Excursion to Kaoota Tramway Track, 8 Aug 2010
Early in our walk we spotted this Stately helmet-orchid, Corybas diemenicus.
AmT
Field-nats observing birds high in the eucalypts along the disused tramway formation.
GF
Here and there, we noticed a few pieces of coal from a century
ago, the raison d'être of the tramway.
GF
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Dryophthorus ECZ sp 02.
A 4mm weevil that inhabits rotting logs but is able to fly.
ECZ is the initials of Elwood Zimmerman, an entomologist at the Australian National Insect Collection in Canberra who specialised in Australian weevils and aimed to 'bring from obscurity into the light of science knowledge of our complex, compound, remarkably evolved, multitudinous weevil fauna.'
LF
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Neopelatops TFIC* sp 01 (Leiodidae).
A 3mm fungus beetle, found in rotting wood where it feeds on slime moulds. Australian species are unusually smooth and shiny while their Gondwanan relatives in Chili and Argentina are hairy in common with other members of the Neopelatopini tribe.
(*Tasmanian Forest Insect Collection)
LF
A planarian (flat-worm).
GF
Small ants with a large individual in their midst.
AmT
Skink.
GF
The scales on its back are corrugated.
GF
This individual has a very strange tail; it has probably been injured and grown a new tail without completely loosing the old one.
GF
Field-nats delving into a rotting hollow log alongside the track.
GF
Finding creatures in the 'mud-guts' of the log.
GF
A beetle larva from the mud-guts.
AmT
Another beetle larva in the mud-guts.
AmT
A springtail larva.
AmT
Beetle, from the mud-guts.
AmT
AmT
Chrysomelid leaf beetle.
Photos by Amanda Thomson, Lynne Forster, Geoff Fenton