Another Moth Night!

It has been raining nightly for some weeks now. So it was with some interest that we accepted Melissa's invitation to set up our light sheet on her protected porch in the hills behind Smithfield. This is at the base of the Kuranda Range and we were happy to see much native vegetation and a perfect place to set up a light sheet. It was typical lowland rainforest at about 100 m elevation.

Here are some of the moths. Some are common but they make a colourful display. Check Buck Richardson's link for some 900 species identified for the region. This is just a small part of the total number of moths that must occur in our rainforests. The smaller moths, the microleps, are not included and they are a huge part of the total number of species that must be present.

Identifications can also be derived from the Australian Moths Online site and checking the recent Guidebook to Australian Moths by Zborowski and Edwards. Note: most of the Pyralidae are now considered by some to be in the family Crambidae.

Eudocima iridescens; Noctuidae female

Eudocima iridescens, Noctuidae, female

Eumelea stipata Turner; Geometridae

Eumelea rosalia (Stoll); Geometridae

Ischyja sp.; Noctuidae

Ischyja sp.; Noctuidae
Maruca vitrata; Pyralidae (Note distinctive stance)
Maruca vitrata; Pyralidae

Aetholix flavibasalis; Pyralidae

Saroba trimaculata; Noctuidae

Strepsinoma foveata; Pyralidae

Palpita limbata (Butler); Pyralidae
Eugoa sp.; Arctiidae

Glyphodes caesalis Walker; Pyralidae

Agrioglypta itysalis.; Pyralidae
Striglina cinnamomea; Thyrididae

Lasiolopha saturata (Walker); Nolidae

Parotis sp.; Pyralidae

Gerontha acrosthenia Zagulajev; Tineidae. Note the hind legs protrude like "tails".

?Acrocercops sp.; Gracillariidae

Conogethes pluto (Butler); Pyralidae

Dichomeris ochreoviridella; Gelechiidae

Anticrates metreta (Turner); Lacturidae

Tropidtamba lepraota; Noctuidae

Oxyodes scrobiculata; Noctuidae

Mecodina praecipua Walker; Noctuidae

Chrysothyridia invertalis; Pyralidae

Asota caricae euroa Rothschild; Aganaidae

Asota heliconia dama (Fabricius); Aganaidae

Tridrepana lunulata (Butler); Drepanidae

Astatochroa fuscimargo (Warren); Drepanidae

Antitrygodes parvimacula; Geometridae

Squatter Pigeon, An Unusual Find in A Rainforest

Squatter Pigeon wandering along rainforest margin

The Squatter Pigeon, Geophaps scripta is nomally a bird of the inland arid country. Yesterday, I saw a small pigeon running about our place. It was reluctant to fly and I thought it might be a young bird of a local species. But I did not look closely to make a positive identification. This morning our neighbour, Gillian, came by to ask if we wanted to see something really rare. It was up on our lawn. And there it was, the same bird as yesterday. It was busy with searching for seeds in the lawn and was fairly easy to approach and identify.

The Squatter Pigeon is aptly named. The birds are reluctant to fly and are easily captured or shot. The early settlers were soon to discover this behaviour and hunted them relentlessly. This and the destruction of their habitat for agriculture has probably led to their vulnerable status.

But how did this bird get to the rainforest, especially if it is so reluctant to fly? Well it may be an escape from an aviary or was just off course. Who knows? There are populations in grassland country around Mareeba. The reddish ring around the eye indicates it is a local, a member of the northern population of this species. So maybe it is just off course but it's a long walk to Mareeba!

With its bumbling ways, it would seem to be a “sitting duck” for a goanna or a snake so its days in the Kuranda rainforest may be limited.

A Nice cricket

Adult male of the New Guinea Rainforest Cricket, Cardiodactylus novaeguineae (Haan).

The New Guinea Rainforest Cricket, Cardiodactylus novaeguineae (Haan) occurs at coastal localities on the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland as well as several coastal islands such as Dunk Island and Green Island, off Cairns. The name is a misnomer; the species is not known from New Guinea. However, other related species occur there.

The Orthoptera Species File lists 50 species in the genus from northern Australia through the islands of the south Pacific. Only a single species has been recorded from Australia.

