Wild BNE

Earlier this month, I drove up to Airlie Beach in the Whitsunday Region to celebrate the 40th birthday of my close friend, Kat. Photo by Luke Martin. Our time there overlapped for one weekend, in which we enjoyed swims, drinks, hearty dinners and a sailing adventure around the islands. The celebrations and wonderful catch-ups flew by quickly, but when Kat and her husband Luke flew back down south on Sunday, I still had a week's worth of time at my disposal to explore the nature of Queensland's coast. I started with a journey into the forests of Conway National Park, just a ten minute drive east of Airlie Beach. I spent a sunny, humid morning walking up to the peak of Mount Rooper, through vine scrub and eucalypt forest. It was exhilarating!  I immediately saw a new species of bird for me in the carpark there, a female olive-backed sunbird (Cinnyris jugularis). After so much rain earlier in the week, the forest floor was also teeming with amazing fungi! After lunch back in town,...

In May earlier this year, I had the honour of being invited to participate in the Cooloola BioBlitz as a Team Leader. Over the course of a weekend, I led two groups of lovely people around various sites near Rainbow Beach, searching for and identifying as many life forms as we could find. These sightings were then uploaded to iNaturalist in order to paint a full picture of the biodiversity occurring on the Cooloola Coast. Here I will share some of the highlights from the weekend! MISTLETOES Both groups I took out into the bush found amazing mistletoes! The most stunning of them all was a long-flowered mistletoe (Dendrophthoe vitellina) parasitising a paperbark, which then had two other species of mistletoe on it—a layer cake of parasitism! With the help of LaTrobe Natural History lecturer Gregg Müller, those two species were identified as the leafless jointed mistletoe (Viscum articulatum) and the golden mistletoe (Notothixos subaureus). It was such a fascinating find that I returned ...

Having spent the three days prior in pandemic lockdown, I was keen to kick off my Easter weekend with a few hours spent in a forest. I also wanted to be able to sleep in a little on Good Friday, so I picked a place less than half an hour’s drive away to visit: Redlands Track Park in Alexandra Hills. Also known by the much better name of Scribbly Gums Conservation Area, this place is large and its trails are many! Though there were also many mountain-bikers, dog-walkers and other users of the park there during my visit, there were hour-long stretches where I didn’t see another soul, which is just how I like my forest time! It was that kind of day where the forest washes over me, lulling me into a mood so tranquil that I don’t so much as walk among the trees, but rather glide through them. I see so much when I feel this way. There is treasure everywhere. On this walk, it came in the form of a gorgeous pair of shaggy caps (Boletellus emodensis), emerging from the base of a dead goliath ne...

A female flatback turtle, covering her nest chamber with sand on Mon Repos Beach. I kicked off the start of this summer with a short break up at Bargara, where I had a fantastic time! I’ll get to all the interesting animals and plants I saw in a minute, but first, let me just say how much I liked the actual region. Bundaberg struck me as a city with the perfect mix of old and new; lovely heritage buildings and structures and a laid-back attitude are complemented by the modern conveniences of good roads, internet access and seven-days-a-week shopping. And while I can see new suburbs popping up here and there, the region isn’t suffering the same intense overcrowding that Brisbane is at present. I loved it!  And now back to the wildlife! Here are some of the creatures and places that will be living in my heart for much longer than my holiday lasted.  Sea turtles If there’s one animal that Bundaberg's Coral Coast is particularly famous for, it’s the loggerhead turtle (C...

Grey mangroves at the edge of Cassim Island. I love mangroves. I find them to be fascinating examples of adaptation, and admire the way they shape and influence entire coastlines and ecosystems.  Salt crystals on a yellow mangrove leaf. Here in South-east Queensland, we have seven species of them (eight, if you count a species of fern), so I also appreciate how beginner-friendly they are when it comes to plant identification, as there are not too many to sort through. Unfortunately, despite their immense environmental and economic value , mangroves are sadly not championed by the general public in the same way that rainforests, coral reefs and other ecosystems are. Governments and developers use this to their advantage, feeling comfortable in destroying coastal wetlands for the sake of marinas, canal estates and the like. A situation just like this is currently playing out in Cleveland, where a proposed development threatens Toondah Harbour and surrounds . Swamp ti...

Last Wednesday, I visited Moggill Conservation Park in Brisbane’s western suburbs for the very first time, and conducted a plant survey up on one of the hills there.

A peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) flies over the rooftops on the Sunshine Coast. 2017 was a great year for adventures in the bush and encounters with incredible wildlife! Here’s some of the creatures, places and events that made an impact on me, and in some cases, the entire region:

Small-leaved lilly pilly, INSET: Australasian figbird (male), Bulimba. A sunny afternoon spent in Bulimba last Thursday afternoon offered up some great encounters with a variety of reptiles, birds and insects.

