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Coming up this month: Dung Beetle Workshop
Unleash the Power Beneath Your Feet!
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We are excited to collaborate with Pioneer Catchment & Landcare to bring this workshop to our region.
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When: Sunday 16th March 2025, 10am-1pm
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Where: Botanic Gardens Nursery, West Mackay
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Cost: $40 pp or $20 for Land for Wildlife Members includes catering.
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Please wear closed shoes.
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Thank you to Mackay Regional Council and Reef Catchments for their support for this event.
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Landcare nursery open Saturday 1st and the 15th of March.
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Where: 33 Kelsey Creek Rd Proserpine
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When: 9 am to 12 noon Tuesday & Thursday, & 1st & 3rd Saturday each month.
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What: A huge range of local native plants grown from locally collected seed, at great prices from $3.50. EFTPOS available. Gift vouchers available for a gardener you know. Knowledgeable staff & volunteers are on hand for friendly advice.
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Community Nursery activities:
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Where: 33 Kelsey Creek Rd Proserpine
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When: Tuesday & Thursday mornings 9am to 12 noon.
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What: Plant propagation, native seed sowing & preparation, nursery maintenance tasks, plant propagation and a great morning tea with a fantastic bunch of volunteers. Please wear sun protection and closed-in shoes.
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What's showing: Native Ginger
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Common name: Native Ginger
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Scientific name: Alpinia caerulea
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Description: A shrubby perennial plant to 2m in height and forming spreading clumps. It has an underground rhizome; only the leaves emerge above ground level.
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Distribution: Endemic to Australia, it grows in rainforest and riparian habitats from Cape York down to the central NSW coast.
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Leaves: Large, 40 to 3.5-10 cm, with a ligule at the base.
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Flowers: Tubular, white, arranged in a large terminal raceme. Individual flowers have a prominent round tepal or 'tongue' which is a landing pad for insects.
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Fruit: Round, green to blue, thin-walled capsules, containing numerous seeds with a thin red aril.
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Notes: Indigenous Australians eat the tender tip of the young rhizome; reportedly plants are very variable in their gingery-ness. The fruit pulp is edible and the leaves are used to wrap fish before cooking.
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It likes to grow in semi to full shade, with some moisture, and soil humus.
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Food for: The flowers attract many insects and butterflies.
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Alpinia – Was named by Carolus Linnaeus after Prospero Alpini (1553-1617), a 16th and 17th century Italian doctor and botanist who specialized in exotic plants.
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caerulea – from the Latin caerulea– meaning ‘blue’, referring to the fruit colour.
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Form. PHOTO: Steve Pearson
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Flowers PHOTO: Steve Pearson
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Ripe fruits are blue. PHOTO: Steve Pearson
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Torresian Imperial Pigeon
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Every year flocks of big fat black and white pigeons whizz back and forth across the coast, and 'moo' away in the treetops, as they nest on islands and in our parks and gardens.
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Hard to miss, they have acquired many names: once Torresian Imperial Pigeons, (TIPs), now they are Pied Imperial Pigeons, or PIPs. They are also called Nutmeg Pigeons, because of their appetite for the fruit of the local nutmeg trees, Myristica insipida and M. globosa. The first recorded sightings of them by Europeans are thought to be by the sailors on Luis Vaez de Torres’s eponymous voyage through Torres Strait.
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Their scientific name is Ducula bicolor, Ducula from the Latin 'dux genitive ducis' meaning "leader". Bicolor, I assume, is a reference to their smart black and white patterning. Some scientists regard our Australian visitors as a separate species: Australian Pied Imperial Pigeons, Ducula spilorrhea.
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Whatever you call them, they mark the seasons with their migrations between here and Papua New Guinea, bringing a little exotic spice to summer in Queensland. Migrating in flocks of 50 to 100, flying about 20m off the water and following the coast, most of them arrive here in August to September, after flying all the way from Papua New Guinea. In summer, you can find them across northern Australia in coastal rainforests, mangroves and riparian (river and stream bank) habitats as well as on offshore islands. The return migration begins in January, with the final stragglers leaving in April. Some may remain here through winter.
