Skip to main content

Lamington National Park shines bright on a grey morning

Morans Creek, O'Reilly.

 On a cool and overcast morning last Friday, I headed down to Lamington National Park and walked two tracks in the Green Mountains section near O’Reilly’s.

The main purpose of my visit was to search for a particular fern I had been learning about, but my curious mind soon enough found other things to focus on as well.
Fairy bonnets (Coprinellus disseminatus), O'Reilly.

 One of my favourite moments of the day occurred on the Python Rock track, when I took a closer look at a pool of rainwater that had collected inside a tree trunk. 
Tree pool, O'Reilly.

 Nothing of note was in the water, but on the dappled green trunk adjacent to it, I found a gorgeous mossy prominent (Cascera muscosa).
Mossy prominent, O'Reilly.

 The moth is just faintly visible in the tree trunk photo above, so if you wish to re-examine it, you can then check to see if your spotting was accurate using the image at the end of this post. 

 As I didn’t find the fern I was looking for on the Python Rock track, I decided to walk to Morans Falls after and try my luck where the track criss-crossed various gullies.

 I did indeed end up finding the fern at this location, and while I was becoming acquainted with it, the beating of wings above my head made me look up.
Brown cuckoo-dove, O'Reilly.
In the air above me, two brown cuckoo-doves (Macropygia phasianella) were fighting over access to a feed of brown beech (Pennantia cunninghamii) fruit.

By the time I walked back a few steps for a better photography angle, a victor had emerged between the two birds, and the loser was hurtling off into the forest. 

Other birds along this track included the brown gerygone (Gerygone mouki), wompoo fruit-dove (Ptilinopus magnificus) and Australian logrunner (Orthonyx temminckii).
Elkhorn (Platycerium bifurcatum), O'Reilly.

 I’ve come to find that a weekday morning with less-than-perfect weather is the best time to enjoy some peace in our most heavily-visited National Parks, and I encountered no more than a dozen other walkers on the tracks.

 For those planning on visiting the Green Mountains section of Lamington National Park anytime soon, however, keep in mind that extensive roadworks on the road up and down from the plateau may cause significant delays to your journey.
Moth location--did you find it?!
Labels:

Comments

  1. diane b21 October 2018 at 11:16

    What an amazing moth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christian Perrin4 November 2018 at 17:54

      Sorry Diane, I just saw your comment now! I agree, it was a really special creature :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

North Queensland Trip, Part 1.

Eungella National Park Eungella National Park location; Image courtesy of Google Maps. My home state of Queensland is a huge place. Bigger than any of the United States, it is considered the sixth largest sub-national entity in the world, behind such remote provinces as Nunavut in Canada, and the Danish territory of Greenland. Though I've lived in and travelled through Europe and Canada, much of my birthplace remains a mystery to me. To rectify this situation, I planned a road-tripping holiday this year with my sister and her partner, in the Northern section of the state. My first visit to anywhere in the Tropics, I have since returned home with some of the most amazing wildlife experiences possible!
12 comments
Read more

Wild Plants of Ipswich

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.
19 comments
Read more

Tadpoles of South-eastern Australia: A Guide With Keys

Book review Reed New Holland Publishing, 2002. It’s noon on a warm autumn day and I am driving south along Beaudesert Road towards the peripheral suburbs of Brisbane’s southside that remain largely a mystery to me. I have decided that not knowing the amphibian fauna inhabiting the suburb of Algester is a personal error that I simply must rectify. My favourite way to search for frogs is to go spotlighting on humid spring and summer nights, but I have left it a little late this year and doubt my chances at finding them now that the evenings have mercifully turned cooler. Instead, I am going to survey the local amphibian population in a way that is quite new to me, aided by a secret weapon sitting in the passenger seat next to me: Marion Anstis’s book, Tadpoles of South-eastern Australia: A Guide With Keys .
4 comments
Read more