Phylidonyris novaehollandiae Another ( former ) unknown bird in the yard. It’s a New Holland honeyeater, a not uncommon bird that’s distribution stretches from the southern Queensland coast, all the way down the east coast, throughout Tasmania, then westwards following the mainland coast wrapping up a few hundred km north of Perth. They’re small birds reaching a maximum size of 20cm. This one was hard to photograph, it kept moving about, not staying still for long at all.

This cocoon was on a post at the start of the Little Blue Gum Creek walk. It’s large, about 15cm long, with sticks woven into the sides. I remember seeing many like this when I was growing up but had never known what animal made them.

Saunder’s Case Moth Cocoon at the start of the Little Blue Gum Creek boardwalk.

A quick search pointed to it being a Saunder’s Case Moth cocoon. During their caterpillar phase case moths make their cocoons out of silk, most species attach sticks, leaves or other debree as camouflage. Each species had a distinct type of cocoon, but they are also constrained by available materials so even within a single species cases can vary in materials and appearance.

I really enjoyed looking at the photos of the construction of Lady Game Drive, something that kept popping up in them was Little Blue Gum Creek. I must have driven down there a million time but I couldn’t place it.

Little Blue Gum Creek : Lane Cove National Park (1939 ?)

After a quick search I found were it is, and also that there is a short boardwalk through the bush at the creek. It’s nearby so in between rain showers last weekend we ducked down there with the kids to take a look. There’s a small parking lot right out the front on the corner of Lady Game Drive and Grosvenor Rd. It’s a really nice little walk, raised boardwalk the whole way weaving through lush vegetation and what must be a grove of tall straight blue gums. Information plaques say the area is also home to a colony of microbats, there is a sculpture at the end of the walk that doubles as a bat refuge. It really is a short walk, can’t have been longer than a few hundred meters. You can hop off the boardwalk at the end and continue along a narrow bush trail, I would have liked to have done it but it had started raining again while we were there so decided to leave that to next time.

Ku-Ring-Gai library has been posting old photos from the area ( including some from Garigal ) to it’s Flickr account . What a great way to make access to it’s archives more convenient. I didn’t even know the library had the photos until I came across one of their online postings by fluke when searching for pictures of Bungaroo.

William Henry, the first settler in the Lane Cove Valley. circa 1860.

There are well over 1000 photos in their stream, and they seem to post a new batch every few weeks. Having lived in the area for a while I’ve found it addictive to browse through them and recognize familiar locations back when they were a rugged frontier.

The Cascades is located at the junction of Middle Harbour and Frenches creeks inside Garigal National Park. Here both creek beds open from narrow winding channels onto wide expanses of potholed and weathered sandstone. It’s a picturesque and popular location with 3 well maintained fire trails leading into the area from Belrose, Davidson and St Ives. In another exchange with John I learned that the Cascades has an interesting history. As a depression era work project a dam wall was built at the base of one of the two large natural pools to create a large public swimming pool. John sent a photo of how it looked when it was in operation. It reminds me of the ocean pools that occupy the rocky headlands of the nearby northern beaches.

Sarcocornia quinqueflora

“A small, erect, leafless herb with succulent stems” - NPOS p. 396

I came across this field of samphire in the salt flats of Moores Creek. I was there looking for remains of a footbridge from an old photo that was supposedly built during WWI as part of a military training exercise. There was no evidence of a bridge, and the creek looked different enough from the photo that it made me doubt I was in the right place.

Bungaroo is an area located within Garigal National Park around the tidal limit of Middle Harbour Creek. It’s accessible by boat (at high tide) or bush track, even so it’s a wild area with a feeling of remoteness, it’s easy to forget how close it is to civilization. Bungaroo is also of historical significance to the early colony of New South Wales. It was at this spot that Governor Phillip camped with a small exploration party on April 16, 1788.

The BOM have updated some of their climate datasets, rainfall for Sydney now goes to December 2013, temperature to May 2013. I’ll keep updating as the graphs as the BOM releases more data!

[update] – The source of the pumice is likely to be from the 2012 Havre Seamount eruption 800km NE of New Zealand. The eruption of this undersea volcano produced floating rafts of pumice estimated to be up 26,000 km²! Thanks for the info Matt! These shelled creatures are known as Gooseneck barnacles. They were covering the recently washed up pumice on Elizabeth beach. Many of them were still alive, you could see them extending their fan like fronds. Pumice forms in violent volcanic eruptions with explosive ejections of magma that cool so quickly that they solidify with fine bubbles of gas throughout. The resulting rock is of such low density that floats on water. The volcano that this pumice came from must have been a long way away, nothing like that near the east coast of Australia.