - Anomalopus mackayi. It rather looks like a fat brown worm but it does have very small and very short limbs, so it is not a worm. It is, like me, an endangered species.
In the last couple of weeks one or two Top-knot Pigeons have been seen in and around Paluma. We are used to seeing very large flocks of these birds so these may be the forerunners of the flocks to be. We are in Spring so we should expect to see the flocks soon. Bush hens have been heard a few times recently. They are seldom seen but, as recorded in an earlier Nature Notes, one with young was seen in the village. Its strong smalldog- yapping call is quite distinctive as we do not have yapping dogs here. Very soon we will be seeing the migrant birds from the north - Dollar Birds, Drongos, Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfishers, Sacred Kingfishers, channel-billed Cuckoos and Koels, and we should notice a few species leaving Paluma to go South - Grey Fantails, Rufous Fantails, some Golden Whistlers and Bassian (spotted) Ground Thrushes. Maybe we should have a prize for the first Paradise Kingfisher seen in Spring. It should be somewhere near 4th November.
Roy Mackay
TT 71 - February 2011 Nature Notes We had a very early start to the wet season and wildlife had to adjust to that circumstance. Birds and reptiles have been on the move to adapt to this change. Like the Golden Whistler in my backyard, which should have gone down south a few months ago. It is still here. Several dingos have been seen lately including three seen gambolling on the grass on the properties of Don Battersby and the Ryles on Hussey Road. In November 2010 I saw a Dingo at the bottom of the Range Road which trotted off the road into the open forest and then walked parallel with me for half a kilometre as I drove level with it.
An odd sighting was of a Cogger's Gecko Oedura coggeri on the rafters of my back verandah. This is a lizard which lives in and under the rocks of the dry rocky country C.15 kms west of Paluma. So, I caught it and took it back to its normal habitat.Not so unusual was the young Frillneck Lizard on the road at Wolfram Creek on 11th Nov 2010. Occasionally we see these in the drier country around the bottom of the Range Road and as we climb higher we see Water Dragons.
On 15 Nov 2010 I stopped the car to take a snake off the road into the bush at the side. It was a Spotted Python about one metre long and was the thinnest snake I had ever seen alive. Its ribs and backbone were clearly defined. I hope it found food as it creeped away.
In the creek at the back of Colwyn Campbell's house and Mick Lewis's house the Northern Barred Frogs were calling with their deep croak on a very wet night. These are among the giants of our Australian frogs
Page 27
being about 90 mm long in head and body which is beautifully patterned in browns. Another unusual sighting by the Venns in their garden was of three young female-coloured Victoria Riflebirds being fed by an adult. A normal brood is two young but very rarely one or three young. Speaking of Riflebirds, I mentioned in a previous Nature Notes that the Pynes found a Riflebird in their house and that it had a numbered metal band on its leg. The number was sent to the records office of the Bird Banding Scheme in Canberra. A reply has been received telling the Pynes that the bird had been banded 9 years ago, one hundred kms NNW of Paluma. It was the longest movement recorded for this species. The Bander (unnamed) was ecstatic with the report. It has not been seen again since the 7th Oct. 2010.
The first reported sighting of the Buffbreasted Paradise Kingfisher for this season was on 17 December 2010 by the Bishops of Paluma. It was a dark and stormy night on 8 Jan.2011 and a python was on the road. After having a very nice dinner with friends along Hussey Road a few guests were driving back into Paluma when halfway through the village they stopped near a python across the road. No, it wasn’t an apparition after libation. It was long enough to have its head on one side of the road and its tail on the other. It was an Amethystine Python. Good to see. Twice in the last month or so I have seen a Barn Owl in Paluma. They are rarely seen here.
Roy Mackay
TT 72 - March 2011 Nature Notes The residents of Paluma are very well aware of the effect of cyclone Yasi on the wellbeing of our birds. Post-Yasi the birds are starving. All of us who have bird-feeding tables are having to put out much more food to feed the hungry hordes. And it is not only our usual Lewin Honeyeaters, Macleay Honeyeaters, White-cheeked Honeyeaters, Riflebirds, Satin Bowerbirds and Catbirds but a few surprising visitors such as Scaly-breasted Lorikeets, Rainbow Lorikeets, Red-browed Finches, Double-eyed Fig Parrots and a Grey- headed Robin visiting my table and finding nothing suitable for its palate. Other unusual visitors noted lately are the Koel(female), Channel-billed Cuckoo and the Buff-banded Rail, which was seen several times and its harsh "Krek" call frequently heard. Kelly Davis, on 9th Feb., heard Brolgas passing over Paluma.
Some of us have also noted an increase in invasions by the native Bush or Garden Rat and the giant but beautiful White-tailed Rats. Some of these had to be trapped and released elsewhere in our rainforest. A delightful sighting of a Sugar Glider was made by the Pynes one evening as it trotted along their verandah rail to see if there were any pickings left on the bird table. One noticeable animal, absent in the early part of our wet season, has now arrived with a vengeance - mosquitoes. Take preventative measures as Dengue Fever has visited Paluma before.
It was good to read Peter Hensler's report in the last Turkey Talk about the sighting of the Koala in the Mt Zero- Taravale Sanctuary. While it was known from that area before it is rarely seen. It has also been seen in Hidden Valley and has been recorded as far north as Chillagoe.
I reported the absence of the Golden Whistler from my garden in the last issue but it it still in the area. It is still in other Paluma gardens and in nearby rainforests. The devastation caused by cyclone Yasi to our rainforests will be seen for months to come but we can already see new growth where the leaves were
Page 28
stripped from the upper branches of the rainforest trees. The rainforest will renew itself. Many of the walking trails around Paluma were criss-crossed by fallen trees and were not negotiable, but tremendous strides have been made in clearing and most tracks are now open “With Caution”.
Those residents of Paluma who get the Rollingstone Rag will have noted a very good article on the foods we give and should not give to the birds at our bird food tables. If you do not get the Rolly Rag contact me and I will give you a copy of the article. Keep your eyes open all you birders. Peter and Pam Hensler of Taravale have reported seeing a bird which can only be the Elegant Imperial Pigeon. It has only been seen once before in Australia in the Darwin area. It was seen while they were driving through to their house. More details of the sighting will be forthcoming. Another interesting sighting made by Anne and Andy Bishop very recently was of an Oriental Cuckoo in their backyard. It is a bird which can pop up anywhere. More of this anon.
Roy Mackay
TT 73 - May 2011 Nature Notes Cyclone Yasi has caused quite a bit of upset in the bird world. In the past few days we have noticed an almost complete absence of honeyeaters from our bird tables. Very strange. At 6:00 a.m. I am up and making breakfast for me and the birds. Usually the birds are waiting for the food I put out - oatmeal porridge sweetened with brown sugar. I give them only this one feed per day with an occasional chopped-up piece of fruit. No birds have been waiting for the past two or three days. Later, one or two Riflebirds and/or a Catbird makes a visit - but no honeyeaters. Chowchillas call most mornings but not more than one morning out of three lately. What's going on?
On the other hand we are getting reports of unusual sightings such as 7 Peewees in the village for several days. It is quite usual to see dozens or even a hundred Peewees gathering at this time of year on the road between the bottom of the Range Road and the Highway. I have reported the presence of a Willy Wagtail on the 5-acre blocks on Hussey Road just west of Paluma every one or two years past but very rarely does one visit the village. There is one here now. Another unusual sighting, by several villagers, was the sighting of a Golden Bowerbird in the western end of the village. A few people only heard its distinctive call, others saw it (16th May). Bill Pyne also saw a Red-legged Wallaby near his house on the same day. While they are known to be in our environment they are seldom seen. I reported in the Roly Rag for March about the one that was grazing on Kelly Davis's lawn. 10:30 a.m.
Nothing has visited my feeding table this morning but I have received reports of sightings of a Laughing Kookaburra in the village and two Brown Quails sighted by Elna Kershaw, a frequent visitor to Paluma and an avid birdwatcher. The Rainbow and Scaly-breasted Lorikeets are still visiting the bird tables and frightening the other birds away. So there is not enough blossom and nectar in the bush yet to make them reject the food tables.
Roy Mackay
Page 29
TT 74 - July 2011 Nature Notes A fortnight ago Anne and Andy Bishop saw a very big Amethystine Python on the Range Road between Little Crystal Creek and Windy Corner. The other evening (5pm) I ran over an Amethystine Python. I stopped and walked back to see what damage I had done. Luckily I found it unharmed. It was a female almost 3 meters long with a shortened tail. Surprisingly there was no mark on it and it crawled along quite naturally. I helped it to the other side of the road and it crawled into a pile of dead timber felled by cyclone Yasi. It was nice to see that big ones are still around. Yet, this one is a tiddler compared to the longest confirmed Amethystine Python at 5 meters. and an unconfirmed record of 8 meters.
While on reptiles did you know that we have a small species of Goanna in our Paluma rainforest? I have seen only a few over the years. It is the Spotted Tree Monitor. It is found in north Queensland rainforests and the "Top End" of Northern Territory and in the Kimberly. It is about 600 mm long and hides under the bark of trees and in tree hollows. Its colouring blends in with the forest floor litter which makes it very difficult to notice. People are used to seeing the large Lace Monitor or the Sand Goanna and do not realize that we have 26 species of Goanna/Monitor in Australia with one, the Short-tailed Pygmy Monitor of Central and Western Australia, at only 230 mm long.
Bird numbers to bird tables are rising but are yet to be back to pre-Yasi numbers, especially in Macleay Honeyeaters. We are not fond of Currawongs in Paluma as they very often dominate bird tables when they are about. Only 5 or 6 are about just now but the numbers vary from year to year with some years when we are free of them. One year, about 10 years ago there were 105 Currawongs in Paluma - too many by half.
One bird species seldom seen here, except as they pass over Paluma, is the Crow. The Torresian Crow, I mean. On Monday, 27th June, one sat in the top of an Alphitonia sp. tree in my front garden cawing for at least 3 hours. I have not said much lately about the village pet hate - Brush Turkeys. Since cyclone Yasi we have all been clearing our gardens of weeds, fallen trees, leaves and other debris and re-establishing our 'ordered woods and gardens'. We have certainly exploited the many heaps of woodchips about the village for mulch. In re-establishing my garden. I have cleared out most of the weeds in the front garden, laid down several layers of paper and put down a thick layer of wood chip mulch. Yet, even after all that work, the turkeys can detect food underground and scratch through the layers to get at a worm or wood-grub or juicy bulbs. It was sad to see one lady's restored backyard garden almost totally destroyed by these birds. So far, none of us have tasted roast Brush Turkey but all of us would like to try it.
