Bellbird Hollow Diary

All quiet on the southern front.

Birds have been relatively sparse here. We still mange to record between 70 and 100 species every month

 but there have been none of the sexy ones: the Wompoo and rose-crowned fruit doves, the rifle bird and the pitta – but we have had topknot, white headed and wonga pigeons, as well as whipbirds and a fleeting visit from a yellow-tufted honeyeater.

All in all though, we’ve had to work hard to keep the numbers up.

The same can’t be said for butterflies. Like everywhere else, we imagine, they are here in their bucketsful. And they are completely ignoring social distancing recommendations. So, following Annette’s request for photos of butterflies we decided to see what we have here.

The start wasn’t difficult because we’d already noticed that a large Bumpy Ash (Flindersia schottiana) had been denuded by a host of beautiful and huge caterpillars.

Lepidoptera expert, Don Herbiston-Evans, identified them as Emperor Moth caterpillars. They’ve chomped their way through just about every leaf on the tree.

As stunning as they are, they cause some damage. 

But nothing like the destruction that another moth has caused. The fruit-piercing moth has been around in plague proportions in recent times and has ruined our citrus fruits, despite the trees being netted.

And now on to the butterflies. This exercise has been a quick learning curve; we’ve been delighted at the sheer variety of species that we have here and hadn’t noticed before. We recognised the ubiquitous Blue Tigers of course, but were pleased to add Leafwings, Varied Eggflies, Long-tailed Pea-blues, Australian Gulls, Meadow Arguses, Lesser Wanderers, Orange Ringlets, Grass Yellows and Grass Blues to the list, as well as a half dozen others.

                                                        

On our Lockdown Butterfly Hunt we then hit the jackpot -a Humming Bird! A tiny humming bird !

Naturally, we realised in micro-seconds that it couldn’t be an actual humming bird but the frisson of excitement was there because it was certainly doing a wonderful imitation of the real thing. But what was it? We could see that it was some kind of flying insect……. Was it a butterfly, a moth, a beetle? This cute little creature was feeding among the flowers. And, just like a hummingbird, it never landed - simply hovered with wings beating at a furious rate and used its long proboscis to suck nectar. An astonishing sight.

Thanks to Google we discovered that it was the Hummingbird Hawkmoth. Next day it was back busily feeding on the flowers of a Swamp Bloodwood (C. phytocarpa). We now understand that hummingbird moths are fairly commonplace in Gympie. But we’ve never seen one before. Birdwatching is on hold for the moment; we are Hummingbird hunting.

I have uploaded an updated and much improved version of the DVD that we made a while ago.
It had to be split into two parts to be acceptable to YouTube.
Anyone interested may access these via the following web addresses or, alternatively, by searching YouTube using the search words below:

(Part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uouh65br-ZA
 Or
 Search YouTube:  Wildlife Mary Valley Qld Australia

 (Part 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMn-6Bny0cc
 Or
 Search YouTube:  Wildlife Mary Valley Qld Australia

There is also a little video on the Hummingbird Hawkmoth (Macroglossum sp.)
This may be accessed with:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8KNkaJLpuI
 Or
 Search YouTube:  Hummingbird Hawkmoth Qld Australia

Text and photos : Contributors Allan & Diane Pratt.