established 1904.

The Tasmanian Field Naturalists Club encourages the study of natural history and supports conservation. We issue our journal The Tasmanian Naturalist annually in October. People with a range of ages, background and knowledge are welcome as members.

Contact Genevieve Gates (6227 8638) for further information or write to GPO Box 68A, Hobart, 7001.

General Meetings start at 7.45 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month, in the Life Science Building at the University of Tasmania. Outings are usually held the following weekend, meeting outside the to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery entrance in Macquarie Street. Bring lunch and all-weather outdoor gear.

If you are planning to attend an outing but have not been to the prior meeting, phone to check as to the timing of the excursion (with Genevieve Gates; 62 278 638). Unforeseen changes sometimes occur.

A reminder that subs are due by the beginning of January.

A cross on your envelope means that you are currently unfinancial.

Articles are required for The Tasmanian Naturalist. Our journal appears annually in October and includes a range of articles around the theme of natural history. Editor: Simon Grove Simon.Grove@forestrytas.com.au

Articles can range from short reports to extended scientific articles accessible to interested members of the general public. Refer to previous issues of the Naturalist for examples of style and suitable content.

We are hosting this gathering of naturalists from around Tasmania and maybe beyond again this year. Friday evening spotlighting will be followed by the renowned Lime Bay orchids on Saturday morning, alternatively Clark’s Cliffs fungi and waterbugs in the creek therel In the afternoon more waterbugs will be sought in the dam to be examined microscopically, followed by the formal meeting from 5p.m. to 6.30. The evening meal will be an on site BBQ costing $14 and including meat, vegetarian patties, salads, dessert and drinks. The evening speaker at 8.00 will be John Gooderham, co-author of The Waterbug Book. Sunday will feature the rugged and colourful coastal heathlands of the Mt Brown to Crescent Bay walk.

Cost will be $16/night/person of $5/tent. Bring food (except Sat. night), bedding, towels. Well equipped kitchen, showers.

In the April Bulletin dogs were mistakenly attributed to Elisabeth and Adrian Brettingham Moore on a Marion Bay beach walk excursion. This was incorrect and is retracted.

16 members left the museum to meet at the Goats Bluff Lookout. As we passed the mud flats at Lauderdale where several waders were gathered our hearts celebrated the news of the end of development plans for the bay. A little further on, pausing by a small lagoon we saw forest raven, swans, white-faced or reef herons and several tiny dotterels.

At Goats Bluff, after scanning the ocean for any signs of whales we headed off down a track to the beach with swallows flitting about our heads, pausing to remove some invading Spanish Heath and notice the abundant native flora. A sea eagle was flying across the bay below circling pacific gulls catching a thermal air currant, lifting them high into the sky. Betsy Island was worth a look with binoculars as we could see the white mark of a falcon’s nest high on the eastern cliff face.

Shells on this ocean beach were few but the sand revealed a wealth of animal and bird tracks. Young bounding macropod prints, small and large bird prints, curious five-clawed wedge shaped prints (possibly a water rat) that left us all guessing while overhead two swamp harriers were hunting and displaying.

Our next stop was the bird reserve shallow beach where the narrow sand was thick with shells of all sizes. The tide was low allowing some to venture out on the wet sand to see live molluscs and bi-valves while the boys with a sand pump exposed layers of shells and sediment. Oystercatchers were wading at the waters edge on both sides of us and we saw strings of tiny egg clusters in worm shaped jelly, lying on the wet sand.

Our lunch stop was the rocky wave platform near John’s Point with time for a dabble in the rock pools and a look at the variety of rock formations. I was disappointed the low tide did not expose more weedy rocks and pools. Kevin found a tiny pseudo-scorpion, so tiny magnification was necessary to see this tailless invertebrate. Quote for the day, "you can never get the real thing these days!" A splash in the water off the point may have been a fairy penguin while further off two cormorants were fishing. Up by the she oaks above the cliff were several deserted rabbit warrens now occupied by brush tailed possums.

The return trip included a stop at Calvert’s Lagoon.

The whole South Arm peninsula from Lauderdale south is a low-diversity area for native land snails, mainly because of its lack of wet forest, so I was not expecting much on this trip. At Goat Bluff I found four coastal species - Pernagera officeri, Paralaoma caputspinulae, Magilaoma penolensis and Pedicamista sp. "Southport". Pernagera officeri and P. caputspinulae were also at our lunch site at South Arm township and the latter was at Calverts Lagoon as well. The unexpected record of Pedicamista sp. "Southport" at Goats Bluff is only the sixth confirmed locality for this SE Tas coastal endemic and extends its range northwards by 23 km. It was also the first time I had found this species and the similar-looking (but much commoner) Magilaoma penolensis together at the same site. In total, only ten native land snail spp. have now been recorded from the mainland of the South Arm peninsula, plus one more from Betsey Island.

At Calverts Lagoon I saw two orchids flowering - Pterostylis williamsonii and P. stenochila

[Note: An asterisk after the name indicates a FUNGIMAP target species]

In paddock/bush: Lepista nuda*

Snails and Orchids, Lutregala August 2005 (Kevin Bonham)

I wasn't expecting many snails from Lutregala as on our previous trip there (10 November 1990) I had only found the marsh-specialist land snail Succinea australis. However, on this trip, I was able to sample dryish sclerophyll growing on margins and sandbars within the saltmarsh, so the results were much better. I found six species: Caryodes dufresnii (small form), Paralaoma caputspinulae, Laomavix collisi, Magilaoma penolensis, Pedicamista coesus and something which may or may not be the striped form of Roblinella gadensis. Two of these finds were interesting. The seldom-recorded P. coesus is normally found on rocky high-energy coastlines rather than in saltmarshes, and this is also its first confirmed record from Bruny (one previous record from around the same area was considered dubious). The questionable R. gadensis have a wider umbilicus than normal for the species and the largest (only?) adult had 4.6 whorls (over 200 previous measured adults all fell in the range 3.4 to 4.2). These could be a new species or just an unusual population but I need more specimens from South Bruny to say.

Two greenhood orchids were growing on the bank on Simpsons Bay Road: Pterostylis melagramma and P. williamsoni. P. melagramma was also the species flowering on the Mt Wellington huts trip - the report in the previous bulletin arose because on seeing a specimen not yet in flower I said it was one of the "Pterostylis ex-longifolia complex". The specimens formerly known as P. longifolia in Tas have been split into four species, of which the commonest are P. melagramma (striped labellum) and P. williamsoni (brown labellum). P. stenochila (green labellum) is also fairly common. 

South Arm