Roy Mackay
TT 75 -August 2011 Nature Notes To feed or not to feed wild birds: that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to feed wild birds all day at your bird feeding table when you can see they are starving, or suffer the slings and arrows of outraged critics for feeding the wild birds at all even after such disasters as cyclone Yasi or hurricane Katrina or the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami is the question that Darryl Jones of Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland has tried to answer. In a careful analysis of 77 scientific papers from all over the world listed in The Emu: Austral Ornithology, 2011,2: 1- V11, Darryl has come to the conclusion that there is not
Page 30
enough evidence to say that we should stop this practice. Certainly we should not feed the wild birds all day, every day as they can become entirely dependent on you and if you go away for a few days or on a two week holiday to Woop Woop it can be devastating to the birds. To avoid such dependency, I provide some food once a day, each morning and I have a 4-inch(100 mm) mesh cage over my bird table to keep out the Brush Turkeys. Other birds up to Currawong size easily get through the mesh.
You will understand that in some parts of the world seed eaters may be dominant while nectar eaters are dominant around Paluma and omnivores are everywhere. Darryl's article indicates that a lot more study needs to be carried out before we can decide one way or the other on this subject. In the meantime keep feeding the wild birds, especially rarer species, so that the gene pool is active, and follow the feeding guidelines given by Mary Young in the Rollingstone Rag for April 2011. It is good that we are doing alright, so far, in feeding the wild birds. "It is a consummation devoutly to be wish'd”.
Driving home from town to Paluma up the Range Road at about culvert 50 and just on dusk a Red-necked Crake raced across the road in front of me. It was good to see one still here in our very cool climate. Also seen on the Range road recently were Whitetailed Rats, the Garden or Bush Rat and Longnosed Bandicoots. It has become too common an experience to see nothing at all on many nights driving up or down the Range Road. However, keep looking and reporting. Such reports give an indication of how healthy the environment and its wildlife is. On Monday, August 8th, Ray and Annette Sutton, birdwatchers, were driving from Paluma to Hidden Valley when they spotted a Cassowary only one kilometre away from Paluma. They observed it long enough to recognize it as a young bird for it still retained some of the brown plumage of an immature bird at its rear end. Also it showed little growth of its casque. There was colour on its face but no colour on its neck. So it is possibly a product of last wet season's breeding.
Roy Mackay
TT 76 - November 2011 Nature Notes One odd occurrence lately, that I and other residents of Paluma reported, is that hardly any birds visited their bird tables for several days a few weeks ago. Even now, very few of the honey-eaters have come back. Concurrent with this occurrence was the departure of Satin Bower-birds, normally a common bird here. At the same time we experienced the departure of migrants, such as the Grey Fantail, and the arrival of other migrants, like the Dollar Bird, the Koel and the Channel-billed Cuckoo. Maybe we have not noticed this seasonal changing of the bird situation and its effect on the local permanent birds before. It is something we should try to remember next year.
With warmer days more Red-bellied Black Snakes have been seen lately – an indicator that the warmer days of Spring have arrived.
Do not be surprised if you see more spiders in your house as the wet season progresses. Other insects and arachnids also take advantage of the wet season to come inside our houses and lots of those become prey. Mosquitoes are one such wet season invader. It is up to you whether or not you can stand having small or large Hunstman Spiders or House Spiders around your house controlling the mozzie population but remember, we have had one case of Dengue Fever in Paluma - though some years ago.
Page 31
The rainforest is recovering slowly from cyclone Yasi but it is interesting to watch the seedlings and saplings of the larger trees race to fill in the gaps in the canopy where the cyclone felled some of the larger, older trees. Many of the younger saplings may never flower or fruit until they reach their maturity in the canopy and will remain celibate until then.
One of the more familiar birds in Paluma is the Rufous Shrike-Thrush, sometimes called the Little Shrike- Thrush. Its melodic call greets us in the mornings asnd evenings more than in the daytime but it is a common bird in our gardens.A couple of times one has nested in Lennie Cook’s pottery shed. For two years now a Rufous Shrike-Thrush has nested in a cane peg basket in the verandah of Andy and Anne Bishop’s house. It is back again and has visited the basket but so far no nest – to be continued.
Also from the Bishops, the finding of three baby Yellow-footed Pouched mice. They had fur but their eyes were not completely open. Guess who got the job of looking after them. Actually, I did enjoy trying to rear them and for a few days they were doing very well. On the fourth day they could feed themselves on the milky diet, lapping it from my hand or from a flat surface. However, overnight, all three babies died.
Roy Mackay
TT 77 - March 2012 Nature Notes Imagine you are sitting on the back verandah with friends, having a cup of tea (or coffee if you will) and a biscuit and looking down a two hectare paddock of mixed fruit trees while a full-grown Cassowary takes his/her pick of the fruit, occasionally having to jump up to get a fruit a bit beyond his/her normal reach. Well, that’s what some of us here in Paluma were privileged to see over a whole week, and more, including Christmas, at Don Battersby’s property on Hussey Road. Now that was a bonus to the Christmas festivities. Thank you, Don. Previous to this wonderful episode, several people had seen Cassowaries east and west of Paluma village- on the roadside from Paluma and on the Paluma Dam Road (now open) and also near Windy Corner and again, one seen by our postie Bob Zander, near the Cassowary sign by Culvert No.56.
So, is everything else a non-event? No; whatever you see in the natural world around you is a wonder to behold. The Wet Season is upon us and the cicadas are singing. Deafening, aren’t they? It reminds me of that single cicada singing to the beat of the Samba in the Miniscule series on ABC TV. While the singing sounds like a mammoth chorus from just one species (and it often is) it sometimes overpowers the singing of other species in a different and softer refrain, yet being heard by others of its own species. We have found a pale golden coloured species among the usual ‘Greengrocer’, ‘Double-Drummer’ and other well-known species.
There is nowhere near the number of birds around Paluma as there were before Cyclone Yasi. I have not had one bird come to my bird table in the past three weeks. The numbers should increase over the next few months as this is the peak time for nesting for many species, from Red-browed Finches to Cassowaries. Most of the Birds of Prey breed over Winter to Spring.
The bowers and display courts of the Golden and Tooth-billed Bowerbirds are recorded by frequent visitors to Paluma, Beth Snewin and Elna Kershaw of Birds Australia. They have records of the bowers
Page 32
before Cyclone Yasi and after. Several bowers were destroyed in the cyclone but a couple of surviving bowers and a few new ones have recently been recorded and are now in use.
For new permanent residents and new weekend residents to Paluma, it may interest you to know that Paluma is a Brisbane area Aborigine name for thunder and that the township of Gayndah in south Queensland comes from the Brisbane area Aborigine name, Gayundah, for lightning. These names were first applied to two new gunboats built in England for the Queensland Nay in 1884. More of the history of these ships can be read in “Paluma: The First Fifty Years” by Linda Venn of Paluma. The book is available from her.
Roy Mackay
TT 78 - April 2012 Nature Notes There have been numerous sightings of Cassowaries over the past few weeks - on the Paluma Dam Road, on the 5-acre blocks on Hussey Road, on the road up to Paluma and a half-grown bird with a small casque on its head seen by Les and Lynn Hyland just west of Paluma near the old rubbish tip. I wonder if the population of these birds is increasing? We may have been seeing only 2 or 3 adults plus the half-grown bird. At this time of year the birds will be patrolling their territories foraging for food and listening for enemies. Each bird has its own huge territory of several square kilometres. The casque on the head is a sound receiver, so, while they are patrolling they will give off signals in the form of deep rumblings which if answered could mean there is an intruder or a potential mate.
The recent tornado had little effect in Paluma but it did leave an interesting example of what these storms, tornados and cyclones can leave behind on their course inland. In this case, Colwyn Campbell found the corpse of a seabird on the lawn in front of my neighbour's house. It had been dead for a day or two after the tornado and was either a juvenile Sooty Tern or Bridled Tern, both seabirds of the tropical oceans and well known off the Queensland coast. I have given it to the museum authorities in Townsville and later we should get a positive identification. By the way - if you do find a dead bird anywhere, always check to see if it has a numbered metal band on its leg and save it. It should then be sent to the Australian Bird-Banding Scheme, c/- CSIRO, Canberra, ACT, Australia. It is the right thing to do and they will let you know where it was banded and other information.
Earlier this year Peter and Pam Hensler of Mt Zero-Taravale Wildlife Reserve, were due to retire to their home on the Atherton Tablelands but decided to stay until after the Easter weekend. So they are leaving us. They have been great neighbours and have done a marvellous job in getting rid of feral animals and by selective or mosaic burnings have largely rid the Reserve of introduced grasses and other invasive herbage. We will miss them but we do wish them a very happy and long retirement.
Rob and Joyce Campbell of Scotland, longtime friends from my PNG days (1964-1987) stayed with me for a couple of nights on their tour of the east coast of Queensland,stopping off here and there to see other old friends. Rob was an agriculturist and ornithologist and Joyce was in the nursing field. It was great to see them again. They met another Campbell - Colwyn Campbell of Paluma. Rob discovered a new Wren in PNG which was named after him - Campbell's Fairy Wren. We took them to see aborigine paintings and the Eucalyptus grandis forest and as many birds as we could find. Before they left, Rob was stuck by a
Page 33
window of my house watching and photographing birds at my bird-feeding table. He photographed a Victoria Riflebird, a Spotted Catbird, a Maclay Honeyeater, and Satin Bowerbird.
Roy Mackay
TT 79 - May 2012 Nature Notes Whether you are a believer or not, I'm sure you must, like me, be annoyed that you have only the three score and ten years to live, or, because of medical science, some more years and, knowing what life has been like, you would like to know what it will be like in, say, 50 or 100 years time. You would like to think that your grandchildren will have a life at least as good, preferably better, as you have had. But you must be worried that they, and tourists, may have to see oil platforms dotted along the Great Barrier Reef. They will see less forest. They will see more wildlife extinctions. They will see more fights (literally) over water and food availability.
