Readers’ wildlife photos

After today’s photos, we have only tomorrow’s photos, the regular Sunday contribution by John Avise.  After Sunday: bupkes! Please send in your wildlife photos.

Today we have the fifth and final set of photos taken by reader Chris Taylor on his recent trip to Queensland (see here for earlier photos).  Chris’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

This is the final part of the photographs from Queensland.

In the final week of the trip, we spent the time back on the coast, visiting a number of locations.

This is the white form of the Pacific Reef Heron, Egretta sacra, seen on the rocks at Flying Fish Point.

There are a number of Mistletoes in Australia, most of which are parasitic on other trees and shrubs such as Eucalypts. The seed needs to be deposited on the branch of the host tree where it can germinate and grow its roots under the bark of the host tree. Mistletoes have coevolved with the Mistletoe Bird and a strategy has developed to ensure this is not left to chance. The seeds of the plant are enclosed in a fruit that attracts the bird to eat it. The seed quickly passes through the gut of the bird, which then defecates the seed onto the host plant. The seed retains a sticky coating which fixes the seed onto the branch, ready to grow and infect the host.

Mistletoe Bird, Dicaeum hirundinaceum, eating a berry of Jointed Mistletoe, Viscum articulatum, which is growing on a small eucalypt tree.

Nearby was one of the Clearwing Swallowtail butterflies, Cressida cressida. Unusually for a butterfly, they have few scales on the front wings, giving them a translucent appearance

Next, we went south to the area at the foot of the Wooroonooran range. The two highest peaks in Queensland, Mt Bartle Frere and Mount Bellenden Ker, are in this range. Although not tall by comparison to other mountain ranges, at only 1622m and 1593m elevation respectively, the range undoubtedly has a big effect on the weather of the Wet Tropics. We stopped in the town of Babinda, claims to be the wettest place in Australia, a distinction also claimed by the nearby town of Tully. Both of these towns have an annual average of more than 4.25 metres of rain. Because of the high rainfall, there are a number of pristine rivers flowing out of the range, such as Babinda Creek, here flowing out of the rainforest cloaking the slopes of the mountains

The mountains are made up of a lot of hard granitic rocks, and so there are a number of waterfalls in the range; these are the Josephine Falls

On the flatlands below the range is the Eubenangee Swamp. There is a small nature reserve here with a short hike through the rainforest. Lots of birds were calling, along with a colony of Fruit Bats. But they all kept up in the canopy, where they were well hidden, so the smaller denizens were the ones that caught our attention. For some reason most of the insects we saw here were dark in colour!

This butterfly is the Evening Brown, Melanitis leda. This insect is remarkable in that it takes two different forms, dependent upon the season. This is the Dry season form, which resembles a dried-up leaf. The Wet season form has a lighter brown colour and black and white spots.

Also here were some Dingy brown, Mycalesis perseus.

And Yellow-eyed Plane, Neptis praslini:

Even the dragonflies here had dark wings! This is the Painted Grasshawk, Neurothemis stigmatizans.

In the dim light of the rainforest canopy, there was an exception to this rule. This is the Red-banded Jezebel, Delias mysis.

We left Eubenangee in the late afternoon, as the sun was making a light show through the Wooroonooran range, a finale to our stay in Queensland. Next day we caught the plane to fly back to Canberra.