From: Peter.Macinnis@p0.f508.n711.z3.fidonet.org (Peter Macinnis)
Newsgroups: k12.chat.teacher
Subject: Global Environment Watch
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 21:00:00 PDT
Organization: FidoNet node 3:711/508.0 - The Bay, Neutral Bay NSW

Herewith the material I started to use in a reply re pseudoscorpions
and things: it ought to be separated out.  Seems to me, though, that we
ought to be in one of the environmental conference areas.

The place: Sydney, Australia, on a sandstone headland covered in
depauperate heath (due to a lack of fire for too long, the under storey
died out, and when then inevitable fire came, weeds were ready to move
in.  But that's another story, as they say.)  It is now late spring, the
cicadas are in full scream, and the ultraviolet is getting wuite
dangerous in the middle of the day.

I had to clean out one of the terrarium tanks today, as the frogs which
usually live there have all got big enough to release, or they have gone
for a holiday at the museum, where they are cleaning out the slugs in
one of the terraria there.  The springtails had taken over, and I must
have flushed out about 3000 of them, while waiting for some paint to dry
and some glue to set.  Tomorrow, I go out to the timber yard, and on the
way back, I'll collect some moss specimens (we seem to have about
fifteen species around Sydney) to replant the tank, as I have some
tadpoles starting to develop legs in one of the other tanks. At the
moment, the fresh tank has two large millipedes (I need them for a
photo, when I have time to walk them across some really dry sand), a
small skink (hopefully eating the last of the springtails) and a
click-jack beetle who has probably been gulped by the lizard by now.
I'll gather up a few fern fronds with sporangia at the same time.

I set tanks like this up with sloping soil or sand, and I always have
free water at the bottom, so that there is a saturated level all the way
through, and constant high humidity.  Ferns will grow from spores in
this sort of tank (although I often "hatch" the spores on mud agar
first), and mosses, club-mosses and liverworts have a marvellous time.
I usually just cover the tank with fly-wire, tied down tightly to
prevent escapes or invasions by currawongs.  If there are frogs in the
tank, I make a hole in the fly-wire, invert a plastic bottle with the
bottom cut off, fill it with leaf litter, and poke the neck of the
bottle through the hole, so there is a constant rain of wee beasties
into the tank below.  With no frogs, the beasties tend to multiply
furiously, and so the need for a clean-out.

I've been at home building and things for the last two weeks: mainly a
sort of conservatory for the plants and animals mainly.  The feral birds
(sparrows, Indian mynahs, pigeons, bul-buls and starlings) have been
noisy around the house, and the currawongs have been attacking the
crows, as have the wattle birds. One of my colleagues at work has been
leaving out fake nests (made from tennis balls) with fake eggs, made of
soft clay, to find out what steals most of the eggs  (the eggs are
attached to the "nest" with fishing line). The crows have made their
marks on very many of the eggs that have been left around.  Would that
they would attack the Indian mynahs and the sparrows, not to mention the
starlings which have moved in recently.

The koels have arrived from New Guinea, and shriek out at anything after
three in the morning, the kookaburras start in around 4, and the
currawongs start shouting soon after.  These last are very stupid birds,
for I will swear that their call is "coq-au-vin".  They get their
(allegedly) echoic name from their call, but it is far more like
coq-au-vin to my ears.  Maybe I get hungry sooner when I am doing
physical labour!

Enough for now, though,
peter slightly less down under




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