A dainty moth

Tipanaea patulella (2), originally uploaded by boobook48.

We were meant to be searching for frogs around a dam at Bambra but I got distracted by the beautiful little white moths flying around the rushes and grass.

They were Tipanaea patulella. Apparently the caterpillars bore into the stem of rushes.

PS I tried out something new for this blog - I uploaded the photo and comments from my Flickr page. It was easy peasy. (Except I see that the original photo title comes up in tiny font underneath the photo which I don't think is really necessary, and the tags didn't come across either.)

PPS And I've just discovered that when you click on the photo to view large it takes you straight to my Flickr page where you have to click on the 'All sizes' option.

The greengrocer pays me a visit

This morning I drew back the curtains on the sliding door and was faced with this huge insect hanging on to the flywire screen _ bit of a shock when I hadn't even had my coffee!

It's a Greengrocer Cicada Cyclochila australasiae, green form. Other colour variations are Blue Moon (turquoise form), Chocolate Soldier (dark tan form), Masked Devil, Yellow Monday (yellow form). They're common and found (or should I say heard) up the east coast of Australia. And they're big _ its wing span is about 13 cm.

I was about to move it to a tree for a different photograph but it flew away when I moved the door. Oh well, now I can have my coffee.

A bird's nest of a different kind

Several weeks ago we did a plant survey on roadside vegetation near Barwon Downs but as usual we got distracted by insects, birds and fungi. Rosalind found these tiny fungi cups on a very small stick. I photographed them and went back to photographing plants. When we saw the photos on the computer we realised that they were Bird's-nest Fungi (species unknown but possibly Nidula emodensis). If you look carefully at the second photo you can see the peridioles scattered on the wood, presumably by raindrops. I've never seen one before, and would love to see a fresh one. I didn't realise they were so small.

A bearded orchid

The references state that this beard-orchid flowers through the spring into January but it was a bit of surprise when we found one last weekend at Bambra. Actually Barry, the birdwatcher, spotted it while we, the botanists, were sitting next to it at lunch time. Luckily we weren't actually sitting on it.

It's the Purple Beard-orchid Calochilus robertsonii, and it is quite common in this district. We had the reference books out trying to turn it into something unusual but didn't succeed. It's beautiful of course, what orchid isn't?