The following comment is from an avid birdwatcher who regularly visits the Botanic Gardens.
The gardens look a bit sad at present and probably won’t recover from the floods in 2013 as breeding habitat for the egrets, ibis, cormorants and spoonbills. The islands where the majority of the birds breed have all but disappeared. The largest one with the recent rain is still under water and the large trees are bending closer and closer to the water. Many of the Little Black Cormorant chicks drowned and the 2 pairs of Pied Cormorants may well have given up their nesting attempt. Fortunately the Royal Spoonbills had a good year with at least 16 nests. They started a bit later than the egrets and there are still quite a few short billed juveniles around. Good to watch the fledglings being fed. They have the same action as the ibis - flapping a wing, whacking the adult and being noisy. Dead trees are important for nesting Spoonbills and should not be seen as debris to be cleared. Along with the usual raptors (had 8 species here one morning last week), a pair of Square-tailed Kites have been around, the Grey Goshawk dashes through daily but you have to be lucky to see it and today a juvenile Peregrine stirred the birds up. Sadly the pine trees where the Collared Sparrowhawks nested were all cut down last year. A few of the visitors with the end of summer have appeared e.g. Golden Whistler, Grey Fantail, flocks of Silvereyes etc. Fork-tailed Swifts have gone through in small numbers this week too.
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Some interesting fungi have been seen in the Botanic Gardens following the recent wet weather. Near Fairymead House some red fungi called Craypot Stinkhorn (Colus pusillus) was growing on the mulch. According to James Cook University, “The reddish arms of this fungus burst forth from a gelatinous egg to form an open weave basket. The stem is very short and the arms do not separate. The smell is like faeces or rotten meat and attracts flies which disperse the spores.” It did smell bad! Near the Historical Museum, a different kind of stinkhorn was also growing in the mulch. This one had attracted flies. Its name is Phallus rubicundus. You can probably work out how it got its name. |
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Some highlights of the Gardens Archives
February 2021
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Friends of Bundaberg Botanic Gardens