Wild Things

Potting hornet

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On my verandah I have hung an antique tin tub, so rusty as to be lacework.

Having found it way down in a gully, far from any habitation past or present, I have assumed it was left behind by a cedargetters’ camp, long, long ago.

Now it is providing shelter for an Australian Hornet, who is busily making nests for her young.

She buzzes as she works, the sound being amplified as it vibrates aginst the tin. She bring small amounts of wet mud and shapes them into elongated cups with her delicate feet.

They are like half-coil pots and she is one of the family of ‘potter wasps’.

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Inside each clay cell she places paralysed caterpillars, lays an egg, then plugs the top. The young will feed on the caterpillars. Interestingly, the adults only feed on flower nectar.

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Next to that cell she made another, joined but separate. Look at the neatness of the rows of clay and the flared shaping for adhesion and strength at the ends. She’s an experienced potter.

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Next morning she had finished two and was inside an almost-completed third, perhaps placing a stunned caterpillar?

These hornets don’t attack people, as I know from them regularly passing by my head as I work when I have the window open here.

So no need to fear or remove them, and they do keep caterpillar numbers in control. Plus they make admirable pots!

Bye-bye babies

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After a little over a week away, I returned to find the empty nest of the Yellow-faced Honeyeaters swinging unattended in the breeze.

I’d been looking forward to seeing the growth and changing coloration of the two teenage young ones.

So had this been a very quick maturation, or Christmas dinner for some predator?

I hope it was the former — but I have to doubt it.

Wasp nursery

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As the warmer weather arrived, I opened the window in front of my desk for the first time in ages.

Immediately I realised that I had uncovered the living larder of a very busy mother wasp.

In the narrow gap between sill and window base, she had created a mud maze in a neat butterfly shape.

In there she had laid her eggs, and sealed up stunned spiders ready for the first feed when the larvae hatch.

This will give the larvae the energy to turn into the pupae from which the adult will emerge.
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But as these look like pupae, has she over-provisioned or will the adult eat them later?

Anyone know? I’d like to.

Lego royalty

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I was visiting a friend’s house in bushland in the lower Hunter. Her small grand-daughter was also visiting, so a child-sized table was set up on the back patio. Large Lego kept her amused.

My friend had fed the King Parrots there for a long time but the white cockatoos had begun to dominate, so she was restricting the sunflower seeds to where she could watch who was eating them.

‘The king is here!’ she called to the child. ‘Shall we feed him on your table?’
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To the delight of us all, the king deigned to leave the guttering and alight on the table. His queen watched from a nearby tree for a little while, until she felt secure enough to join him amongst the Lego people.

My friend, originally from Denmark, vividly recalls her amazement at these parrots when she first saw them. We all agree that their gentle yet blazing beauty continues to astonish us afresh each time.

Honeyeater hatching

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I have had my first sighting of the Honeyeater babies in the nest outside my kitchen window. There appear to be two scrawny-necked grey heads, with rippled pink beaks like delicate clam shells.

They seem to alternate in their bobbing up and down, so it’s hard to catch them together.

I have placed a chair by the kitchen sink so I can jump and snap the pair when they are staying up more often in unison.
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Mum is being kept very busy and the morsels I have seen her bring are quite large, although I can’t tell what they are.

But it must be good; just look at the eyes closed in ecstasy as it swallows!
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And then I managed it: here’s the pair, snapped just after Mum had flown off so both their heads were raised, swallowing hard.

Houseproud honeyeaters

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My nesting honeyeaters aren’t happy with the house they built. At least she isn’t.

Perhaps the winds have made the finely netted nest feel less secure, or she’s rethought the design.

She doesn’t seem to sit still for as long as she was, turning about instead of facing away from my window as before.

She fusses about the nest inside and out, from all angles. Is she patching and improving on what they built together, or are those the bits that he built — unsatisfactorily?

Or does her restlessness mean that she hasn’t yet laid those eggs? Perhaps this is the avian equivalent of a human female driven to ‘springclean’ just before she goes into labour.

