Excursion to Bruny Island,  8 Feb 2009

  Don Hird took us to help check his Pygmy possum nest-boxes, near the airstrip, north of the neck on Bruny Is.

Don explaining the Pygmy Possum Project, alongside one of the nest boxes.

GF

A Pygmy possum has just crawled out from its nest material in the bottom of a nest-box.

The possum was in a torpid state and is now warming-up, uncurling its tail and inflating its ears, a process that takes about 5 minutes.

AT 

Another nest-box, showing a nest made by a Pygmy possum. The possums bring-in their own nesting material.

GF

Stopped for morning-tea, some seats more conventional than others!

GF

Corunastylis_tasmanica orchid.

AT

This Leptospermum (tea-tree) had many galls on it, bigger than its nuts.

On breaking one open, we found a grub inside.

GF

A spider on the stringy bark of a eucalypt.

GF

This lacewing camouflages well.

AT

Two views of a mantisfly, about 15mm long.

AT

GF

Cranefly.

AT

Bee-fly.

AT

A huntsman spider infested with mites.

Huntsmen often have mites,
but not usually so many.

GF

AT

Grasshopper.

AT

Hatchet wasp.

AT

This wasp is a flightless female tiphiid, Thynnus zonatus.
Its larvae feed on beetle larvae in the soil, probably scarab larvae.

SG

Seastar Patiriella calcar apparently consuming the egg-mass of a sea-hare Aplysia sp., a sort of herbivorous sea-slug.

Photograghed among the rocks and boulders between Miles Beach and Cape Queen Elizabeth.

SG

 
Crossing what is called Big Lagoon, without getting our feet wet!
GF

Photos by Abbey Throssell, Geoff Fenton, Simon Grove