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Any forest’s floor will repay your close attention, at any time.
This is true even when an unusually-prolonged dry spell has ensured that on this day the relevant forest will fail to deliver its usual visual treat in the “fungi department”.
However, in the “Karri trees’ annual exfoliation department” all was as it should be on 12 February 2025 in Porongurup National Park.
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You are looking at the “skin” on a venerable Karri’s trunk, as it was on the afternoon of 12 February 2025.
Six months earlier – or six months later – it would have looked remarkably different, in both colour and texture.
Karri shed and renew their bark in an annual cycle.
“Karri loam” – the particular soil type in which Karri trees grow – is primarily composed of decomposed Karri bark!
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This series has more birds, but not just yet; the next several episodes look at details of a forest.
These chapters are the fruit of a short walk on a wintry summer’s day.
50 kilometres northeast of Albany, the Porongurups are a “modest” mountain range – only about 15 kilometres long.
They rise no higher than 670 metres ASL, but have enough altitude – and are close enough to the Southern Ocean – to create their own microclimate.
The Porongurups are much cooler and also very much more moist than is everywhere else within sight of them.
They are remnants of what, more than one billion years ago, were much mightier mountains.
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I am almost certain that the pictured bird is a spotted scrubwren, Sericornus maculatus – the southwestern Australian version of southeastern Australia’s white-browed scrubwren.
The “spotted” and the “white-browed” were formerly regarded as two subspecies.
Since 2019, the prevailing classification regards them as two distinct species…albeit ones that are known to interbreed where their ranges overlap, around Adelaide.
The spotted scrubwren lives in densely vegetated places along the coastal “fringe”, from Adelaide, through to Shark Bay.
Currently, four subspecies are generally recognised.
Glimpsed fleetingly, spotted scrubwrens appear to be “drab”, but a closer view reveals that their plumage is in fact finely detailed.
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Whilst enjoying coffee on the Surf Gallery’s verandah we also enjoyed a close encounter with the pictured individual.
Click this for more info on this splendid species, which is endemic to near-coastal, well-vegetated places in southwest WA.
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The annual “spring flowering” in Australia’s southwestern “corner” is one of the world’s most spectacular natural phenomena.
It is right “up there” with any of the “great migrations” by mammals, birds or insects.
In its diversity of species (many, endemic) and its sheer beauty, Southwest WA’s “flower season” is peerless, I think.
However, far from all species of southwest WA flora opt to bloom in spring.
At any time of year in southwest WA considerably more than a handful of species are in flower; many occur naturally only in WA.
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As you can see, at 9.26 am on 09 February 2025, this post’s hero was well-wetted.
As his appearance makes evident, he is a male.
His plumage’s recently-concluded breeding season “magnificence” is fading, but not altogether gone.
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…diamond bird, diamond sparrow, headache bird, widopwidop…
Spotted pardalote is the “proper” common name for Pardalotus punctatus – one of Australia’s tiniest, loveliest, shyest birds.
Although moderately common in all of the reasonably fertile parts of Australia (the east coast, the south-east, and the south-west corner) it is seldom seen closely enough to enable identification.
On the morning of 16 February 2025, I at last managed to take some halfway decent photos of one.
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Homo sapiens is not the only species which includes a small number of lucky individuals who have “discovered” the “secret” beach, just east of Anvil Beach.
Another mammal also swims and fishes there.
It is safe to assume that Arctocephalus forsteri is the more successful fisher of the pictured, reef-sheltered waters.
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On WA’s wonderfully wild south coast there are some calm days, and a few truly safe places to bathe or swim.
16 February 2025 was such a day, and the “secret beach” (just east of Anvil Beach) usually offers safe bathing in perfectly reef-sheltered waters.
As evident in the featured image, even on this exceptionally calm day, the ocean-facing side of the reef gave occasional hints of the ocean’s oomph.
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