With about 200,000 annual extra population from immigration, some wanting to be fisherman, or timbermen or farmers or miners, there is very likely to be less fish-stocks, less timber, etc. etc. Yes, I do worry what the future holds for my grandchildren. Do many, any, of the timber companies replant (especially with the same species) the areas they have cleared? Believers and non-believers know that what ye sow ye can reap.
In a previous Turkey Talk I reported "On the 12/7/06, with Don Battersby, I watched a young Platypus swimming and diving in Don's dam". Well, today, 9/5/12, with Don Battersby, Michael Drew and Colwyn Campbell, I again watched a young Platypus swimming and diving in Don's dam. Maybe it has a burrow and will, maybe, establish its own territory. Maybe not. The last one didn't. How did this one get there? It must have come overland from the source streams of Ethel Creek nearby. It is well recorded that they do travel overland to establish their own territory - particularly the young ones - pushed out of the territory secured by their parents.
On a recent trip to Hidden Valley I was favoured in seeing one Whiptail Wallaby (known earlier as the Brush Kangaroo) and eight Grey Kangaroos, including one joey. There is no clear-cut definition between a wallaby and a kangaroo. You can call the common Agile Wallaby an Agile Kangaroo. It is generally recognized that the larger wallabies are called kangaroos and the smaller kangaroos are called wallabies. You should not be critisized for calling the Whiptail Wallaby a Whiptail Kangaroo.
Several people have reported seeing the Bassian Thrush (known earlier as the Ground Thrush). There is an Autumn movement of these birds from the lowlands of the north Queensland coast up to the highlands of Paluma and the Atherton Tablelands. A reverse situation exists in NSW and Victoria.
Roy Mackay
Page 34
TT 80 - June 2012 Nature Notes The Platypus is still in Don's pond and it seems to be getting used to seeing people on the shore as it appears closer to visitors now. Contact Don before you go to try and see it.
Did you see the Transit of Venus? Wasn't it amazing? Over 700,000 viewers to the ABC site to see it. And Venus is as big as the earth but uncomfortably warm (over 800 degrees celcius). We see it as the morning or evening star for an average of 250 days. It seems that, as far as we know, we are the only concious beings in the Universe to see this phenomenon.
Many of you will be well aware that the winter migrants have arrived - the Grey Fantails, Peewees, Willy Wagtails and the dreaded Currawongs. While in recent years Currawongs have been in Paluma in ones and twos I remember one year (maybe 1999) when one flock of 105 birds hung about for the winter. I wonder why the predominance of black and white birds arriving at this time. I am told that there are too many white cockatoos around the orchards this year.
Did you know that you can still identify a snake from its shed skin (slough). The shed skin holds all the scale identification patterns of the original snake. Our skin comes of in flakes or fine dust. The snake's skin is continuous over and under the scales and comes off usually in one piece, though inside out. The underside of the scales flattens out to make the shed skin longer than the original snake - by up to a fifth longer than the original snake.
In the next couple of months my new book - The Bonito Expedition - will be available in bookshops. It is about a very little known Australian historical and scientific expedition which left Sydney in June 1885 and was a colonial expedition to explore Papua New Guinea, then known as British New Guinea. There were twelve scientists, naturalists and technicians including an artist and a photographer. There were also eleven Malay labourers and a Ceylonese cook. They used a small Australian cargo ship, the Bonito, and each member of the scientific staff had to keep a daily diary. Only 6 of these diaries are extant (Mitchell and Dixon libraries, Sydney) so I was able from these to give a day by day account of the expedition. In 1966 and 1967 I did two patrols in the Bedamini tribal area through which the Bonito Expedition passed. They were still cannibal people then. Only 9 photographs taken on the expedition have survived out of 840 photographic glass plates taken. The expedition called in at Brisbane, Townsville, Cooktown and Thursday Island on the way up.
Roy Mackay
TT 81 - August 2012 Nature Notes It is almost a week now of 4.5º C early morning temperatures. Sure,it is colder out on the Hussey’s Road, 2 hectare[ 5 acres, remember ?] blocks. Well,you can sit on the verandah for a while in the sun, or you can inspect the front garden to see what damage was done to your newly planted hippeastrum bulbs by the brush turkeys overnight - but still Paluma is still Paradise to the residents and bird-watchers.
Here it is in the middle of Winter [Dry Season] and I start to go down my back steps only to halt mid-step at the sight of a 1.5 metre Red-bellied Black Snake sunning itself at the foot of the steps. It was shining
Page 35
with a beautiful gloss. It seemed to be to have just shed its skin [slough]with a small patch of slough still stuck to its side. I watched for a while but it must have detected my little movements for it glided away under a pile of cardboard which I intended to lay down on a garden patch before I lay down some mulch. It stops the weeds. If there is a new species of weed to be found I am quite sure I have it, for I seem to have all the others, including Cardiospermum halicacabum [ a delightful name ] which research tells me is a “weedy” vine of North & South Queensland of doubtful endemicity. As far as I am concerned it is a fast growing, shrub enveloping weed which I could well do without.
Birds are in good numbers and no new species to our area have been added to our local list of 216 species. However, Palumians have noticed absences of Satin Bower-birds and Riflebirds for some days or weeks, but they are back with us now. I can not give a reason for their temporary absence.
As a naturalist living right beside the rainforest, I can take a few steps from my house to examine the forest and its wildlife any time. Recently, I walked through to a tree felled by cyclone “Yasi”, 18 months ago. The roots and some earth attached were criss-crossed by trails of black ants. The bark was split and lifting making hiding places for invertebrates - slugs, spiders, cockroaches, pillbugs and millepedes. I was hoping to see Velvet Worms, but, no luck. When I came to the branches there were live and dead ferns, a staghorn fern, a couple of orchids and a climbing Pothos. The latter is that climber you see on tree trunks as you walk along our tracks. There is a constriction about two thirds long each leaf. It has no common name. Lift the bark of a dead tree and see what you can find.
Roy Mackay
TT 83 - November 2012 Nature Notes Nature Notes Birds are back in pre-Cyclone Yasi numbers. Very few lorikeets come to the bird tables now. This may be telling us that there is good flowering in the forest. Lennie Cook saw an extraordinary event on his way down the Range Road the other day- a Spotted Catbird killing a Little Shrike-thrush. While it is recorded that the Spotted Catbird kills birds, they are usually smaller species such as warblers and thornbills. A good but sad sighting. Thankyou Len.
As you may have seen on TV, Taipans are out and about. So are most other snakes. So, be aware and take care. Besides snakes coming out of winter hibernation, it is also their time for mating.
In the days when we had our own rubbish tip, we would often see dingoes feeding on scraps there. After the closing of the tip, dingoes virtually disappeared and soon after we saw more wallabies and cassowaries. Now there are more reports of dingoes being seen – along the Paluma Dam road, around the 5-acre blocks along Hussey Road and even in Paluma. Linda Venn recently saw a dingo with pups along Lennox Crescent. For the past few years we have noted Pretty-faced Wallabies and Swamp Wallabies and more Cassowaries about our area. May it stay that way. While the dingoes are a small check on the pig population they also like wallabies and cassowary eggs. Remember, the dingoes are an introduced animal, not a native animal. And like the rabbit should be exterminated. Maybe we should free a few “Daleks” into the forest – “Exterminate, Exterminate”.
Page 36
Linda Venn found a young pink-tongued Lizard recently. It was one of the pale brown/grey varieties we get here not the black-banded varieties we also get here. The pink on the tongue shows much more in the adults. Now here’s the rub. There are two colour patterns in the Pink-tongue Lizards and both are found in Paluma. You can see both colour patterns in “A Field Guide to the Reptiles of Queensland” by Steve Wilson, p 113. This prompts the question – “Why are there two colour patterns in the one species with no intermediate colour patterns?” This prompts the next question - “Are there two species here?” I’ll leave that to the experts.
Another sighting AND a photo of a Cassowary. Linda Venn took a photo of a cassowary at about culvert 50 on the Range Road a few days ago. Bill Venn called me to se a Ring-tailed Possum in the trees at the entrance to Gumburu school today – 14 Nov. It is unusual to see them abroad in daylight and this one took its time to move deeper into the forest. Several people were there to see it.
TT 84 - March 2013 Nature Notes Climate Change. Well, of course it changes. Some changes are very serious. Some imagined. We had an Ice Age of about 4000 years, 10,000 years ago. The Daintree rainforests are survivors from that period. Because we have not had as much rainfall this January as we had last January, some people think it is because of climate change. In fact, in January 2013 we had 496 mm of rain in Paluma. The average rainfall for January over the past 24 years is 480.8 mm. People do not remember that we had nil rain in January 1988 and we had 1766 mm of rain in January 1998. We have short memories of these things.
The sandy coast of the Gold Coast is washing away. But next year it might just build up again even further out to sea than we remember it. Yes, we have climate change. It is always changing. Some Pacific islands are washing away - not all of them. Some are pushing up as the floor of the ocean buckles up under them. The tip of Cape York and the rest of Australia, is moving up towards the equator at about 2 cms per year. This is reflected in the frequent landslips in the Papua New Guinea mountains as the Indian-Australian Tectonic Plate is subducted under the Pacific Tectonic Plate just to the north of PNG. There is change in the climate, change in the earth's crust, change in the earth's polarity, change in our atmosphere (remember the hole in the Ozone layer?). Our world is changing all the time. We exacerbate some changes when we dig holes in the landscape for coal, gold and iron and in fracking. Believe it. Our climate changes and always has since the "Big Bang". Get used to it. Just think. In the 225 years since 1788, Yeppoon is 450 cms closer to the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5 degrees South) than it was in 1788. It is an amazing and wonderful world we live in. Have a great 2013.
Roy Mackay
TT 85 - April 2013 Nature Notes Cassowaries here and there. During the past two months there have been several cassowaries seen in and around Paluma including a large one seen by Michelle Landau on the Paluma Dam Road this side of the Birthday Creek Bridge. They have also been seen by Les and Lyn Hyland, Don Battersby, and very recently by Bill Venn. One on the roadside near the old rubbish tip turnoff, a few places west of Paluma
Page 37
township and on Lennox Crescent respectively. Though not local, Colwyn Campbell and I saw one very close-up at a friend's place near Mission Beach. It was right beside the friend's house and was feeding on fruit laid out for it, as it was a regular visitor. It seemed huge from such a close distance. These will be written up in the record book in the shelter by the Community Hall.