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Most nest on islands in large groups, but lone pairs also nest on the mainland. Males display to females by flying steeply upwards and then gliding downwards again. The female builds a nest, usually on a high tree branch, or rocks, or the ground, then she lays one, sometimes 2 eggs, which take 27 days or so to hatch. They can nest up to 3 times per season. No wonder you can hear them complaining loudly all day to anyone who will listen, as they endure the summer heat on the nest. Sensibly, males and females alternate long hot days on the nest with days out foraging in the treetops. Chicks leave the nest at about 23 days old, when they have fledged into their greyish juvenile plumage, which is replaced by whiter adult feathers at about 200 days.
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The secret of their success is that, like other fruit-eating pigeons, flamingos and penguins, they can produce a milk-like, fatty secretion from their crop to feed their chicks. This has more concentrated nutrition, and is much more portable, than the fruit itself, allowing them to feed far from the nest and return quickly with concentrated food for a growing chick.
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Those that nest on the islands migrate to the mainland to feed and return in the evening, but some nest on the mainland and migrate the other way, so each afternoon you will see flocks going in both directions. How they decide which they will do, and why, is a mystery.
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They are very powerful, direct and fast fliers, with their wings making a loud whirring noise as they pass overhead. Predators can include the likes of sea eagles, which can take unwary pigeons, making them keen to travel in flocks. If you watch them in the late afternoon you will see solitary pigeons waiting in the tops of trees, like commuters waiting for a bus, then swiftly joining passing flocks for the daily commute.
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Feeding on rainforest fruits from around 20 plant families, including the nutmeg and other trees, palms, shrubs and vines, they can swallow quite large fruits, digest the pulp and later rid themselves of the seeds either by regurgitation, or from the other end. Either way, this makes them an ecologically important species as they travel large distances, dispersing many species of rainforest seeds as they go.
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In his book about the evolution of birds ‘Where Song Began’, Tim Low describes fruit pigeons as ‘almost perfect dispersers’ of plant seeds. He explains that after swallowing a fruit, they process it in a soft gizzard, without grit or stones, allowing the fruits to be digested and the seed to be excreted unharmed. This, combined with their ability to travel large distances, across land and sea, makes them great dispersers for plants with large fruits, as well as those that can't survive floating across the sea. They move the seeds further than fruit eating mammals, and large numbers of them cross large expanses of sea quickly, moving bulk quantities of seeds as they go. Fruit eating pigeons are thought to be responsible for many of the rainforest plant species that now occur on our offshore islands, and many of the plant species that we share with New Guinea.
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Next time you are out and about in the late afternoon, keep an eye out for the flocks of big black & white pigeons as they flutter up and down the hillsides of Cannonvalley, and enjoy the spectacle, as they will leave for New Guinea soon.
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They can roost on islands or the mainland.
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At 38-44cm in length and weighing up to 475g, its no wonder people regarded them as good tucker. It is thought that many were shot and pickled as provisions for the crews of passing ships.
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They were once so plentiful that E.J Banfield of Dunk Island wrote in 1908 that “fully 100,000 of them come and go each morning” and described flocks as big 2 miles across. As they were hunted for food and sport, with shooting parties awaiting the bird's returning to the nest each evening, eventually their numbers plummeted to mere thousands.
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Hunting ended after a long campaign in the 1960s by Margaret and Arthur Thorsborne of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. In Queensland, their numbers are now thought to be recovering from hunting, now standing at around 30,000. The Thorsbornes pioneered the annual TIP Count, which continues to this day, keeping an eye on the population.
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Torresian Imperial Pigeon in flight.
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Males and females take turns at incubating the egg and foraging for food.
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Chicks fledge and leave the nest by around 23 days old.
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Look for the flocks flying in formation over the sea or above the rainforest canopy on the mainland.
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ALL PHOTOS: Courtesy Julia Hazel, PIPWatch, JCU.
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Where Song Began: Australia’s Birds and How They Changed the World, Tim Lowe, Penguin/ Viking 2014.
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DESI 'Snakes of Queensland' identification cheat sheet
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DESI Queensland has published an ID guide to help the public to understand snakes and avoid snake bites. It has terrific photos and links to more information. These are some excerpts, click on the link for the full guide.