Meanwhile all the father-to-be can do is keep watch — and pace the branches.

Python farewell

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The day my python had surrounded the shower shell on my verandah, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to risk a shower that evening.

It was a windy night, and next morning when I did go to have a shower, the rubber mat had been blown back, doubled on
to itself.

I usually just flick it back flat with my hand. Something made me use the broom this time.

Just as well, for there lay the sleepy python, in a perfect coil.

I gave the shower a miss yet again. A top and tail at the kitchen sink was a far better idea!

But I kept checking for when it might awake, to see where it would head next.

Eventually it uncoiled and poured itself over the mat and between the boards — or was it going under the mat? How would I ever be sure it wasn’t under that raised edge of the mat where it met the fibreglass base?

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Verandah python

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It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was writing about a rare sighting for here –  a diamond python. That was a fair distance away, on the track.

Meanwhile a friend, having rescued a stunned python down on the tar road, had brought it here to recover.

He thought I might like one for my garden; despite the posed benefits of keeping the numbers down of other snakes and small mammals like bush rats, I declined and asked him to release it outside the yard down by the dam.  I thought no more about it.

I do have a bush rat of some sort that, every night, without fail, enters the house and dashes along the same exposed rafter, always between 8.45 and 8.50. I haven’t been able to find out how and where it goes in and out.

Then one night it did fail to show up.

Next day this is what I saw, up on the top western corner of the mud wall on my verandah, partly hidden by the grapevine.

Plump loops and rolls of spots and diamonds, fishnet black over yellow and white.

It was a diamond python, curled up, fast asleep. Was this a post-prandial nap? Post-rat?

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New nest

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The Yellow-faced Honeyeaters are definitely building their nest in the Crepuscule climbing rose outside my window.

They are very quick to dash in and add to it, one at a time, and they don’t stay in there long.

The whole branch they’ve chosen is suspended, loosely swinging, so hopefully other feathered predators won’t be able to get at it.

One friarbird, who’s also collecting string and such for its nest, has been hovering around, flapping frantically in mid-air and causing the honeyeater to fuss and chatter at it.

You can just make out the tail of one poking up from the nest.

I can’t open my casement window much now as a friend noticed that they weren’t coming to the branch when I had the window in front of it wide open.

Obviously the immediate surroundings had changed too much and made them wary. They resumed when I latched it closer to the frame.

This nest seems to be mostly composed of lichen.

 No mud as in the swallows’ construction.  

They must be just weaving and hoping.

House honeyeaters

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A pair of honeyeaters have taken to perching just outside my kitchen window, sometimes on the climbing rose that hangs just beyond, and sometimes on the window frames themselves.

I think they are Yellow-faced Honeyeaters. They have a pretty call, quite loud for their size, and I am very pleased to have them as new regular visitors to serenade my days at the computer.

Assuming they are nesting somewhere near, I hope they take up permanent residency.

Mountain goanna

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Last week I saw a goanna on my ridge. It was an occasion of great delight because, over 30 years, this is only the second goanna I have ever seen up here. They have both been Lace Monitors.

My new goanna ran up on to the base of a large horizontal tree trunk that had been snapped off and smashed down in a storm some years ago.

As you can see, the camouflage is perfect – greyish, pinkish, blackish; ripples and spots, patches and strips. And look at that exquisite needle point tail!

Perhaps there are more goannas here than I thought: I just haven’t had my goanna eyes tuned in.

Rosies can be green

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One of the Crimson Rosellas brought her young one along to try the birdseed recently. It was the first time I’ve seen this happen.

Instead of the mature red, blue and black plumage, its blue was paler, its red more tomato than scarlet, and much of its body was dusted with light lettuce green. It looked like a different parrot altogether.

I assume the green is to camouflage the young from predators until they are old enough and smart enough to fend for themselves.

Mother and child weren’t there long, and the young one didn’t strike contemplative poses for me as the older ones do, so the photos are a little blurred.