Ian Marshall gave me details of his observations of about a fortnight ago of a hawk chasing and catching small birds over a week period. This was around his house area (Ivy Cottage) and was of a Brown Goshawk or a Collared Sparrowhawk which are similarly coloured and both species chase small birds. They are different in size but not that much to notice if you are not used to seeing them. It was a good observation
No, the birds in and around my garden and adjacent rainforest are not anywhere near the numbers I had here before cyclone Yasi. No, it has nothing, or nothing noticeable, to do with climate change but, yes, it is probably that I did not notice this difference here after previous cyclones.
Don has seen a single Willy Wagtail on his block which happens each approach of Winter. He has also seen White-necked Pacific Herons, two kingfishers (Forest and Sacred) and an occasional duck landing on his pond for a short while. Rainforest backs onto his block so he gets the benefit of two birdworlds - the rainforest and the open orchard and grasslands.
Janette Furber found an Echidna on the road when coming to work one morning a week or so ago. It was captured and brought in to show to the schoolchildren at the environment education schools. Later it was returned to the bush.
There is always something to see in the bush and our gardens and we are attracted even more when something new is seen.
Roy Mackay
TT 86 - July 2013 Nature Notes While manning the Paluma History Exhibit in our Community Hall last Tuesday (16th July) and looking through the photo albums, I was struck by a recurring thought that one animal illustrated, the Spotted- tailed Quoll, which was killed and photographed in the war years (1938-45), has not been seen here since then. Well, wait a bit. I haven’t seen a rabbit in Paluma for about 15 years. Are there any more animals in our area that have disappeared over the last 26 years I have lived here? Yes, and I have mentioned some of them in past issues of “Turkey Talk”. Some reptiles have not been seen here for many years. Death Adders, for instance, and Black-headed Pythons, Children’s Pythons, Slatey-grey Snakes, Pink-tongued Lizards, Barsided Lizards come to mind. The fire regimes of the past decade or two have contributed to the decline. Maybe they are not extinct here but are so reduced in numbers that we seldom see them now. Has anyone seen a Striped Possum in Paluma recently? The last one I saw was found by Linda and Bill Venn in trees just across from their house and that must have been about ten years ago.
Just reflect on that a bit. There is great controversy, reported in the media, on logging in Tasmania and in NSW and Queensland. Our forests are dwindling and so is the wildlife associated with them. We can complain that areas that are logged should be replanted with the same species . Forestry has done some
Page 38
of that. In other areas forests have been cut down and replanted with imported Pines – and that is a story of success and disaster. Theoretically, we should replant with the same species that we take out. But it seems that this would be uneconomic. That is a shame as we have lost a lot of forests which are great converters of carbon.
Satin Bowerbirds are back in greater numbers now and fewer lorikeets come to the bird tables. While White-cheeked Honeyeaters and Macleay’s Honeyeaters are now commonly seen, they are still not seen in the numbers we saw before Cyclone Yasi, two and a half years ago
Roy Mackay
TT 87 - September 2013 Nature Notes Yes, it has been a very dry Dry Season. We only had 3.5 mm of rain for the whole of July and August. Maybe we should take out the Wet from the Wet Tropics - just joking. Spring is here by the feel of the hot sun on my bald pate as I worked in my garden. I now feel that I will have to wear a hat when working in the garden - a thing I have never done before. At the same time I have noticed weeds are spreading and growing faster. Water Lizards have come out of hibernation, mosquitoes have already made their presence felt and some plants are already blooming.
In my newly published book - The Bonito Expedition (Crawford House Press) - I refer to the botanist and Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, Baron Ferdinand von Mueller. He received all the botanical specimens collected on that expedition of 1885. And now there is a new book by the gifted scientist, ornithologist and writer, especially on birds of prey, Dr Penny Olsen, about Baron von Mueller, called Collecting Ladies. No, he did not collect ladies. He had ladies collecting plants for his collections. Fancy that in 1885, and in so doing he introduced ladies to science. About 1000 plant specimens were collected on the Bonito Expedition by William Bauerlen, aged 40 of Sydney, who was appointed Special Botanical Collector. He had been specially recommended by Baron von Mueller, who had previously employed Bauerllen. No other recommendation was required" for Bauerlen expedition.
My younger son, David Mackay, of Armidale NSW, is a Botanical Artist who started his working career as an artist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, where he produced paintings and illustrations of plants for the various publications of the Gardens including the first sketches of the newly found Wollemi Pine of the Blue Mountains, NSW. Associated with these Gardens and the Bonito Expedition was J.H.Maiden, who came out from England for health reasons. In 1880 he became a member and, later, Hon.Sec. of the Geographical Society of Australasia (GSA), sponsors of the Bonito Expedition. He was taken on board the WENTWORTH, the tow ship of the Bonito when it left Sydney in 1885. He was to be dropped off in Brisbane where he was to establish a new Branch of the GSA. Maiden became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney from 1896 to 1924. So, is it not interesting that we all have some connection to history? Here, I have published a book and, through my son I have a very tenuous connection to the expedition I write about.
Roy Mackay
Page 39
TT 88 - December 2013 Nature Notes As I write we still have 13 days to go to the end of the year but I doubt that it will give us the rain we need. Our average annual rainfall over the last 44 years is 2728.3 mm. This year's rainfall to date is 1982.0 mm.
Last week, Don Battersby rang me about a large python dead on the road just past the rubbish tip turnoff. I found it - a beautiful but dead specimen of the Amethystine Python, 12 feet two inches [370 cms] long without a mark on it. It is a shame it is dead but still it is nice to know they still occur here.
I have not often mentioned the various mammals which are to be found in the Paluma area but, of course, they are mostly nocturnal. I am preparing a list of the mammals from the Paluma area (same as shown on the bird list) and it will be available from the Community Hall in the next month. Barry Smith of the Paluma Environment Education School pointed out to Colwyn Campbell and me, the many caterpillars and pupa of the Cairns Birdwing Butterfly hanging on the plants near the School office. You will have to go soon to see them as they change from caterpillar to pupa to butterfly within a month and a couple have already changed to the butterfly. Ask Barry to see them.
I have not yet had any reports of sightings of the Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher this year. They nest in the termite mounds each side of the Paluma Range Road above Little Crystal Creek to Windy Corner from about November 4th to the middle of February. It migrates down from Papua New Guinea to nest in the rainforests from Cape York to Mackay. Keep your eyes open.
There have been several glimpses of a bird of prey in the village near the road between the two environment schools over the past two months. What is it?
Yours truly will be in Adelaide for Christmas but there will be lots of activity in Paluma over the Christmas period so let me know what you see in nature over that peri od. Best Wishes to all for Christmas and New Year and may we all have a good 2014 - despite the Government.
Roy Mackay
TT 89 - February 2014 Nature Notes On waking this morning (29 Jan.) I was greeted by a chorus of warbles from a flock of Chowchillas (Logrunner, Auctioneer Bird) which lasted for about 8 minutes. This is one of the joys of living in Paluma. This species was first collected in 1894 by Edward Spalding, near Rockingham Bay, north of Cardwell. Spalding was a taxidermist and field collector - as I was from the 1940s to the 1980s, first at the Australian Museum, Sydney and then in PNG. It is common in the rainforests from the Paluma Range to the Atherton Tablelands and is also found in the coastal riverine forests. When you hear them, relax and enjoy.
Further to the mass hatching of the Cairns Birdwing Butterflies at the Paluma Environment Education School reported in the Dec. 2013 Turkey Talk, I and Colwyn Campbell have made several visits to see more of the transformation from chrysalis to adult butterfly. Most of the butterflies are males but we
Page 40
have seen newly hatched males and females mating as soon as possible after hatching. To date (3 Feb.) there are only a few chrysalis now to hatch.
On her way home to Paluma on 29th Jan., Linda Venn stopped on the Range Road to pick up a dead goanna. This was no one and a half metre Lace Monitor (Goanna) but a less than half a metre long Spotted Tree Goanna (Varanus scalaris). They live in our rainforests in the lower parts of trees and under flaking bark. While I have seen a few of these goannas over the years they are not common. Although they come down to the ground to feed on insects and small lizards, most Paluma residents have not seen one.
No Cassowaries have been seen over the past month but Wilfred Karnol recorded between 20 and thirty Cassowary pats on the Shay's Hut site near Mt Spec on 23rd Jan.
Have a great 2014.
Roy Mackay
TT 90 - March 2014 Nature Notes The Cairns Birdwing Butterfly saga at the Paluma Environmental School still goes on. As at 23/2/14 only two chrysalises in our viewscape are still to split and reveal the beauty within – male or female.
Some bird species are to be found all over Australia, such as Wedge-tailed Eagle, Brown Goshawk, Galah, Tawny Frogmouth and Willy Wagtail. There are other birds that have a very restricted distribution such as Golden Bowerbird, Tooth-bill Bowerbird, Spotted Catbird, Chowchilla, Bower’s Shrike Thrush, Victoria Riflebird and Fern Wren, which occur in the Paluma and Atherton rainforests and nowhere else in Australia. So it is no wonder that birdwatchers from all over Australia and overseas are often seen in Paluma walking our trails and roads. We are pleased to see them here and help them when we can. But it is not only the birds which draw people to our rainforests.
There is a negative side which draws orchid thieves, fern thieves, reptile collectors and others. Unfortunately our police and National Parks authorities are far too under-staffed and distant from Paluma to attend any reports on such thefts. One thing that we might do is photograph the number-plate of the vehicles we see carrying away this material and send those photos with data on place, date and times to the authorities. Just a suggestion: any other suggestions? Most of the Christmas Orchids and Rock Lily Orchids have gone from the Witt’s Lookout area. A few years ago I saw a vehicle being loaded with ferns and tree ferns from the rainforest a kilometer or so west of the Paluma Dam turn-off. I should have reported it. Large flocks of White Cockatoos and Red-tailed Black Cockatoos have stopped off in Paluma over recent weeks – as if you hadn’t noticed. For your information – Wet Season rainfalls in the Paluma area from Dec 1969 to March 2013. These figures cover the area from Paluma to Hussey Road.