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Weed hall of fame:
Euphorbia heterophylla & E. cyathophora
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Common name: Spurge, Milkweed, Mexican fireplant
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Description: Short-lived, erect annual glabrous (hairless) herb growing 60-120cm tall, with milky sap.
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Leaves: Alternate over most of the stem, simple, elliptic, ovate to obovate, 20-100 x 8-50mm. Lowest pairs of leaves and near flowers are opposite.
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Flowers: Tiny, mainly green or yellow, in terminal clusters. E. Cyathophora has fiddle shaped 'floral leaves' around the flowers with (sometimes) red bases. In E. heterophylla these are never fiddle shaped, and are yellowish green.
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Fruit/ seeds: Fruits are small capsules 3-4 x 4-6mm, splitting into three segments to expel seeds. E. Cyathophora seeds are dark brown, ovoid and flat at the base, and warty. E. heterophylla seeds have 3 ridges along them and can be dark brown or mottled grey.
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Spread by: Explosive release from seed capsules, dumping of garden waste, soil movement on vehicles.
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Invades: Agricultural and grazing lands, stream banks, disturbed vegetation, coastal habitats, sandy soils. Forms large monocultural colonies which enlarge over time.
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Toxicity: Highly toxic latex sap: consumption of one leaf has caused the death of a child. Also toxic to stock and possibly wildlife if eaten.
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Notes: Probably imported to Australia as a garden ornamental, E. heterophylla is a locally declared weed in the Whitsundays, under the Local Law provision of the Local Government Act 1993, requiring them to be controlled on all lands. They are declared due to the serious impact that they have on natural habitats in the region.
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Milkweeds can be easily hand weeded when the ground is soft (i.e. in sandy soils, or after rain). Take care to wear gloves, eye protection and protective clothing, as the latex sap is toxic and causes skin and eye inflammation.
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Try to remove before seeding occurs, as the seeds are propelled outwards, increasing the area of the infestation every year. Place them in a rubbish bag and dispose of in landfill.
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Seeds have relatively short (mostly <1 year) viability in the soil; regrowth from germinating seeds can be suppressed after weed removal with heavy mulching.
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Euphorbia cyathophora (painted spurge) showing the orange patterned 'fiddle-shaped' leaves around the tiny flower heads.
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Euphorbia heterophylla with flower head.
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Euphorbia flowers are unusual: both female and male flowers have no petals and are reduced to just the basics: pistils & ovary, and stamens, respectively. The green 3-lobed structure is female. Male 'flowers' are the cream-coloured stamens at the base of the female flowers. The circular openings are nectaries, called an 'involucre', which attract pollinating insects. PHOTO: Steve Pearson
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Euphorbia is named for Euphorbas, who was physician to King Juba of Mauretania.
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Capitata means head, referring to the arrangement of the flowers. Heterophylla means 'various-leaved', referring to the varying shape.
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'Spurge' comes from 'espurge', a Middle English/ old French word for purge, referring to use of the plant as a purgative.
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Chemical control: For large areas, both species can be sprayed with Fluoroxypyr (herbicide at 200g/ litre as per the manufacturer's label. Make sure that you read the directions for the herbicide carefully before use; herbicide must always be used in accordance with label directions, including wearing appropriate PPE.
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Mackay Regional Pest Management Group (2018) Weeds of the Mackay Whitsunday Region, Second Edition.
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How you can help:
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If you're interested in doing your bit for the local
environment and socialising with like‐
minded people, we have volunteer activities on Tuesday & Thursday mornings
and more. Contact us!
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WCL is a community not‐for‐profit. We rely on donations to assist with our projects such as revegetation.
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WCL is registered charity; donations of $2 or more
are tax deductible.
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To donate, please contact us or go to the
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CONTACT
CONTACT US FOR INFORMATION ON
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- Natural Resource Management
- Land Management Plans
- Native Plants
- Environmental Weeds
- Volunteer Activities
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WCL TEAM
Coordinator & secretary: Christine Peterson
Admin/finance: Leigh Donkers
Field Staff: Kayla Simpson & Rory Richards
Nursery Volunteer Manager: Nicole Murphy
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Management Committee:
Jacquie Sheils, Chair & newsletter editor
Jim Dickens, Treasurer
Dale Mengel
Canegrowers rep. John Casey
One Committee position vacant
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Thank you to our supporters:
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