A frequent criticism of rainforest plantings is that they tend to be deficient in vines and understorey shrubbery, with the usual focus being on the planting of trees. This gives many community-driven and private reforestation plots a bit of a “plantation” aesthetic—evenly spaced trees of a similar size with little (or primarily weeds) growing beneath them. Such habitat tends to be unfavourable for much of our wildlife that depend on shrubbery on or near the ground (e.g., scrubwrens and whipbirds). Such species can actually be disadvantaged by well-intentioned habitat restoration efforts if planted native trees are an inferior habitat to the dense Lantana and other weeds originally at a site. This is something I’m very conscious of when I select combinations of species to plant on our property at Pine Mountain. Rather than focus solely on trees, I plant numerous vines and shrubs in an attempt to emulate a habitat structure that scrubwrens and whipbirds favour. While whipbirds have yet to move into any of my planted areas after six years, several pairs of White-browed Scrubwrens nested in my planted plots for the first time this year. The first nest was built in a dense cluster of Carissa ovata and Cyperus gracilis way back in August. The latest nest (by a different pair, hundreds of metres from the first nest) was remarkably only one metre from our front door! Ironically tucked into the base of a “Bird’s Nest Fern” (Asplenium australasicum), I only noticed it when the chicks were old enough to loudly beg for food. How we didn’t notice it being built or incubated so close to a main thoroughfare I have no idea! Unfortunately, a predator (I suspect a brushturkey, though without sufficient evidence to mount a legal case) also discovered the chicks only a couple of days after I did. Still, it is encouraging that our local scrubwrens approve of my restoration efforts to date.
The timing of this failed nest was surprisingly late, as most other nests of this species I’ve encountered on the property have been in late winter. I had assumed that nesting in the cooler months was a strategy that White-browed Scrubwrens adopt to reduce the risk of monitors and snakes depredating their nests, which are located on or near the ground. Clearly their breeding season is far more protracted than I formerly appreciated.
Another species that is currently nesting far later than in previous years is the Tawny Frogmouth. Last year’s nestlings fledged in mid-October, while the chicks in this year’s nest are only half grown at the end of December.
While I never found the nest, our Speckled Warblers successfully reared a brood over the past month or so. I was drawn to the unusual, high-pitched begging calls of the fledglings (reminiscent of the begging calls of Fan-tailed Cuckoo chicks, but nothing like the related scrubwrens). I first spotted the youngsters when they were just a day or two out of the nest (based on their stubby little tails and clumsy flight). However, the photo below was taken when they had been out of the nest for around a week. Apart from the fleshy yellow patches in the corner of their mouths, they look surprisingly like an adult despite their young age. This is the first confirmed breeding of this species on our property. I assume that, like the related White-browed Scrubwren, their nest would have been located on or near the ground among grass or dense shrubbery. I’ll have to look harder nest year!
Just like last December, a brood of Pacific Black Ducklings has recently appeared on our dam. The dam itself is almost dry, after many months with showers but no substantial run-off. Last year’s brood were very mobile, wandering up and down the creek, so I don’t know if they nested locally or waddled in.
It is not only our breeding birds that have been unusually late this year, but the large, migrating flocks of Topknot Pigeons that usually pass over in October have continued until mid-December this year. As I was in Africa during October, I don’t know whether there has simply been a protracted tail-end of the migration period, or whether the entire population opted to move later this year. I wonder whether the unusual rainfall patterns along the east coast this year have altered the fruiting schedule to which migration is presumably linked.
After an absence of over a year, two Squirrel Gliders (possibly the same as discussed in a previous post) made a reappearance in the same box as previously. I always check this box whenever I walk past, as it is a favourite of Brush-tailed Phascogales, and its small size means that I can normally see when nesting material (lichens and dead leaves) is visible at the entrance hole. Last week, the phascogale was not in attendance, and the box was instead filled with the bulging mass of glider bellies and tails. These two probably regularly sleep in some of my other boxes but, as the other boxes are much deeper, I wouldn’t necessarily notice.
This month I also added a new mammal species to our property list. After an absence of a couple of years, I had begun to see numerous bandicoot holes around my restoration plots. I initially assumed they would be Northern Brown Bandicoots (Isoodon macrourus), as I had recorded this species on our property several years ago, and I regularly see them along the grassy verges of Riverside Drive at night. However, over the past few months, I had seen multiple Long-nosed Bandicoots (Perameles nasuta) in some of the patches of vine-scrub along Riverside Drive, while Alister and I have been on our night walks. Finally, I caught a glimpse of a Long-nosed Bandicoot in the plantings beside our house. Unlike Northern Brown Bandicoots (which can live anywhere with long grass), Long-nosed Bandicoots are forest specialists, particularly favouring rainforests. Like the scrubwrens mentioned earlier, finding that Long-nosed Bandicoots have moved into my planted areas is strong encouragement that I’m doing something right.
The other animal that we have been seeing with increasing frequency on our night walks are Eastern Barn Owls. I don’t know if these are the dispersed offspring from the nest near Sherlocks Road, but we have been regularly seeing Eastern Barn Owls along the entire length of our road. Our House Mouse plague from last summer has more-or-less ended now, but Black Rats are still in very high densities. Hopefully the Barn Owls will help put an end to that.
One reason to suspect that the Black Rat plague will not end any time soon is that we are entering another boom fruiting/seeding season for our native rainforest trees. Many species that fruited last summer for the first time in many years (e.g., Cupaniopsis parvifolia, Amorphospermum antilogum, Arytera foveolata and Cryptocarya sp. World’s End Pocket) are currently bearing crops for the second year running. For most of these species, the same trees that fruited last year are fruiting again, alongside many trees that failed to fruit last year. However, I noticed a curious pattern among the C. parvifolia, in that trees that fruited heavily last summer are not fruiting this year, but many other trees that failed to fruit last summer are this year.
I managed to propagate large quantities of seedlings of most of these species last summer, so I haven’t been collecting too much seed this year. One exception is Amorphospermum antilogum; all my seed from last year rotted before germinating. This was frustrating, as it is not a species that is widely available commercially. If I want to plant more (it goes without saying I most certainly do), I’m going to have to work out how to propagate them myself.
My technique for sowing all our local rainforest seeds is similar; if the seed is covered by a fleshy fruit or aril, I first remove the soft material (imitating the gut of a bird). Then I sow the fresh seed in trays of potting mix, covering each seed with about as much mix as the thickness of the seed. I noticed that many A. antilogum seeds produced roots but no shoots ever emerged. Eventually, the embryos within the seeds rotted away.
This year, I’m trialling a couple of different approaches. For one third of the seed I recently collected, I cracked open the shell that encases the kernel and planted the kernel directly. My theory was, perhaps the shells are too hard for the shoots to penetrate through, although roots were able to. For another third, I planted the whole stone as I would normally, but instead of covering with potting mix, I covered loosely with leaf litter in an attempt to emulate the forest floor. I postulated that perhaps the seeds were rotting because there was too much moisture and insufficient air flow around the seeds. The final third are my controls—whole stones covered in potting mix as per last year. Who knows? Maybe i just had a dud batch of seed last year. This year, I’ve collected from multiple different trees. Fingers crossed, and I’ll report on the results in a future post. Merry Christmas!
Life at World's End 
[…] Road, in the far north of the region, where a resident pair lives. However, as noted in this previous post, Eastern Barn Owl numbers have boomed since the mouse and rat plague that started last summer. […]
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[…] insect infestation turns out to be a branch in full bloom! My propagation trials on this species last summer haven’t resulted in a single seedling germinating, but I’m still holding out some hope, […]
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