Musk and Rainbow Lorikeets

LORIKEETS

 This year we have so much flower around; in gardens, along roadsides, high in trees and all over the ground through the bushy areas, and the blossom feeding birds are having a wonderful time.






Musk  Lorikeets (Glossopsitta concinna) are common around Kilmore, now. They were not so when I first came to the area thirty five years ago. They are an odd looking little birds, with their stumpy tails and noisy voices. It is fascinating to watch them as they fly rapidly past. I can hear them coming from quite a distance before they noisily twitter past and are gone, chattering all the time like a classroom of grade one children.  Even when they are busy feeding they constantly chatter to each other.


I watched this small group feeding on a red flowering gum tree alongside the Kilmore Cricket Ground. The tree was smothered in red flower and the contrast between the parrots and the tree was as bright and glaring as a Jenny Kee cardigan.

The psitta part of their name is a Greek word referring to parrots. I came across a reference to a bird called a "The Psitta, 'Chatterbird'.   http://www.santharia.com/bestiary/psitta.htm   Very appropriate. 



Alongside the musk lorikeets in the same tree were a large group of Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) Their genus name is derived from the Greek terms tricho- "hair", and glõssa "tongue" Hmmm!




It was interesting for me to see they and the Musk Lorikeets in the same small tree. They seemed quite happy to forage there together. The only dispute occurred when a wattle bird tried to join the party.  It is not often one sees a wattle bird put off by others. He  did not stay very long, too much noise I imagine.

 

Wild Flower Time in Kilmore

A KILMORE GARDEN OF EDEN

Chocolate Lilies en masse

Trigger Plant Stylidium?

When I have my car serviced, it is always returned with one of those little sweet Christmas trees in a plastic bag. These are supposed to make your car smell pleasant, but I find the scent overpowering.

Australian Buttercup

Yesterday, walking in the Monument, the scent was just as overpowering. It was so strong I thought perhaps I had one of the car perfume packs in  my camera bag. It was a sweet and chocolaty aroma.

Chocolate lilies!  I have never seen them growing so densely. The ground is covered in them to almost a metre in height. They are not just in patches, they are everywhere. As I waded through them my legs and trousers became smeared with patches of purple.

Early Nancy

I knelt down at one stage to take  picture and without having to move off my knees, I was able to photograph at least a dozen other flowering plants. There were yellows, blues, whites, purples, pinks and oranges, all there, mixed up together.

Ivy-leaf Violet

Golden Everlasting Daisies

Bulbine Lily

Showy Podolepis 

Chocolate Lily

Slender Rice Flower

Donkey Orchid

Blue Button

Tall Bluebell White Form Wahlenbergia Stricta

Yellow Buttons

      

Tall Bluebell

 

Fleabane

                                                  

    

Crested Pigeons

CRESTED PIGEONS  ( Ocyphaps lophotes)

I have watched these birds for many years. They are often about the town, sitting on electricity wires, watching the world go by. On a still day they can be heard 'hwoo - hwooing' from taller trees. It is one of the sounds of living in this town.





When I come across them feeding on the ground, they are quite timid, and burst into the air with a hectic whistling beating of the wings. Some say this whistling sound distracts predators from young birds which maystill be on the ground.



I watched this pair for a long time on Sunday. Sitting high on a dead tree, they 'billed and cooed' (I think that is probably the right expression for pigeons and doves?). They then played a sparring game with their crests. They looked as though they were fencing, using their long black crests as foils. They both displayed lots of feather fluffing, holding their tail feathers over their heads. The male then mounted the female.

 They flew off to another tree where they sat for  quite a long while in a contented way.

They seemed much more highly coloured than I have seen them at other times. Perhaps, like other birds, their colours intensify during the mating time. The legs were very red, the eyes bright orange, and the plumage more highly marked. They did look beautiful.

Moth Flies

ANNOYING LITTLE FLIES  (Clogmia albipunctata)

I love to read in bed. For the last week or so it has been  chore.

Turn on the light and  I am immediately joined by a crowd of tiny insects. Gnats? Moths? Flies?  

They are so tiny it is difficult to see what they are. Using a 10x magnifier I can just make out what looks to be tiny moths. But they move so quickly that it is hard to get any detail. They are certainly far too tiny for my camera to catch

So I did a bit of asking around. Fleas says one person, bed bugs says another, gnats, midges, fruit flies, and a few silly answers such as baby flies. I know all of those, and these don't fit my observations at all. 

I finally found the answer. I have a friend who is an entomologist. He knew straight away what they are. Moth flies; sometimes called drain flies, bathroom flies, sink flies, filter flies, mothmidge or sewer gnats. They are quite beautiful when they are seen close with their long segmented antennae.

MuseumVictoria gives the following description.

These dark grey flies are 2-4mm in length and have hairy moth-like wings. They have a jerky flight and are observed around bathrooms, in damp subfloors, in greenhouses and in other locations where moisture and the presence of decaying organic matter will support their presence. 

