Thoughts

For most of my life, my autumns were those of the northern hemisphere; marked by first frosts, gales and falling golden leaves. Autumn was a season of significant changes and was my favourite time these foods create is fuel for the journeys ahead of them.

I particularly noticed the Eastern Koel, and how its calls become progressively less complicated as the days’ length reduces. By the beginning of April, it has left us for Papua New Guinea and its last “coo-ee” notes have become a memory.

Most autumn migrants are responding to shortening days. Some are north-south latitude travellers – others are altitudinal, escaping the onsetting chill of high ground and the reduction in food which goes with it.

The Rose Robin is a good example. It usually comes to us from much higher places; probably Lamington Plateau or Springbrook (where it is a canopy bird and hard to spot).

These robins will stay with us (at places like Baroon Dam, Maleny Trail and Bli Bli Lakes) while winter advances. But, after the solstice, they will be aware of seasonal change in another direction and will feel driven to slip away.

Climate change notwithstanding, all these wonderful things appear against this season’s clarified background –now free from heat haze. There are early morning ‘cottonwool’ cushions of cloud layered into valleys and hollows – soon to be burned off by a kinder, lowered sun which now gives a different shine to the distant ocean’s surface.

Wildlife and landscape; Queensland autumn’s expressions. There for us all to see.

About That Tree

their regular territories; and Arctic-yearning shorebirds, leaving for the north, assumed bright breeding feathers.

In the Wild

Apart from a few rare orchids, the only noticeable flowers which I had been accustomed to seeing were on the vines of common ivy. In Queensland, I was astonished by the mass flowering of Blue Quandongs and many eucalypts, and their noisy attendant flocks of nectarfeeding birds like Rainbow Lorikeets and Little Friarbirds. Then there were gatherings of Straw-necked Ibises – newly returned from the south – foraging in the cattle pastures. Oriental Cuckoos, perhaps bound for Japan, fattened on caterpillars in our White Ash tree; while I noticed that Cicadabirds did the same with fruit. The subcutaneous fat

with Spencer Shaw

There’s more to creating habitat than just planting trees

Do you remember the old Humpty Dumpty rhyme of our childhood, and how all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again... Feels a bit like that with ecological restoration at times, but when we all work together we can make a difference. On the plus side at least we’re not struggling to put an egg together with hooves, like the kings’ horses!

For many decades now, many of us have been planting and weeding to restore our native vegetation and in turn re-create habitat for our native fauna. But what if I was to tell you that there’s far more to creating habitat than just planting trees.

Native vegetation communities at all stages of their development provide habitat for native fauna, but for our revegetation plantings alone it will be many, many decades if not centuries before they provide the full range of habitats forf the ecosystems we are aiming to restore.

So, the sooner we take action to increase habitat potential, the sooner we can provide habitat for a whole host of threatened fauna.

Take tree hollows for example, here in South East Queensland we have large areas of native forest which could lead us to assume that there’s plenty of habitat in the form of hollows to be found for our arboreal and avian fauna.

However, a large percentage of these forests are regrowth and although they’re many, many decades old, our woodland forest trees can take well over a century to start to form useable habitat hollows. So, nest boxes and man-made tree hollows are a crucial stop-gap measure for at least the next century. Oh yes and please stop cutting down old growth forests.

Closer to the ground we can create habitat through diverse plantings that also recreate understorey (e.g. grasses, herbs, ferns) and shrub layers (with all their associated benefits of food, nesting and resting resources).

Piles of rocks, logs, mulch, piles of leaves or even soil should be installed in all revegetation projects to help create immediate habitat potential for grounddwelling fauna.

Besides resources for fauna these complex plantings and additions will provide resources for native fungi, which are perhaps not only the glue that holds our ecosystems together but the very engine that drives them.

Be diverse in your plantings and habitat creation and you too can help play an important role in putting our fractured ecosystems back together again.