Page 41
December January Av. 288mm Av. 545mm Min. 62mm (1983) Min. 55mm (1990) Max. 783mm (2010) Max. 2201mm (1981)
February March Av. 525mm Av. 401mm Min. 144mm (1990) Min. 52mm (1998) Max. 1379mm (1991) Max. 1168mm (2012)
Roy Mackay
TT 91 - May 2014 Nature Notes It is three years since Cyclone Yasi caused so much damage to our environment, to say nothing of the much worse damage to Cardwell, Innisfail and other towns. It was in the woodlands and rain forests where the worst damage occurred. Weeds spread and trees died and the patterns of movements of birds and mammals changed. Now Cyclone Ita has passed through and felled many of the trees which died after Yasi. So changes are still occurring. But not all of our environment is changing. None of the birds or mammals of Paluma [or Rollingstone or Balgal] have become extinct because of these natural events. Numbers of some species of birds and mammals have changed such a Riflebirds and White Cheeked Honeyeaters are in lesser numbers in Paluma while we see more Rainbow Lorrikeets.
It was my pleasure to take Rob & Joyce Campbell, Scottish friends of mine from my Papua New Guinea days, 1960s-1980s, for a drive along the Paluma Dam [aka Lake Paluma] Road to do some birdwatching. We went to see the remnants of a Golden Bowerbird bower near Birthday Creek Falls. The courting and mating season is over for these birds and while the bowers usually remain intact, this one was damaged in the cyclones. we went on to the Dam and after a short time drove back. We had only come about four kilometres when a full grown Cassowary stepped out of the forest on the other side of the road. We stopped, got out of the car and bristling with cameras tried to get photos of the bird. It walked slowly back and forth about 5 meters in and parallel with the road. Maybe fifteen minutes passed from the sighting of the bird to the finish of photographing - and so memories are made.
The Brush Turkeys of Rollingstone/Balgal and Paluma are in greater numbers now than before the Wet Season. Late in the Dry Season and early in the Wet Season is when these birds build their nesting mounds. When the mounds of leaves, litter and soil is heaped up by the males to about 1.5 meters, he goes courting the females. When the females are ready to lay their eggs the males invite them to his mound where he has prepared some pits on the top of the mound ready for the eggs. As soon as an egg is laid the male aggressively chases the female away while he fills in the pit where the egg is laid. One female may lay up to 20 eggs per season. The male patrols his mound either adding litter on top of the eggs or scratching some of it off so as to maintain an average temperature of 35ºC which he does by sensing with his tongue. Clever birds eh!
Page 42
As I walked out on the streets of Paluma As I walked out in Paluma one day I spied a big python all dressed in bright colours All dressed in bright colours but cold as the grave I dragged the big python around to the roadside I scanned the high python to see what had killed it I spied the scarred skin where a vehicle had ht it Then saved the big python for the Townsville Museum. Roy Mackay
TT 92 - June 2014 Nature Notes Back from Britain and Paris. What did I see of nature? Well, the grass is much greener in Britain. They retain more forests per acre of their land than we do and they forest the edges of their highways. We (Colwyn Campbell and I) were on a bus tour and we had very little opportunity to go bush. However, I recorded about 20 bird species from Ravens to Sparrows and Colwyn saw a Deer in Scotland. We were struck by the brilliant yellow fields of Canola/Rapeseed and the brilliant yellow Gorse bushes. In Scotland these bushes were often planted along fence lines. Fiery red to pale pink Rhododendrons were also a common feature along roadsides and paddocks. Large patches of Bluebells featured in many patches in paddocks near the road or in lands associated with castles or in the "ordered woods and gardens" of great houses.
At Bath we were entranced by the garden plots full of Pansies - huge Pansy flowers. If you have been on an overseas bus tour you will know the feeling of being teased. You want to see more of that place or this. We were very much teased but very pleased too. We felt we were deeply teased when we came to the southern edge of the Scottish Highlands. The high rounded mountains, the remaining patches of snow, the water cascading in rivulets down the mountain sides and the mists swirling through the glens - magic. Large areas of heather - not flowering till Aug.-Sept. - alternating with large areas of Gorse kept us enthralled. What birds and mammals did they hide?
All the same, it was nice to be back home and to see the Riflebird and Rainbow Lorikeets, the Macleay Honeyeaters and the White-cheeked Honeyeaters. Anyone know of a Bank that needs robbing? I would love to go back to several of the places we visited, but to stay for a longer time.
Roy Mackay
TT 93 - August 2014 Nature Notes At the recent Art and Craft Exhibition and Market, in and outside the Paluma Community Hall, as part of the Northern Beaches Festival, one thing in particular became apparent. People are very curious: they want to know what is what, who does what, what is here, what is there. They wanted to see what is in
Page 43
the exhibition but they wanted to see if there was someone who could tell them what they have seen elsewhere. And so it was that I was approached by people who wanted to know or verify what they had recorded on their I-phones. In this way I was able to give positive identification on what they could show me on the Iphone screen. One was of a Striped Possum found on their lawn. These occur in and around the Paluma rainforest but are seldom seen. Maybe if we went night spotting more frequently we would find that they are far more common than we believe now.
The other Iphone photo I was shown showed the back of a Spangled Drongo bird seen in a couple’s garden. These birds have been seen in and around Paluma recently but usually they migrate here in the Spring and leave in the Autumn: so it is a good record. While boys at school often call each other a drongo, most of the boys do not realize that there is a beautiful Australian bird called the Spangled Drongo. It is also found in the Solomon Islands, PNG, Indonesia and S.E. Asia.
While we do not have the Magpie in our rainforest we do find it in our more open areas. This brings me to the point that while Colwyn Campbell and I were in England and Scotland last May, we often saw magpies. However it is a very different bird from our local Magpie and is in a different Family of birds from ours. The British Magpie is a more colourful bird even though it is basically black and white. The British bird is much longer and slimmer and the feathers are highly glossed with a blue, purple and green sheen - a beautiful bird in its own right.
Roy Mackay
TT 94 - September 2014 Nature Notes It is time for male brush turkeys to chase around after the females for mating and also for males to start building their nesting mounds. The main mating and nest mound making time is in September but can extend into November. So be prepared for even more destruction to your garden as these birds dig and scrape for extra food. The only part of my garden where the turkeys do the least digging is where I grow my Hippeastrums. They do not touch the bulbs and do very little digging there. By the way, very few Hippeastrums will flower in pots .Also, as Spring started this month, the Grey Fantails, Fan-tailed Cuckoos, Dollar Birds, Drongos and Figbirds will be migrating south.
In our Paluma rainforests and woodlands we have a wide range of orchids. While collectors have been through our area stealing as many as they can there are still a lot to see if you go off the track or where you know there are some rarer species. One area about ten kilometres west of the village is the home of a small patch of Greenhood Orchids. Since Cyclone Yasi the patch has dwindled and only a few specimens can be seen. Not far further west there are many places where a species of Potato Orchid, Gastrodia urceolata, can be found on the floor of the forest in November. This species was only discovered Near Atherton in 1988 and named by D Jones of Canberra in Australian Orchid Research, Volume 2 in 1991. Then two years later one Roy D Mackay of Paluma found that this new species can be found just west of Paluma. There is little, if any, chance that this will be collected by orchid collectors as it has no leaves and can only be found when it flowers. Also the flower rises from a rhizome which feeds on the roots of certain trees.
Page 44
Another rare orchid, the Moth Orchid, Phalaenopsis amabilis, occurs from Iron Range, Cape York to Mount Spec. I have seen it only once and that was in the Mount Spec area. We are lucky in Paluma to have many protected areas, National Parks and Reserves around Paluma and we in Paluma should do what we can to protect it from any destructive inroads to it.
Roy Mackay
TT 95 - November 2014 Nature Notes While a couple of Noisy Pittas have stayed in Paluma over the dry season the migrants are coming back in numbers especially above Little Crystal Creek. As the Palumarians go up and down the Range Road, day and night, they cannot help but notice the changes in the fauna and flora they see throughout the year. Having worked in Museums and Zoos throughout my working life I sometimes see things that other people do not see. I know what I should see - and very often I do not see what should be here. While we often see a bird of prey passing overhead very few nest here in the rainforest. If you do see one - let me know please. There used to be a nest regularly used by a Wedge-tailed eagle on Taravale Station.I must see if it is still there. A Wedge-tailed eagle was seen by Bill Pyne recently feeding on a roadkill a kilometer past Ramona West’s place. If you have the Birdlist of Paluma and surrounds you will notice 15 species of birds of prey have been sighted in that area. As I write this I have had a report from the Venn’s today [17 November 14.00 hrs] of White-throated needle tails [Spine tailed swifts] diving through and feeding on a spiralling column of “Flying Ants” [White Ants] up at Gumburu - a great sight to see. Yesterday [Nov 16] Colwyn Campbell and I were returning from the Running River rubbish tip and we stopped at the Running River Bridge just in case we could see a platypus. Yes, there was one surfacing under some branches which had fallen in the river. We were attracted to it by radiating ripples of water. And today [Nov 17] another report of 2 Platypuses seen gamboling together in the same area, came in. On our way back from the tip Colwyn and I also saw Rock wallabies, Pretty faced wallabies, including one melanistic specimen and one Swamp Wallaby.
Roy Mackay
TT 96 - February 2015 Nature Notes For someone like me whose life has followed the wonders of nature, every day is interesting, sometimes full of joy, sometimes alarming. Before and through the Xmas period I spent time with family in and around the Armidale region, NSW. My son, David, is doing a PhD research project on one of our native fig species and the minute wasps which breed in the fig's fruits and the birds that feed on these fruits. These figs occur from the lowlands and mountain slopes from southern NSW up to Cape York, the Rusty Fig.