If you are seeing large numbers and you don’t regularly leave your windows open, the flies must be breeding inside your house or in your water pipes. You could have a drainage problem, such as slow-draining pipes, or water pooling in over-watered pot plants. Once you remove all permanent sources of water and fix any drainage issues, the flies should disappear. 

Bathroom flies are not harmful to people and will not damage clothes or linen. They are therefore considered to be of nuisance value only.

( https://museumvictoria.com.au/discoverycentre/discovery-centre-news/2009-archive/bathroom-flies/ )

My drains and bathroom plumbing are fine but the ground and garden all about, is very damp. Everything is damp in Kilmore so I suppose the moth flies are having a good year of it. 

Sacred Kingfisher

SACRED KINGFISHER (Halcyon Sancta)

The days are still very grey. We have patches of sunlight  and the air and ground is warming up, but the days have been grey. I have seen echidnas, brown snakes, blue tongued lizards and tortoises all on the move in the last week. I imagine a combination of wet ground and the warmth is pushing the wildlife above ground a little earlier than other years. 




Do we plant out tomatoes now? It is is still two weeks until Melbourne Cup Day. That is the proper time for tomatoes.

I have a brother in law who lives around Baddaginnie.  Benalla never had a holiday for Cup Day, so  the locals begin  tomatoe planting day according to the days when the brown snakes and the blue tongued lizards emerge from their winter sleep.

It must be the time.



I was walking last Sunday quite early when a flash of blue swooped past and a little kingfisher landed on a nearby tree. I can't remember seeing one of these before around Kilmore. It was a bright blue and sat on it's branch for quite a few minutes before flying off.  It was a small, blue kookaburra.

Today I had an hour or two to spare and went out looking to see if I could find him or her again. It began to rain heavily, again. I sat under a large pine tree to wait until the rain passed. The birds were not waiting. Swallows, ducks, swamp hens and cormorants were all enjoying the rain. And there was the little blue kingfisher, sitting quietly looking at me. Lovely!

So what kind of kingfisher is it?   I could not see this bird very clearly but I think this might be a Sacred Kingfisher. At first I thought it was an Azure Kingfisher which has a striking blue, ultra marine coloured back with buff underparts. This one has a pale chest and has a white collar which extends all around the neck.  So I think Sacred Kingfisher,  Halcyon Sancta. 

The name?  Halcyon  was a mythical bird said by ancient writers to breed in a nest floating at sea at the winter solstice, charming the wind and waves into calm And sancta, of course means saint. What a lovely name for a lovely bird 

Red-browed Finch

Red-browed Finch or Red-browed Firetail

These birds are listed as being common to the eastern coast of Australia, and the adjacent ranges, but I do not see them very often around Kilmore.


This pair were feeding on the tee off mound for the final hole on the Kilmore Golf Course the other day. I was able to get quite close to them, they did not seem to be concerned about me at all, very sociable.  


Finches of course, are seed eaters, just look at the beaks. They feed on  ripe or ripening grass seed which they pick from the ground or from the  stalks. That is certainly what this pair were doing on this day. Perhaps the course curators had spread some grass seed on the tee-off area.  My reading tells me they also  need a regular supply of water. So if you are thirsty and lost in dry country, look out for finches. They are a good sign of water.

These have the scientific name Neochmia temporalis but have also been known as Aegintha temporalis. Temporalis comes from the Latin for temple; that makes sense. Neochmia and Aegintha? I am still looking for a meaning. Both sound like Latin to me, neo,  new?  Aeg...,  something to do with silver perhaps. Aah, they are related to silver eyes, perhaps that is a connection. I'll update the information if and when I find it.

Wood Ducks & Porphyry Swamp Hens

SPRING GROWTH

Wood Duck Parents and Children

There are lots of young birds about at this time.

It is difficult to see those that are tucked away in tree hollows, those hidden in thick clumps of gorse, those in mud nests under the eaves of sheds or those perched in stick nests at the top of a telephone tower.

The water bird babies are a lot more obvious. Within a short time of hatching they are out on the water or scrambling about the reed beds.

I spent a pleasant half hour watching three (three?) purple moorhens (Porphyrio porphyrio) feeding chicks in their nest of reeds. There are many of these beautiful swamp hens on the Kilmore Hospital reservoir. I have always called the porphyry moor hens but I think I might have my terminology mixed up a little. Swamphen seems to be the name in my books. The moorhen name seems to belong to the dusky moorhen, a similar but not quite so brightly coloured bird.

The porphyry name, of course, comes from the beautiful purple coloured igneous rock that has been used for centuries in building and sculpture. There is a beautiful sculpture outside St Mark's Basilica in Venice of the Four Tetrarchs carved from porphory.  The term Greek word porphyry means purple, the color of royalty. The 'royalty' of the Catholic Church, the cardinals, of course wear purple or porphyry.

And here we have such a beautiful bird, all clothed in royal purple. I was a little surprised to see at least three birds busy around the nest and all were feeding the young. Upon doing some reading, I found the following comment about the dusky moorhen.  " During breeding season, the Dusky Moorhen forms breeding groups of two to seven birds, with all members defending territory, building nests and looking after young."  (http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Gallinula-tenebrosa). 

