Birds on the Araucaria property, Scenic Rim, Queensland

I’ve just been looking back over our records of the birds we have been seeing over the past few years on the Araucaria property and the adjacent Andrew Drynan Reserve campground (where guests on our camping option stay)

Here’s a summary, more or less in order of frequency of sightings

Lewin's Honeyeater feeding on nectar from a bottlebrush flower

Very common (seen almost every day):

Brown cuckoodove

Common (at least seasonally):

white-faced heron in tree near creek

Reasonably common (at least seasonally)

osprey watching topknot pigeons on Araucaria property

Occasionally seen or heard:

Dainty green treefrog

We’ve been hearing and seeing a few frogs lately, on warm wet evenings (although some of the evenings have been surprisingly cool for a Queensland summer).

Clicking froglets (Crinia signifera) have been very vocal, and we’ve heard a variety of others, including spotted and striped marsh frogs, tusked frogs, the green tree frog and the great barred frogs.

This little beauty is the dainty green treefrog, Litoria gracilenta, on a Dianella (native flax lily) next to the small pond near our wildlife ecology centre.

Once again the bat freed himself while we attempted to reach him, but this time with his leg bleeding, so we can only hope the wound was not too serious.

There has been an interesting example recently in England, with  a gardener showing that garden snails appear to have a formerly undetected  ‘homing instinct.’

School childrfen are now being encouraged to join in the study to confirm this – and see the BBC article ‘Snails have a homing instinct.’