Life in a Southern Forest

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Week in pictures

1st - 7th February, 2019


Rainy, moonless nights - perfect for moths!

Opodiphthera eucalypti Emperor Gum Moth - a 130mm wide beauty beating on our loungeroom window

Ghost moths are often attracted to our house lights on wet nights in late Summer.

Other night-time visitors

Our walls and windows house a rich ecosystem of predators and prey


Day-time arthropod activity


A Collection of Caterpillars

We think we know the species identity of at least some of these. But the only way to tell for sure is to rear them through to the adult moth stage in our “Buddy Tank”. We’ll keep you posted…

Summer Raptor Visitors

We were wondering for some time why we’d seen few small birds on the block during the Summer. The reason became apparent a couple of weeks ago. We then realised that the bird calls we’ve been hearing for some weeks were those of Brown Goshawks.

We tracked the calls to the back gully, where we discovered a pair of juvenile birds - constantly begging for food. Parents were seen at times ferrying small prey to the gully, but we never actually observed them feeding the youngsters.