Nymphs of the New Guinea Rainforest Cricket are distinctive with their reddish heads and lateral stripes and developing wings. There are no other crickets like them in the rainforest.

This cricket is common when it is encountered. They have a "patchy" distribution. This means that within their geographic range they are found some places and not others. I have not found it on our block here in Kuranda, but it is common at the Caravan Park only a few kilometers distant.

Adult male.

This is a large cricket, males measuring approximately 28 mm. It is found close to, but usually not on the ground. It prefers low shrubbery and tree trunks along rainforest margins and in mangroves. It would seem to be a sitting duck for marauding Cane Toads, Bufo marinus, but they do not seem to make a dent in the cricket population numbers even though the female crickets oviposit in the ground.

The Calling Song of males of the New Guinea Rainforest Cricket is very distinctive and easily recognised. Males sing after dark on warm nights.

More information on this and other Australian crickets can be found in Otte and Alexander (1983).

Literature

Otte, D. and Alexander, R. D. 1983. The Australian Crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae). Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Monograph 22, Pp. 1-477.

Cassowary Chatterings

Readers of this blog will know that each year we follow the progress offspring of the local pair of cassowaries.

This year three chicks appeared in early October. To date they are progressing nicely.

From their earliest days, the chicks make a variety of sounds depending on their activities.

The feeding sound is not unlike that made by a group of young chickens.

The sounds of Cassowary chicks feeding. The enthusiasm of the chortles is directly related to the quality of the food.



The Cassowary distress call.

If the chick gets out of sight of his father, who looks after the chicks for their entire young lives, it produces a sound like the above. If it is really distressed, the call is much more strident and much much louder. At no time have I ever seen the father rush to the aid of a supposedly distressed bub. (However, I have not tested this by grabbing one of the chicks!!).

Soon the father Cassowary will somehow decide that it's time for the chicks to be on the their own. He will drive them away and the distressed chicks will be heard calling throughout the rainforest.

They will just stand around calling and wondering what has come over their father. Just a day before he was a caring and protective creature and now he has completely changed.

As adults Cassowaries are generally silent. I have heard the male only make a booming sound that carries for a great distance through the undergrowth. I've not heard the female make a similar sound. Both sexes produce a sort of hiss when they are around one another.

Cyclone Yasi; The Aftermath

For most of the tracking of Cyclone Yasi, it appeared that it would make a direct hit on Cairns. But at the last minute on the 3rd of Feb. 2011 it diverged slightly to the south sparing Cairns from a major disaster. Tidal surges and water to more than a metre in the business district was predicted. But all of that went south to the vicinity of Silkwood, Mission Beach, and, to some extent Innisfail. You may recall Cyclone Larry some 5 years ago hit Innisfail head-on and caused much destruction. Those poor folks were just about recovered when Yasi made its appearance and suddenly veered south. The path of destruction of Yasi stretched from Port Douglas in the north to well south of Hinchinbrook Island.

Cairns did not escape without some damage. Many big trees were felled and a few buildings were flattened. The Botanic Gardens seem to always take the brunt of these cyclones. The gardeners told me that it was not as bad as with Larry, but it was still a mess. Several big trees and palms came down. On the positive side, if there is such a thing with cyclones, it opened the canopy a bit and is letting light in where it had been dark for years. This will accelerate growth for plants in those areas. There was no major damage to buildings.

Curator David Warmington has provided a few photos of the damage cause to the Gardens by Cyclone Yasi.

The Barron River Falls at Kuranda just after the cyclone passed--water and silt heading towards tot ocean---and the Great Barrier Reef. Buck Richardson photo

Tinkling crickets

Most of us hear the very low pleasant sounds of crickets coming from the undergrowth in the rainforest or along rainforest margins.

Cricket Classification

Most crickets are classified in the family Gryllidae. There are currently eight subfamilies in this large family. Recently some taxonomists have elevated some subfamilies and tribes to full familial status. As an example, the Mole Crickets, once considered as a subfamily of the Gryllidae, are now considered in their own family, the Gryllotalpidae. In addition, the Scaled Crickets are now in their own family, the Mogoplistidae. Most taxonomists follow the classification presented on the Orthoptera Species File (OSF). This is an active catalogue of the Orthopteroid insects of the world. (http://orthoptera.speciesfile.org/HomePage.aspx). It is kept up to date and a Committee adjudicates on controversial matters.