One of the many adorable locals on the Bunya Mountains. It was my 34th birthday last month, and I celebrated it with a group of close friends out in the Bunya Mountains. I have only ever been to this place once before, as part of a weekend away with a birdwatching club when I was a teen. My memories of that experience are a little blurry with time, but I recall being enraptured by wallaby-packed hillsides, and an amazing sunrise. The wallabies— red-necked wallabies , to be precise—made a big impression on me this time as well! They’re everywhere on the mountaintop, whether it be in the National Park, in public areas or on private lawns! They’re also common here on the outskirts of Brisbane and in the surrounding shires, but locally they tend to be shy animals that are usually seen alone or in small groups. I suspect that their abundance and approachability at the Bunyas is a result of many generations of wallabies living there peacefully, with little to no hunting pressure or ha...

Encompassing a landscape quite unlike any other in South-east Queensland, Plunkett Regional Park is somewhere local nature enthusiasts should know. The landscape of Plunkett features a variety of sandstone outcrops, boulder formations, cliffs and caves.

Piccabeen palms, Mount Tamborine. Last Thursday, I braved a cold early morning to head up into Mount Tamborine and spend some time with the rainforest plants.

Another year, another set of memories created with some of the most interesting wildlife on the planet, right here on Brisbane's doorstep. Among my twelve favourite wildlife sightings of the year, you'll notice more invertebrates this time around compared to previous lists; thank the array of amazing entomological field guides that are finally being published and are piquing my interest in this area. Without further ado, here are twelve fascinating animals I met this year:

Much of eastern Australia is having a fairly wet spring this year, and the plant life seems to be thriving as a result! Last week, I drove out to a tiny bushland reserve in the Ipswich suburb of Woodend to scout out some particular plants, namely ferns. The reserve is accessed by a pathway that begins near the corner of Macrae and Ladley Street, and appears on Google Maps as Smith Park. It protects a small gully that feeds into the Bremer River nearby. I found two interesting ferns here, each adapted to a specific microhabitat within the reserve. Mulga ferns, INSET: spores on frond underside, Woodend.

Beautiful flowers are appearing in the bush once more, thanks to the increasing length of our daylight hours heading into spring. Last weekend, I sought out blossoms at two of my favourite places from the past year, Dawn Road Reserve at Albany Creek, and Bribie Island National Park at Woorim. Dawn Road patron Trina McLellan has written a wonderful account of what we found together at Albany Creek on Saturday, that you can read here . Sunday's Bribie adventure was a solo occasion, however, and I spent most of the morning in the wallum heath beyond McMahon Street, protected as part of the island's National Park. Walking a few kilometres down the gravel road, I came to a small sandy track branching off to the east that I had been wanting to explore better for quite some time. The first flowering shrub I came across was the wallum hakea (Hakea actites) . Wallum hakea, Woorim.

This month marks the one year anniversary of when I headed out into the bush for the first time to study not animals, but plants . It was a decision that changed my life, and I've since come to enjoy going on tree ID quests as much as I enjoy a bout of birdwatching, snorkeling or spotlighting.  Last Saturday, I decided to celebrate this momentous occasion with a dawn stroll around King Island Conservation Park, off the coast of Wellington Point.

Of the top ten wildlife encounters I had this year, seven of them were with species I had never seen before. The amazing thing is, I didn't exactly have to travel to far-flung places to see these creatures either. Some of them were even seen in places like the outskirts of Caloundra, or among the busy new housing estates of North Lakes. This is why I love Brisbane, a place where the wilderness can creep into our suburbs and enrich our lives if we take the opportunity to notice it. Here is what I noticed this year! 1. Black Falcon , Jeebropilly. Black Falcon; Photo by David Jenkins courtesy of  'Birds as Poetry'. At a wetland out near Amberley Air Force Base in May, I saw nature's own version of a jet-fighter plane, and it was very impressive. Swooping in low over the water and scattering flocks of wildfowl into flight, I watched a Black Falcon - my first ever!

Yellow Bittern Hysteria! Australian Little Bittern, North Lakes Earlier this month, a report went up on the  'Eremaea'  website: a Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis) had been sighted at North Lakes. For those not yet initiated into the world of vagrant bird sightings, this is the feathered equivalent of a wild mongoose or monkey suddenly appearing in Brisbane of its own accord. Considered the first ever verified sighting of a live Yellow Bittern on the Australian mainland, this species usually has a home range across Asia, extending as far south as Indonesia. Little did we know, this little bird was set to tear the bird-watching community apart!

I've never really taken much notice of plants until recently, regarding them usually as just the thing that a bird perches on while you're watching it. This week I decided it was time to change that attitude by trying my hand at plant identification in Denmark Hill Conservation Park, located in the centre of Ipswich. The park is just 11.5 hectares in size, but preserves a patch of bushland that acts as an 'island refuge' in a sea of suburbia. I did my best to focus on the trees and not be too distracted by birds or the resident Koala   (Phascolarctos cinereus)  population, and came up with nine interesting trees and plants seen on the Water Tower Circuit.