By studying animals and plants, scientists find chemicals that help mankind to survive many illnesses - one: anti-venom serum to cure snakebite. We need more scientists. I wonder how the snake-catchers got on that passed through Paluma recently? My elder grand-daughter in Armidale, NSW, has just finished High School and has been accepted by Melbourne University to do a Science Degree course. Yes, it makes me proud. For a Xmas present she gave me a notebook which she had made herself. This notebook I now
Page 45
use for recording the wildlife I see on my shopping trips to Townsville each week and which I will tell you about in this column. A couple of weeks ago I stopped the car just in time not to run over a small snake which I found to be a foot long Death Adder. This is the first Death Adder I have seen on the Range Road for over 15 years - since the over-regular burning of our woodlands. Since then I found a young Amethyst Python about 1.5 m long and as thin as a rake in an area of the Range Road which had recently been burnt. Other wildlife on the Range Road worth recording included many Noisy Pittas, many Emerald Doves and a metre long Carpet Python. Flying over the Bruce Highway between Rollingstone and the Toomulla turnoff we often see White Cockatoos, Black Kites, Currawongs and Crows and, of course, the Fairy Martins which nest under the Ollera Creek Bridge. On the downside we all see Marine Toads which, however, seem to indicate that some rain is about. Last week, Colwyn Campbell came out of the back of her house to see what her dog was barking about and found that the dog had bailed-up a fair-sized Amethyst Python coiled up among the plants at the base of the back steps.
TT 97 - April 2015 Nature Notes Brush Turkeys roost communally except some of those looking after a nesting mound with its collection of eggs. I have never seen such a roost until Rick Roveda of Paluma told us of one he had just seen the day before upstream of the Little Crystal Creek Bridge. Rick took Colwyn Campbell and I down to the bridge the next evening. At about 18.30 hrs we saw Brush Turkeys coming out of the rainforest and perching on the branches of the tall Pine trees there which stand well clear of the rainforest. They came in singly or in twos and threes and sometimes after landing on a branch they decided to change over to another branch. We saw about 80 birds come out to perch before it became too dark to count them. Rick saw over 200 birds when he saw them first. Often the branches bent under the weight of the birds. You do not need to be a naturalist to enjoy this sight.
While in the area I found two baby Green Tree Snakes flattened by traffic on the bitumen near the bridge. A couple of days ago Colwyn Campbell told me of a flattened snake by the entrance to the car park on the way to McClelland's Lookout. It was days old and smelt like it but I collected it and found it to be the remains of a Marsh Snake - Hemiapis signata - which is found in coastal areas from Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands south as far as Eden in NSW. It grows to about 50 cms in length, olive green, venomous, but not often seen in Paluma.
Colwyn Campbell's daughter, Kate, and her grand-daughter, Aleisha from Cairns, stayed with Colwyn for the Easter weekend. Aleisha went to put on her running shoes and found a frog hiding in one of the shoes. Aleisha caught it, put it in a jar and later, when I arrived, I was able to identify it as a Broadpalmed Frog - Litoria latopalmata, common in the Paluma area. What was interesting to us all was the changing of its colouring from when its was found to putting it in a jar and later, photographing and releasing it on a pale gravel path. It was a medium mottled grey-green in the shoe pale-coloured gravel path it had changed to a pale creamy grey. It was a good lesson to all of us seeing this change according to its environment.
Roy Mackay
Page 46
TT 98 - May 2015 Nature Notes Birdlife Australia is canvassing members to give money to be put into preserving forest lands to prevent further extinctions of birds. Already Queensland is known to have more bird extinctions than other States. While we are still increasing our population, some of whom will go on the land, we can expect more forests and other landforms to be destroyed by clearing, by burning and by mining. Of course this also means the killing off of many other forms of wildlife. As I write this, part of our woodlands on the way down from Paluma is burning. How? or Why? lf you read my Nature Notes in the last issue of Turkey Talk you will remember about the Brush Turkey roost up from Crystal Creek Bridge. Well it has now become the nightly roost for White Cockatoos and no turkeys to be seen. Because we are expanding our population there is a proposal to exploit the lands right across the country between the south latitudes of 18 degrees and 20 degrees. Of course this will mean more extinctions. Sometimes, just joking, Paluma gardeners could wish for the extinction of Brush Turkeys. ln my garden the turkeys do their destructions before I get up in the mornings. I have unsightly wire mesh over a lot of the front garden. lt is only partly a cure.
Before I left school in 1943 I had already decided that I would work in natural history. Reptiles are still in the forefront of my mind when I go exploring in the bush. It was after I left school that I caught (so to speak) my first venomous snake. I took a train in Sydney south to Robertson close by the Wingecarribee Swamp, where, I was told, there were large numbers of venomous Copperhead Snakes. When I left the station and walked down a road to the swamp, I was blessed by seeing a Copperhead Snake coiled up on the road close by the swamp. As I had never caught a venomous snake before, I took very good care to approach slowly and pounce with my hand onto the neck of the snake close to the head. And that made all the maggots come out. Later l did catch some live snakes. After living here in Paluma since 1987 I gradually built up a list of the reptiles and amphibians I had seen up to 2009. That list included 80 species. Since that time there are many species I have not seen that were once common. Species that you still see occasionally are the Redbellied Black Snake, The Amethystine Python, The Carpet Python, the Children's Python and the Brown Tree-Snake. Some of you have the Asian House Gecko in your home, chirping at dusk in the Summer. A complete list of the reptiles and amphibians of our area will be available soon at the Community Hall.
Roy Mackay
TT 99 - August 2015 Nature Notes Midwinter and most of our reptiles are hiding away but it is not too cold for some of our pythons. There is a big Carpet Snake in a pile of timber at Don Battersby's place which is a good rat eater especially if it is given dead ones now and again. Other Carpet Snakes and Amethyst Pythons have been seen on the Range Road at night recently. Even Water Skinks and smaller garden skinks come out of hibernation for a while to bask in the sun.
One of our most beautiful snakes is one of our smallest - the Coral Snake. The colours and pattern are too elaborate to describe here but do try to see one in an Australian Reptile book. It has a very odd distribution; from Adelaide area across NSW in a wide band to the Brisbane area and then in a patchy
Page 47
strip up the Queensland coastal plain as far as our Crystal Creek at the bottom of the Range Road. One was found there by Mike Cermak, a reptile collector who lived in Paluma about twenty years ago. While it is venomous it is not dangerous. It is a burrower and feeds on very small lizards but occasionally comes out on the surface of the ground at night. We have several other burrowing snakes in our Paluma area such as five species of Blind Snakes, and three species of Legless Lizards.
If you put out food for the birds I'm sure you have noticed that there are more than usual numbers coming to feed. Is this because of less flowering because of less rain? I find them insatiable and have to put out twice the amount I usually put out. They go through at least a pint of honey-water a day besides the rolled oats I give them. Before I put the food on the table the Macleay Honeyeaters perch on my hand and start feeding immediately. There is a pecking order too. The male Satin Bowerbird takes pride of place even over the male Riflebird. Catbirds, Riflebirds, Satin Bowerbirds, Lewin Honeyeaters, Macleay Honeyeaters, White-cheeked Honeyeaters and Eastern Spine-bill Honeyeaters all vie for the food. Of course all go away if a Currawong comes along. I try to discourage them. It is not long for Spring so keep your eyes and ears open to locate your first Asian House Gecko.
Roy Mackay
TT 100 - October 2015 Nature Notes Here is a problem for you - if you have some spare spare time. I'm sure most of you have seen a large brown moth in your home or toolshed or in other dark sheltered areas. It is about 75 mm across the wings which have an irregular blue and brown spot on each forewing and a black and white crescent on the hind-wing, all this on a brown patterned background. It is found commonly from Northern Territory to Queensland, Atherton Tableland, Paluma and coastal areas to central NSW. It is frequently seen on house walls at night under outside lights. Its scientific name is Speiredonia spectans.
The problem is no-one knows what its caterpillar looks like nor do we know what the caterpillar's foodplant is. It has been suggested that it may breed on wattles as close relatives do. However, several other moth and butterfly caterpillars feed on wattles too. So you would have to recognize all these to find the one we need to identify. To start, you would have to identify the wattles around your house and in the surrounding bushland. Maybe now you can appreciate the work of Entomologists and other naturalists in understanding the life history and differences in our wildlife species and giving each of them a Generic and Specific name showing its closest relatives.
We are still finding new reptiles, frogs, mammals and other wildlife. And remember, many of our wildlife species help us medically. So, before we burn-off our bush or destroy our environment for mines and agriculture, we should understand what those areas have in wildlife and plants which may help us medically or otherwise. Queensland has the worst record of any of our States for the extinction of species. In my 28 years of life in the Paluma Paradise I have seen the decline of numbers of reptiles and mammals on our Range Road caused mainly by the indiscriminate burning of our woodlands. While some of the burning is controlled, most of it is irresponsible.
Roy Mackay
Page 48
TT 102 - February 2016 Nature Notes So far it is a very dry Wet Season. The humidity over the past two months and which is still with us, seems stronger than ever I can remember over the past twenty-eight years I have been here. At the same time, we have more fires in the environment than ever before. This of course wipes out a huge amount of our wildlife, especially those that cannot escape quickly enough: such as some lizards, frogs, insects, snakes, some birds and their nests and some small mammals. While this does not affect the bird population much in Paluma, it is noticeable that more birds are visiting our bird-tables than usual. Fifteen lorikeets squeezing onto a bird-table 35cm square, chirruping and not fighting, is a sight to see. On 25th January, the Venns saw twenty species of birds between 8:00am and 9:30am on their property. While no cassowaries have been seen over the last year, there have been sightings of fresh pats around the village.
Although there were some fires between Townsville, Rollingstone/Balgal and Paluma, they were not as fierce as in previous years. The frequency of fires in the environment determines the level of the population of the wildlife in the area: many birds, reptiles, mammals and amphibians are becoming rare because of these fires. The rise in population, the spread of housing and the clearing of land is also affecting our wildlife. We do not have enough National Parks and other reserves for our plants and wildlife. Have you seen a Frill-necked lizard lately?
A few snakes have been seen over the past few weeks; mainly Red-bellied Black Snakes. Only one Carpet Snake but several Amethystine Snakes have also been seen. Last night (Feb. 19) I saw a two metre Amethystine Python in front of Ivy Cottage. I was able to stop the car in time. I got out, picked up the snake and laid it down in the nearby bush. No, I do not expect you to do the same. Please do not run over them. Just stop. Then go round it.
Lately there have been flocks of Red-tailed Black Cockatoos in large numbers passing through and yes, there are always plenty of White-cheeked Honey-eaters.
I am sure you realise that the more we swell our population the more our environment and wildlife will suffer. We in Paluma are privileged that we cannot swell our population too much because we are surrounded by a National Park with rare and wonder wildlife.
