While it is currently very fashionable to emphasis the influence temperature can have on the distribution and abundance of plant and animal species, let’s not ignore the very broad geographic ranges of many species, or the words of the early naturalists, including Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913).  Mr Wallace wrote:

“NOWHERE does the ancient doctrine—that differences or similarities in the various forms of life that inhabit different countries are due to corresponding physical differences or similarities in the countries themselves—meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction [as in the Malay Archipelago]. Borneo and New Guinea, as alike physically as two distinct countries can be, are zoologically wide as the poles asunder; while Australia, with its dry winds, its open plains, its stony deserts, and its temperate climate, yet produces birds and quadrupeds which are closely related to those inhabiting the hot damp luxuriant forests, which everywhere clothe the plains and mountains of New Guinea.”  

The Australasian parrot, the rainbow lorikeet, Trichoglossus haemotadus, is a case in point.  It has a distribution extending through eastern Indonesia, New Guinea, and along the entire eastern seaboard of Australia, from Queensland to Tasmania.

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Notes and Links

I understand there is some dispute whether the populations of rainbow lorikeet in eastern Indonesia represent the same or a different, but closely related, species to those in eastern Australia.  Nevertheless it is apparent that this species or species complex has a distribution more influenced by its evolutionary history than temperature gradients.

Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, Chapter 1, http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wallace/alfred_russel/malay/chapter1.html

The picture of the lorikeets was taken by Jennifer Marohasy at Great Keppel Island on Sunday August 23, 2009…

IF you would like a printed A4-sized copy of this picture  make a donation to the running of this blog – see orange button at the top RHS of this page – and I will send you an autographed copy with an Alfred Wallace quote about lorikeets.

Yesterday at the Sydney Writers Festival, I heard Eva Hornung, author of ‘Dogboy’, the story of a child who grows up with wolfs in Moscow, talking about animals and our relationship with them.   She suggested that the divide between humans and animals is much closer than popular culture suggests and that we humans have a “vested interest” in suggesting otherwise.  

I was also interested in a comment she made that we cannot have a completely “right relationship” with animals – it was in the context of domesticated dogs being necessarily submissive in character in order to coexist with humans.    It is probably also impossible for humans to have a completely “right relationship” with nature?

Like dogs, black ravens are considered relatively intelligent and have an ability to solve complex problems, imitate, amuse and be amused. 

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Notes and Links

Common Ravens, Corvus corax, have among the largest brains of any bird species. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Raven 

Dogboy, by Eva Hornung
http://www.librarything.com/work/8191112
“Dog boy is haunting, disturbing and throughout upsetting. A wake-up-to-reality story of modern life, set in Moscow with history to back it up. Eva Hornung has done her research and has presented an eloquently visual and smellable believable picture of what necessity of survival can lead to and the role of dogs in our lives and the role of humans in dogs’ lives.”

Indeed every time that Lake Eyre in central Australia floods, our oh-so-sensitive-to-nature journalists provide us with the sort of happy purple prose that we see on the front page of today’s The Australian, where Jamie Walker says:

“The torrents that swept down the swollen Georgina and Diamantina rivers, mixing in Goyder Lagoon before surging through Warburton Creek and into the lake proper, carry a bounty of new life: nutrient-rich sediments to feed the thirsty native vegetation that has erupted all around it, and in turn herbaceous native rodents; fish for the mass of birds tracking the flood; all the water the wild camels from the Simpson Desert can drink.”

Meanwhile, every time it rains hard enough in north Queensland for rivers to flood into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, which represents precisely the same phenomenon as the Diamantina feeding Lake Eyre, journalists at The Australian provide us with much lamenting and concern like the following:

“A MASSIVE surge of polluted water has spewed onto the Great Barrier Reef following heavy rains that hit north Queensland last week, environmentalists say.

The WWF estimated up to one million megalitres – enough polluted water to twice fill Sydney Harbour – entered the reef after a monsoon brought drenching rain to north Queensland.

Mr Heath said satellite imagery confirmed water flows travelled to mid-shelf…”

Nature herself simply doesn’t care about the big environmental impacts and changes, no matter how much birthing, killing or (from our perspective) environmental degradation they may cause – it’s all just part and parcel of being a dynamic planet.

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Cathy has a PhD and lives in Far North Queensland.

The photograph of the pelicans was taken by Jennifer Marohasy below the Torrumbarry Weir, Central Murray Valley, in October 2007.  Pelicans (Pelecanus conspicillatus) can be found in coastal and inland Australia – where ever there are fish.  Some fishermen say that when there are floods on the land there is bounty in the sea.

I’m off for a bit – “Gone Fishing”.   Cheers,

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The photograph is of a pelican near Ingham, North Queensland, taken September 29, 2008.

The Tawny Frogmouth is fairly common and “nests” at our place every November. The nest however is virtually non-existent but they mostly use the same dubious spot each year so the eggs and chicks [1-3] live on the verge of oblivion.

We usually get a couple of families.

They have very soft, penetrating, low frequency calls which sound like a distant power house … ooom, ooom, ooom.

It’s great to lie in bed and listen to them.

They’re better than cats at cleaning up rats and mice and are absolutely ghost-like in silent flight.
 
The lapwings pass, mince through the grass,
The frogmouth chicks look down
And teeter on oblivion,
While mother wears a frown.

Jim Inglis
Australia

Meanwhile I have been posting a couple of messages at the ‘Community Home’ page. 

I am now asking you, particularly if you live in the vicinity of Mittagong to have a look here, and if you are a member of the Australian Environment Foundation to have a look here.

Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos, Cacatua galerita, are very common where I live in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.   It is not uncommon for a flock of perhaps 20 birds to strut about on my back lawn late in the afternoon before perching in a very tall nearby pine tree where they sleep at night.

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Update,  January 31 

OK.  In response to requests from Janama and Bernard and the Bird, I’ve filled it!

1) They used to follow whaling ships and feed on the blubber and floating oil. (Any of several species of large Antarctic petrels).

2) Prions are a small group of Petrels which once were known as whale birds, because they feed on the same plankton baleen whale feed and were thus likely to be good indicators where the whales may be.

3) The Sooty tern (see photo) is as well called a whale bird.

Photo courtesy BirdLife International/Simon Stirrup

“ We frequently observe humpback whales and birds feeding on the same patches , so it’s not surprising that occasionally birds might be engulfed by feeding humpback whales “.

“We observed three partially digested birds coated with whale feces floating in the water near adult whales”.

RESULTS OF HUMPBACK WHALE POPULATION MONITORING IN GLACIER BAY AND ADJACENT WATERS: 2005

Cheers,
Ann
Sweden