Cricket songs, when compared to those of katydids, are melodious to the human ear. Katydid songs are more metallic, buzzy or tinny. The pitch (carrier frequency) of the two taxa is usually very different. Cricket songs have pure carrier frequencies between 2000 to 9000 cycles per second. Katydid sounds are generally much much higher in frequency.

Here I present the Calling songs of two cricket species. One is a widespread species, the other more local.

Homoeoxipha lycoides (Walker) seems most at home in tall dense green grasses. The crickets can be found in their greatest numbers along roadsides and forest margins. Numbers can be large and the sounds of an aggregation of calling males are very distinctive, though very low in volume. Males sing mostly during the day and early evening. These crickets are often attracted to lights. The call is a continued, prolonged wavering trill, a series of pulses. The pulses come at about 51 per second in distinct groups of 8. The wingstroke in this species is much greater than that described below for O. coorumbena.

Ornebius coorumbena Otte & Alexander is nocturnal. The crickets occur in low shrubby vegetation in the rainforest to about 2m. They feed on detritus that falls from the canopy onto leaf surfaces. They are not usually attracted to lights. Their calls can be the dominant cricket sound at certain times of the year. Males call, isolated from one another, never in aggregations. The song consists of groups of pulses (chirps) with 7 pulses separated by about a second. Each of the 7 pulses corresponds to a wing closure.

These notes served as the basis for an article in Audio Wings. This is the journal of the Australian Wildlife Recording Group. There are two issues a year containing articles dealing with wildlife sounds ranging from insects to birds, mammals and reptiles. There are important reviews of new recording and analyzing gear. A workshop is held every second year in the field where wildlife recordings are made, analyzed and techniques compared and reviewed.

For more information on this club, contact the President, Mr Fred van Gessel fvangessel@optusnet.com.au

Finally I am very grateful to Mr Ken Hickman who has helped me to understand the fairly complex nature of embedding sounds into this blog. Thanks Ken.

Literature

The "bible" for Australian cricket information is:

Otte, D., Alexander, R. D. 1983. The Australian Crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae). Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Monograph 22. Pp 1-477.

This book is available from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia or over the web.

A Couple of Big Fellows

A wander in the rainforest after dark can reveal creatures you would not normally se during the day. Meet a Raspy Cricket, Chauliogryllacris sp., family Gryllacrididae. This large insect is soft-bodied and would desiccate if exposed to the drying condition of sunlight and wind during the day. It's massive head conceals mostly muscle that power the mandibles. Although it can give a painful bite, it is an omnivore and feeds on a range of foods ranging from other insects to fruits and seeds.

The mandibles are used primarily to dig into rotting wood where it makes a burrow and covers the entrance with silk fibres that it produces form its mouthparts. This is a characteristic of the family Gryllacrididae. Nymphs as well as adults produce silk.

the white spot in the centre of the head is the median ocellus. The two small yellow spots just above the first antennal segment are lateral ocelli. The function of these "eyes" varies from one group of invertebrates to another but here they may be involved with a homing behaviour that is similar to that displayed by ants. Raspy crickets "take a picture" of their surrounds before they move out for a night's marauding. This enables them to return to their burrow and not have to expend the energy to construct another.

Chauliogryllacris is a big cricket. The body of this female measured 50 mm. the antennae were extraordinarily long, measuring 165 mm.


The Queensland Palm Katydid, Segestidea queenslandica, has been featured several times in this blog. This is an unusual dark form. It is big with the body measuring some 90 mm from there head to the tip of the wings. This species is facultatively parthenogenetic, that is unmated females can produce eggs that hatch. The hatchlings are always females. Males in this species are rare but this year on one night three were heard along the Kennedy highway near Kuranda. They were singing from Wait-a-while vines (Calamus sp.) high in the trees. This was the first time I had heard this species even though I have encountered dozens of examples over the years. Soon I'll present a recording of the song of this katydid.