Roy Mackay
TT 103 - April 2016 Nature Notes The birds are back in numbers. Just this morning [early April] on my bird table there were White-cheeked honeyeaters, Lewin’s Honeyeaters, a flock of Red-browed finches, a catbird, a few Rainbow lorikeets vying for the food I laid out. There were no Satin bower birds and only one Rifle bird there. So while there were many birds there, several species, normally there were absent - Crimson rosella, Macleys honeyeater,Yellow faced honeyeater.
While there are as many water skinks in abundance as usual at this time of year, there are fewer Amethystine pythons and red-bellied black snakes than usual. Has anyone seen a Blue-tongue lizard lately ? I’ve seen only one Pink-tongue lizard in the past year. So far as we can see the very dry Wet Season has
Page 49
done well for some wildlife and has upset some others. I have been in Paluma for almost 29 years. From my back verandah, in 1987, I could see the tree-line at the edge of the escarpment to the North-east. Despite numerous cyclones since then, the rainforest between my house and the escarpment has grown up to completely obscure the trees at the edge of the escarpment.
Roy Mackay
TT 104 - June 2016 Nature Notes In case you havenʼt seen or heard of the Rainbow Serpent sculpture made by Sue Tilley of Townsville it is in the grounds of Gumburu Environmental Education Centre, you should go and see it. Contact staff to show it to you. It is a marvelous piece of sculpture.
Even though we are in the Autumn/Winter months we are still finding fresh snake shed skins. A very large Red-bellied Black snake shed skin was found by Kelly Davis on his workshop block. It was 1.7 meters long. The record length of a Red-bellied Black snake is 1.4 meters long. So you must understand that the shed skin of any snake is about another ¼ to ⅓ the length of the snake itself. This is because the shed skin is from the underside of each scale as well as above all joined together. From the figures above you can still tell that Kellyʼs snake was near record size.
Over the past three years I have not needed to add any new species of bird to the list of Birds of Paluma and nearby areas. Several species on the list have only been seen once or twice in the past 10 years - e.g: White winged chough. Some species are only seen by chance as they pass over the rainforest to more open country - e.g: Brolgas. So get a copy of the list from the Community Hall any Tuesday between 11.00hrs and 13.00 hrs.!
Roy Mackay
TT 105 - September 2016 Nature Notes As a recorder of numbers on the bicycles in the Paluma Push cyclists on the 24th July, I had a bit of time before the first cyclists got to the Paluma Dam checkpoint. So, I looked about me at Nature. Several White Cockatoos flew over screeching their presence, a Whipbird cracked its whip nearby and a Brush Turkey came up close to see if I had a handout of food as it expects from the campers at the nearby Paluma Dam. I have lived in Paluma for over 29 years and visited or worked at the Dam very often in that time. There are two species of snake that can be found in the bush near the Dam waters more than away from that area. They are very dangerous because they look like each other. One is harmless, the other very venomous. Other venomous snakes are there too, like the Taipan and Red-bellied Black Snake but they are more easily identified. The lookalikes are the harmless Keelback or Freshwater Snake Tropidonophis mairii and the venomous Roughscaled Snake Tropidechis carinatus. Wisely, most people avoid snakes and do not try to kill them with a short stick.
If you do want to know more about these snakes and any other Australian snake, lizard or frog you cannot do better than purchase the book Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia by Harold G. Cogger
Page 50
published by CSIRO Publishing, Seventh Edition, 2014. It is considered to be the Bible for Herpetologists and snake-collectors. Harold (Hal) and I both worked together at the Australian Museum, Sydney, in the 1950s and 1960s
Roy Mackay
TT 106 - October 2016 Nature Notes Spring is sprung and how wonderful it is. Plant growth is very obvious with new leaves and beautiful flowering. Just as obvious that Spring is with us is the many sightings of snakes, migrant birds, flying ants and butterflies galore. We are still short on Cassowaries. Sounds from them have been heard, pats have been found but only one has been seen recently.
I have been trying to find specimens of the velvet worm lately, but I find the ground, even near Benham’s Creek, not moist enough to suit them. I’ll keep looking. While one bird, the Night Parrot, has recently been found not to be extinct, we will still have extinctions to our flora and fauna. The growth of our human population, the cutting down of our forests and more ground under cultivation will lessen the numbers of birds and other flora and fauna in some areas. Those birds and animals which have a small range are most at risk. The new scheme to eradicate cats from Kangaroo Island, South Australia, will save their native fauna from extinction. This is a lesson many other areas can put in place. A few years ago there were a couple of cats brought into Paluma. One of them killed a Banded Riflebird. Since that time, as far as I know, there have been no cats kept in Paluma. I do love cats and when my wife, Margaret, and I lived in Papua New Guinea, we bred Siamese Cats. Yes, we brought one back with us to Paluma and when it died we did not replace it. Please do not bring cats into Paluma. We love them but we treasure our native birds and mammals more. Even the native Brush Turkey which often causes havoc in our gardens, is far more valuable to Paluma than any pet cat.
Roy Mackay
TT 107 - November 2016 Nature Notes As Christmas approaches we will be surrounded by our resident bird species and quite a few migrant species, most of which will breed here before they need to move back in the early Autumn to their over- wintering area. As with the birds, the mammals and reptiles will be affected by the very poor rainfall this year and its effect on the plants. So far this year we have had only 926.5 mm of rain. The driest year we have had since 1969 was in 1992 with only 1001mm. The average since 1969 is approximately 2500mm. So we hope we will not break the driest record. I’ll let you know in February 2017. By the way the highest rainfall for Paluma since 1969 was in 1981 with 4675mm. Wonder if any residents were developing webs between their toes then. Just joking! Over the last few years we have all heard of the rising tide levels around the Pacific Ocean. I wonder if anyone knows of any exceptional tides along the coast at Balgal.
Red-bellied black snakes are very noticeable these days. I stopped in the main road through Paluma the other day to get one off the road and put it into the bush. Then on the way home from Townsville last
Page 51
Friday [13th] I managed to avoid running over another one about a metre long only to see it killed by a following car. So if you see them in the bush leave them alone, if you see them on your property get a reptile collector to take it away. Over the Christmas period both my sons and their wives will be here. They are biologists teaching at Universities. So they know much more than I do. So if you have a special query call on us. Have a great Christmas and a very Happy New Year It is time for reflection and future planning. Give a thought to Nature. After all we came from there.
Roy Mackay
TT 109 - March 2017 Nature Notes It seems to me that this past couple of months of Summer has given us a greater number of butterflies than usual. And aren’t they spectacular flyers; going so fast over and through the bush without hitting a leaf or each other – except to mate, The flowering of the forest and garden plants is wonderful to see and examine – and it is not over yet. As a naturalist in my 30 years in Paluma I have enjoyed our natural environment and the changes or consistency of the wildlife here. No additions have been made to the bird or reptile lists for Paluma for several years now, however, it is sad to notice less numbers in some species. Fewer pythons are seen. This may be because of the rise in motor traffic through our area. I still manage to stop in time to avoid killing snakes or lizards and manage to lift them off the road and drop them into the roadside forest in the direction they were going.
When I came to Paluma in July 1987, I was immediately happy that I would be living and working in very natural surroundings. Even so, I was alarmed at the prevalence of leeches of at least two species in this area. Since then there have been times when no leeches have been seen by any resident. However, this season they are back in very noticeable numbers. One animal I have not seen for some time is the Velvet Worm Peripatus sp. Whether it is because of the dryness of recent years or not, I cannot tell. It is one of those animals which left its watery world millions of years ago to carry on its life on land. Only a couple of years ago, one was found here by a schoolboy at Paluma Environment Education School. So keep your eyes peeled. After all, there are five species in the Townsville area.
With the excessive heat these days you may be interested to know the Australian record for the highest temperature recorded here was in Cloncurry at 53.1*C. The world record for the highest temperature is 58*C in the Libyan Desert. (Droughts and Flooding Rains by David Ellyard, 1994, Angus & Robertson). [ Wikipedia regards both these as “disputed” : Australia’s is officially 50.7ºC at Oodnadatta on 2nd June 1960 and World is 56.7ºC at Death Valley California on 10th July 1913. Even this latter although “official” is doubted by some meteorologists. Ed.]
Roy Mackay
TT 110 - April 2017 Nature Notes We are all part of Nature. So far we have found the same minerals and chemicals in the planets we have landed on. And so far we have found no animal life on these spheres. But if you reflect about how much
Page 52
we know about these other worlds, you must realise that we have only just started on this investigation. So far, we are the only humans in the universe. We are kept busy noting what wildlife is around us and unfortunately what is not around us, any more.
Don Battersby has seen a cassowary about 1 km on the Paluma Dam Road – on the 12th February. It is great to have them around us: more since we closed the waste dump and diminished the number of dingoes that live here. We are lucky in Paluma not to have Indian Mynahs, Domestic Pigeons, House Sparrows, etc. around us. We have had enough rain to encourage Velvet Worms to be more apparent but I have had no reports of sighting them this season.
There have been many reported sightings of snakes about Paluma. Red-bellied Black Snakes, Whip Snakes, Carpet Snakes and Amethystine Pythons. As you know I am fond of snakes so it is encouraging to know they are still about and that we have not killed them off altogether on our roads. There have been many names changes in reptiles as you can see in Reptiles and Amphibians by Harold Cogger in the 2014 edition. As herpetologists and other natural history scientists study the animals around us they find relationships not noticed before and so there are often name changes: mostly scientific. So it is good to study new books on our wild-life – both animals and plants and better understand the wild-life around us. Gosh: reading the books by Bryan Sykes on our DNA is very educating even if they show the possible elimination of male humans. Read Adam’s Curse; a Future without Man. Keep looking and enjoying our wild-life – even the screeching call of our White Cockatoos.
Roy Mackay
TT 111 - May 2017 Nature Notes Kelly Davis watched a Goshawk attacking a Brush Turkey. Now, why would it do that? Your guess is as good as mine. Did the Turkey molest a nest or young of the Goshawk? Later, Colwyn Campbell, while walking her dog came across a Goshawk in the same area, being harassed by a lot of other birds. For a while I watched a four-foot Red-bellied Black Snake crossing my backyard as it investigated holes in logs, pushed its way into or through piles of leaves and stalks in a green waste pile. It looked healthy and shiny as it disappeared under my house. Looking for extra food before it goes into hibernation?