Little Black Cormorants

A WET WEEK IN SEPTEMBER

KIlmore sits just to the north of the remnants of the Great Dividing Range. Pretty Sally, a hill supposedly named after the proprietor of an early inn, and about eight kilometres from the town, is just 529 metres tall. Monument Hill, adjacent to the town, is a little over 460 metres tall. The Kilmore Creek, running through the centre of the town is 380 metres above sea level at the southern end of the town and about 330 metres at the northern end.

Because we are very close to the top of the Dividing Range, this is a relatively small area for the collection of water after heavy a downfall. Some of the water runs into Dry Creek to the East of KIlmore and some ends up in the Kilmore Creek. These waterways join the Goulburn River and eventually join the Murray River.  So with a small collection area and a good slope, we rarely have a problem with too much water. Just sometimes,

But it has been wet. Our creeks have, for a short time, looked like creeks. It was great to see the water flowing, flushing the accumulated rubbish away. Very often Kilmore Creek resembles a  drain running behind the main street.  In 1884, the journalist naming himself 'The Vagabond', writing in the Argus  talked of the Cloaca Maxima of Kilmore. The Cloaca Maxima was of course the 6th century BCE sewer system of ancient Rome.

But this week our creek was a real creek.





I found some new visitors to our area. Perhaps they like the wet countryside.

 Three Little Black Cormorants ( Phalacrocorax sulcirostris) were sitting in the little sun that was shining through the cloud. I haven't seen them here before. As children we  called them 'shags'  and 'cormorants' .I do remember my Leaving Certificate (Year 11) teacher growling that at my friend. Damian was sitting next to a sunny classroom window and couldn't give the  mathematical formulae for exponential growth. You are  'like a shag on a rock', said Brother Michael.  I assume the reverend brother was referring to the bird's habit of sitting asleep in the sunshine. Poor Damien, he was called 'Shag' for a long time afterwards.

The name sulcirostrisis is from the Latin words sulcus "groove", and rostrum "bill". Phalacrocorax  is thought to come from the Greek word for bald, referring to a whitish face patch on some species. 

Buff-rumped Thornbills

  Buff-rumped Thornbill (Acanthiza reguloides)

These tiny little birds are very hard to catch sitting still. They are constantly on the move, from the ground to small shrubs and trees. It is obvious they are around because they call constantly as they move from place to place abd branch to branch. They continue to call as they search for food,  'sipp, sipp, sipp'.

People in some regions know these  as Little Thornbills. Not surprising they are such tiny birds, no bigger than a mouse in the body, yet their highly pitched voices can be heard over quite a distance.




They are very pretty, when you can actually get a good glimpse of them. They seem to be a brighter yellow at the moment, more so than when I followed them earlier in the year. They look quite distinguished with their white ringed dark eyes, speckled faces over yellow breasts and underparts and black feet and beaks.

Usually I see them groups of four or five, but sometimes they forage in pairs. Whilst they do not seem timid or overly cautious, they usually manage to keep just out of camera range. If I move toward,  trying to focus on them amongst the twigs and branches of shrubs, they move off a little way. I move forward again, and they move on some more. We do this dance three or four times, until they get sick of the game and flitter off into the distance.




This little fellow, or lass, sat for quite a while on a branch, singing away; in a voice not the usual 'chip, chip,' or 'sipp, sipp, sipp'.

Spring Kilmore

Something Is Moving In the Land

After a few wet and cold weeks, we are seeing glimpses of Spring. We have patches of bright  and warm sunshine interspersed amongst the cold squalls. I was standing in bright sunshine just a few hours ago whilst hail stones were hitting my bald head.







Just this week, all of a sudden,  the flowers are beginning to bloom. There are many Early-Nancy, far more than we usually have. They are called Early-Nancy for an obvious reason, one of the first flowers of Spring. Good rainfall this year seems to have helped them along. The botanical name of these small pinky white flowersw is Wurmbea dioica. 


 I love botanical names, they contain so much information. According to Michael Bedingfield,

 (http://step.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Wurmbea-dioica-Early-Nancy.pdf  writing in the Friends of the Grassland Newsletter 2003)  F. Van Wurmb was a Dutch merchant and amateur
botanist who lived in Java, Indonesia in the 18th century. And the word dioica is a Greek word for two houses. This is referring to the male and female flowers which occur on the plants. They usually occur on different plants but I am sure I have seen them on a single plant.

It is quite easy to see the difference between the flowers, the female flowers have oval shaped fruit. Sometimes there are a few bisexual flowers in the inflorescence. The different flowers can be seen in the pictures.



I saw my first Green-hood orchid out, and there are many more on the way.



 I found a small hovea, just the one at this stage, and patches of clematis.



I think it was Edna Walling who, when speaking of gardening, talked of the enormous pleasure in anticipating. what is to come. There is so much to look forward to in the coming weeks.

What a waste of time to walk around a golf course when we can walk in the bush.