Wild BNE

If only waders had gaudy colours like a rainbow lorikeet, or baby-sized proportions like a koala. If only they had a cheery song like the butcherbird, or icon status like the kangaroo. But no. To most, they are distant brown specks on a humble mud flat, not worth a second glance nor thought. The reality is that they are the best travellers on the entire planet . The birds right here in these photos taken at Wynnum on the weekend are great knots, and in four months time, these exact same birds will be nesting on upland tundra in north-east Russia. If they're lucky, that is. Because in the meantime, offleash dogs and beach walkers disturb them everyday, wasting the energy these birds need for a very long flight. The journey itself is perilous too: land reclamation in China and Korea is destroying the refuelling stops for these marathon athletes, and we have similar development plans here in Queensland . The unfortunate truth is that waders have climbed up endangered species lists v

On Sunday afternoon, I paid a visit to the Brisbane River at Murarrie for an hour. There, I poked about the rocks and stalked the shoreline to see if I could find some periwinkles to identify, and caught up with a species that has puzzled me ever since I found it at Lamb Island (below) a few weeks ago. It is small, with a pointed apex and distinctive, bold patterning on its shell, and at both localities was found on hard substrates near mangroves.  It reminded me of Littoraria luteola in general shape and colour scheme, but was the wrong size and patterning and utilised a different microhabitat, with luteola being arboreal on mangrove trunks and branches. Below is a luteola  that I found at Jacobs Well last year. Studying my books at home, I realised the answer had been staring me in the face the whole time as Littoraria articulata , the checkerboard periwinkle. The book to solve this for me was Graham Edgar's 'Tropical Marine Life of Australia' (2019) , which has quickly