While walking to McClelland’s the other day it surprised me to find a Carpet Snake coiled up on the footpath on the corner leading to McClelland’s Lookout. It is a busy corner and anyone passing there must see it. I grabbed it by the neck and it coiled tightly on my wrist and arm. I let it go onto a tree which it climbed showing no injury. So, why did it coil up on a bare patch of pathway by a busy roadway? Your guess is as good as mine.
Did you see that TV programme which showed that four new planets between ours and the Sun had been discovered by an amateur Astrologist? Wonders never cease. So far, we have not found a boundary to the Universe – if there is one.
We are spoilt in Paluma which backs on to a National Park. On the other side of the village the ground largely drops away steeply to river valleys. So, we cannot expand and so cannot spoil the native forests which surround us. We live with the native wildlife and hardly any foreign pests. We do have Cane Toads but do not encourage them. We are spoilt. We are in…[remaining text missing from this issue]
Page 53
TT 112 - June 2017 Nature Notes Winter is upon us and birds – some of them – are migrating north and a few species are coming from the south. The opposite will happen about September. Only yesterday (10th June), a very shiny red-bellies black snake crawled under my ousel looking for a suitable place for hibernation?
When I came to Paluma in 1987 I could see where the edge of the eastern border of the National Park was marked by a row of tress. Now I cannot see anywhere near the edge because there is no cutting of the forest bordering our village – wonderful.
More than ten years ago it was not unusual to see rabbits now and again visiting our back yards and gardens. Keep your eyes open as I have been told of an observation the other day which could be a new rabbit visitation. So, keep your eyes open.
Did you see the interview on the ABC-TV of the entomologist and his new book on spiders? So many new species have been recorded they outnumber the previous named species of certain types.
You may be interested to know that 15 Sharman’s Wallabies in the Taravale area and surrounds gave been radio-collared to study the status of these wallabies, one of the rarest mammals in Australia.
Roy Mackay
TT 113 - August 2017 Nature Notes Apparently Townsville has had the hottest July for a record 100 years. Paluma must have had a similar record for we have seen Red-bellied Black Snakes on the prowl for food right through July and I still see one in my neighbor's back yard frequently. We have now had most of July and now August, without two honey-eaters, Macleay's and Lewin's; most unusual. Even pythons have been seen on our roads in July. Now it is August we should see migrant birds coining back from the north, such as Forest Kirigfishers, Dollar-birds and Rainbow Beeeaters. Keep your eyes open.
Male Brush Turkeys should soon be seen building their mountains of leaves where the females will lay their eggs. When I came to live in Paluma in 1987, my wife and I would drive down the Paluma road at night just to see the wild-life which was abundant then. We would see Pythons, Death Adders, Brown Tree-snakes, Pink-tongue Lizards, Bandicoots, Wallaroos, White-tailed Rats, Echidnas, etc. Nowadays, we see very few, if any, wild-life on the road in the evenings or at night. The human population has grown and is using the road much more now, day and night, so much more wild-life is being killed. So sad.
Roy Mackay
Page 54
TT 114 - October 2017 Nature Notes As has happened in Spring in past years, the reptiles are coming out of hibernation. In Paluma we are quite used to seeing the Water Skink, Blue-tongued Lizard and other smaller skinks roaming our backyards at this time of year. What we do have to be careful about is that we could come across Red- bellied Black snakes, Brown snakes and even Taipans. So, be careful in the garden. To understand how bad the Taipan is, you should read “Venom” by Brendan James Murray, published by Echo, a division of Bonnier Publishing, available from “Mary Who” bookshop. The book also tells the facts of the establishment of the Australian Reptile Club by me in 1949.
This is also the time of year when Male Bower-birds rebuild their bowers to attract females for mating. It is also the time of year when male Brush Turkeys build a mound of earth, leaves & twigs to accept the eggs of the females for incubation. Your gardens and the bush plants mostly flower at this time of year, making it pleasure to walk our bush tracks as well as our gardens.
Since I was about 8 years of age my life has been associated with nature. So it is a great time of year to wander through the bush or garden for all the spare time I can get. My working life has been with museums and zoos and nature still gives me the greatest pleasure, even just to watch skink lizards in the garden.
Roy Mackay
TT 115 - December 2017 Nature Notes It is a wonderful time of the year. Earlier hibernating wildlife now roaming around for food, snakes sloughing their skin and hunting food, birds mating to have young and mammals hunting for mates. Red- bellied Black Snakes are abroad hunting for food and looking for mates. At night is the best time up here to see pythons abroad - Carpet Snakes and Amethystine Pythons are the most commonly seen here at this time of year. Water Skink lizards have come out of hibernation and are mating.
Of the 783 species of birds recorded for Australia, 217 have been recorded for the Paluma region. These figures are not permanent as many birds are restricted to certain habitats ; many are happy in almost any habitat and some are restricted to one or two. Some parts of our habitat change every year.
One particular migrant that Paluma residents keep an eye out for is the Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher. It arrives from the North in the early days of October to mate and later to lay eggs in holes pecked in the termite mound towers we see as we look between Paluma and Little Crystal Creek Bridge and also along the Paluma Dam Road after the Birthday Creek Bridge When the young hatch and grow enough to fly, they leave and head North about the end of March. Keep your eyes open early morning and just before dark to see these birds.
Roy Mackay
Page 55
TT 116 - February 2018 Nature Notes Yes, up here in Paluma, we have been having very high temperatures just over 30ºC. However we also have a shortage of rain - below average for the last five years [2500mm] The highest rainfall we had recorded was in 1981 [4675mm]. The shortage of rainfall has not affected the flowering of plants up here and so has not affected the number of butterflies about. There is one variety of birdwing butterfly going over a Rondoletia plant. I can not find its subspecific name. It has bright red colour - under the head and breast, which is not recorded in any of the subspecies in my books.
Early in the summer I recorded 4 Amethystine Pythons crossing the road in one night. I have seen only one in the bush since then but Red-bellied Black snakes have been seen more this year in the village than usual. One in particular goes back and forth through the backyards of at least 7 houses including mine. I have noticed a shortage of two of the five water skinks Sphenomorphus that usually come out and wait for prey in my back garden.
Every year about September there is a migration of Paradise Kingfishers from the North to the termite mounds in the rainforest above the bridge for egg-laying. When the eggs have hatched the young are able to fly [ about February ]. The birds and their young fly North to their usual hunting grounds in Cape York.
On the 18th March this year I will be 90 years of age and it will be 82 years since I have been in Natural History when I had a Diamond Python. I have been a taxidermist with the Australian Museum until 1964 when I became Officer in charge of the PNG Museum in Port Moresby. Then in 1977 till 1987 I was officer in charge of the Baiyer River Birds of Paradise breeding sanctuary in Baiyer River in the Western Highlands of PNG. and then retired to Paluma in 1987. I am still associated with nature !
Roy Mackay
TT 118 - June 2018 Nature Notes Hibernation is in full action. The Red-bellied Black Snakes are not apparent as they were a month ago. Nor are their prey, the Water Skinks, Sphenomorphus quoyi. Lynda Radbone reported that a Lace Monitor. Varanus varius, a little over a metre long, took up residence for about a week across the gardens of 67 and 69 Mount Spec Road. It was feeding on little skinks. No frogs are calling at night now. Winter is on its way.
Birds of prey are seldom seen in our environment so it is always great to see a Wedge-tailed Eagle when it flies over the village. I saw one pass over early in May. It did not stay around. Flocks of White Cockatoos have been seen daily in the past few weeks. The dominant bird at my food table is a flock of White- cheeked Honey-eaters. They harass other birds at the food table until only they can stay as long as they want. The rarest bird at the food table is the Spotted Catbird and you only see it there when it has young to feed.
It was exciting and pleasant for the proprietors of the Rainforest Inn and a couple of their customers to watch five King Parrots feeding in the Pink Ash, Alphitonia petriei, quite close to the café. Although it is not the time of year for Bower-birds to be mating and making bowers there are several birds in my
Page 56
backyard scanning areas where there were bowers last year. Although they are not building bowers yet they are showing interest in the sites.
A Southern Boobook Owl, Ninox novaeseelandiae, sheltered for nearly 2 days in the rafters of Tracey Cooper’s pergola. It had possibly lost its usual shelter when trees in the vicinity were lopped.
Front lawns of houses along Mount Spec Road are now spotted with small diggings made by bandicoots, which you can see if you scan your lawn late at night.
Isn’t it a shame to see dead marsupials along the road! Wallabies are seen dead at the side of the road on my weekly shopping trip to town. Occasionally a dead wallaby is seen on the road from Bruce Highway up to Paluma. Less wildlife is seen on the road to Paluma than when I settled here in 1987.
Average annual rainfall for Paluma is 2494.3 mm. However, in the last five years the rainfall has been below average.
Roy Mackay
TT 119 - August 2018 Nature Notes It is six years since we have had above average annual rainfall: 2494.3 mm.
We are all appreciative of our wildlife, especially of our birdlife and extra especially of our Birds of Paradise and our Bowerbirds. I have a fresh bower in my backyard which so far has not much in the way of decoration – only two scraps of blue tarpaulin.
Birds of prey are rare around Paluma. They do not stay, even around food tables for birds.
We are lucky in having our village of Paluma so close to National Parks which protect our flora and fauna. Lots of our fauna are permanent here. Some are seasonally present here – like the Bowerbirds.
I am very pleased to have such a wide range of butterflies and moths around my gardens. While our gardens have some native plants they also have foreign plants which attract our native butterflies.
Lists of our birds and reptiles are available at the Community Hall on Tuesdays between 11.00 am and 1.00 pm most weeks of the year. While it is interesting to know what fauna is around you, one thing you should know is what snakes are venomous and should be avoided.
Roy Mackay
Page 57
TT 120 - October 2018 (Discovered in 2019 – the article published in TT120 was actually a copy of the previous issue, printed in error) [this is the last contribution to TT that Roy made before he died]
Nature Notes One family of five Water Skinks which have hunted for insects all summer season and were in holes under rocks and timbers, were found by the Black Snakes.
If you want reptile lists for this area, there are printed lists obtainable from the historic photograph display at the Paluma Community Hall, open Tuesday each week between 11.00 am and 1.00 pm.
We are lucky in Paluma. Along the north-side of the village is a National Park. On the south side there are more restricted areas too; far too steep to build houses.
Roy Mackay
Page 58