Welcome lack of speed when feed is seed

Juvenile Scaly-breasted Munia (was Nutmeg Mannikin, before that, Spice Finch) tucking into seed of Para Grass - the Town Common's worst weed by area covered - in the Townsville conservation park today. No need for speed for feed of seed. Though granivores are maddeningly quick to take flight.

So too Welcome Swallows, which are also maddeningly fast and unpredictable feeding in flight on assorted insects. And feed on prey so small as to be nigh invisible. About 90 minutes in chilly southerly blasts on Sunday morning produced no quality images. The birds did however slow low over the water at times to take a slender white unidentified insect from the surface or just under the water.

The Bad, the Ugly and the Beautiful

Steamy stuff in the daytime? Sounds a bit like soap opera to me. We'll call it The Bad, the Ugly and the Beautiful!  

Not so bad to look at, but ugly is as ugly does. And what the Cane Toad (Bufo marinus) does is reproduce its poisonous self in noisome numbers: up to 30,000 eggs per female a season. Perhaps 99% will not survive. Still leaves 300 to do their worst. Look closely and you'll see a chain of black eggs stretching along the flank of the male toad (above, at work in Tyto. Click to enlarge).

Hard to see bad barbed wire as anything but ugly, even with an attractive young Welcome Swallow (Hirundo neoxena) taking a comfort stretch upon its rustiness. But I was taken with the colour match between rust and parts of the bird. (Note to barbed wire collectors: I don't think this is a rare piece.)

Nothing ugly about the Ulysses butterfly (Papilio ulysses), though the brilliant blue coloration signals a warning against swallowing the swallowtails. The males sip salts from small puddles, in part to produce pheromones to attract females. Their liquid uptake - and throughput - must be considerable as this butterfly spent several minutes moving from puddle to tiny puddle and produced scores of drops, such as that shown.

Nothing ugly or bad about Plumed Whistling Ducks (Dendrocygna eytoni). Two have taken up temporary quarters in a waterlogged corner of the caravan park. Funnily enough, Plumed Whistlers can give the impression they are averse to water. They stand around by day, prefer ground landings to splashdowns, will breed far from water, and feed nocturnally on grasses and other low growth.

Well, that didn't go so badly, did it?

Bittern sticks his neck up

Here's today's puzzle: find the bird in the bulgaroo. Hurry up, I've done all the hard work. Stood near this spot for months off and on. And all for nothing most of the time. That, or a brief gurgle and then silence for the rest of the day.


Today brought the if-onlys. If only the bird would come out to the water's edge of the bulgaroo (which I cannot identify: am told it's Scleria sp but cannot nail it down. So, bulgaroo it is. Not bulguru: the Water Chestnut.)


If only it would climb to the top of the bulgaroo. If only it would - best of all - stand openly and preen. If only I'd ID the bird? Why, it's a Little Bittern (Ixobrychus minutus). Today's is the first clear sighting for me since April 7. Then, I got obscured, blurry pictures of a bittern seizing a great mass of weed and unidentified prey. One day, if only the if-onlys are aligned correctly, and fate decrees, I'll get a decent picture of little Ixo!



Elsewhere, I came across two young Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena) awaiting impatiently on a bridge rail for their hard-pressed parents to meet their demands for more, more, more... ...and people think teenagers can be just a teeny bit demanding! At least they don't physically try to bite your head off.