Wildlife Australia - Winter 2005 - Finding Food

Once seen, never forgotten, as many visitors to Lamington National Part know, but finding a regent bowerbird in its bower is another matter.

Male bowerbirds don’t build nests. Their stick constructions are designed not to protect eggs or hatchlings, but to entice and attract. It’s worked — though probably not quite the way the bird intended.

Bowers are display areas where males court, cavort and convince a succession of female bowerbirds that they’re the one. However, this regent bowerbird also attracted the attention of photographer Michael Snedic. In all his years of working in his beloved rainforest as a guide and photographer, Michael has seen dozens of satin bowerbird bowers but barely a handful of bowers built by the more elusive regent bowerbird. He was determined not just to find an active bower, but to photograph it with the bird in situ. Share the challenge, and the results, in ‘A taste for pomp and pageantry’.

 

Contents...

How to keep a numbat happy

By Tony Friend

Happy numbats are busy participants in intricate, healthy ecosystems.

A hollow log, a trail of termites - what more could a Myrmecobius ask for? Research at Western Australia's Dryandra Woodland show how a numbat's simple needs are well met in the complexity of a wandoo woodland.

The case of the emerging cicada

By Gavin Davidson

The loud rattling call, the empty shells - it's one of summer's familiar mysteries.

There are more than 200 cicada species in Australia, each with its distinct call. After their long sojourn underground as nymphs, adults live only a few weeks and are a favoured food for birds, spiders, preying mantids robber flies and tree crickets.

Treasures of the skeleton cave

By Scott Burnett

Their dining habits are goulish but the owls' assistance is invaluable.

Small mammals meet a sharp and sudden end in the talons of this fierce predator - which then donates the remains of its meal to science. That is, if scientists can find the treasure trove in the dropped pellets.

 

Things that go bump in the night

By Sandra Clague, Chris Clague and Olivia Whybird

Picture this: nocturnal visitors to a profusion of rainforest blossom. Have you ever wondered what goes on in the forest when you are not there? Doug Clague did - and investigated some of the most popular nightspots in the north Queensland rainforest - finding a profusion of wildlife on his property in the high country near Millaa Millaa on the southern Atherton Tablelands.

 

Flame grilled specials: how Australian animals find food after bushfires.

By Skye Karolak

Fire and food have a long and complicated relationship - especially in Australian bushland.

Bushfires are like living, breathing creatures. They have their own behaviour and move over the landscape in their own ways. Meet one and the memory will be etched in your memory forever.

Do we try and tame this animal, or work with it? That is the key question for biodiversity.

 

Rare and Welcome visitors: glossy black cockatoos in southeast Queensland

By Annette Henderson

A wildlife corridor, an education project and one couple's long-term commitment to wildlife lead to a rewarding experience with a vulnerable species.

The specialised feeding of these appealing birds limits the area they can inhabit. Preservation of the large tracts of original forest in the Sprint Mountain to Greenbank corridor will be critical for the local populations of glossy black cockatoos.

Dangerous Liaisons

By Gary Wilson

In the wet tropical rainforest of northeast Queensland and in a small area of central Queensland, two creatures quietly continue a food-and-sex-based relationship with a difficult beginning in the Age of Dinosaurs.

Descended from plants that were probably wind pollinated, the Byfield fern now depends on a weevil for reproduction. Female cones signal their presence to the weevil through heat and smell.

 

Fire, food, and casuarinas

By Antoni V. Milewski

When it comes to recycling nutrients, casuarinas keep themselves to themselves with a number of conservation strategies.

Their drooping foliage is familiar in eucalypt understories and along Australian foreshores, but casuarinas have an uncommon - even paradoxical - life strategy. With their apparently vestigial leaves, how do they produce such dense wood and such useful firewood?

 

Also in this edition:

Editorial, Comment, City Animal, NatureWatch, Books Reviews, Winter Skies, Young and Wild, WPSQ in Action, Swamp Cartoon and our regular environmental crossword.

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