My erratic blogging has not improved recently but a visit to Brisbane environs to spend time with my first grandchild (as well as other family members in the area) took priority over everything else.
It was a wonderful time to share with the new parents but now I’m home and we are readying ourselves for a camping adventure in the national parks of Central West Qld. House-sitters Bill and Pauline will be looking after things here and we will attempt to post a few snippets from our travels but as Telstra coverage is limited in the areas we are travelling I’m not certain how that will go.
We are not the only ones exploring new territory; a few weeks ago we had a call from Murray Hunt who specializes in bird watching tours on the Daintree river. On a good tide he had gone a long way up Barratt Creek, along our boundary, and saw a sub-adult cassowary on our side of the creek, which he photographed and sent to us. Around the same time we found small cassowary scats in some of our revegetated areas.
The flecks of blue are the remains of the skin from Blue Quandong (Elaeocarpus grandis) fruit, the large seed on top is a Cassowary Plum (Cerberus floribunda) and the fruit starting to germinate are a native Mahogany (Dysoxylum alliaceum). Allen later collected the Mahogany seeds to grow on as the ‘poo’ was right on one of our paths so the trees wouldn’t be able to stay there.
While we haven’t actually sighted this young bird we are happy knowing that it is exploring a new area and finding some suitable food.