A very productive working bee. First step was to get some more plants into the ground. I put the lomandras in the top level after pushing back the fishbone fern. A Hibbertia scandens (Guinea Flower) went beside the creek, just before fern wall. I neglected to take photos but all the planted plants are looking healthy for now.
I had barely taken a step on the track down to site A when I was drawn to a very loud but unseen bird in the fishbone fern. I didn’t recognise what type of bird it was but it was going crazy which made me curious enough to stop and see what it was concerned about. Only because I had stopped, I saw this guy:
A snake on the track. Not sure what type it was but I’m glad I saw it before I was on top of it. It didn’t move despite me trying to make some extra noise, stomping on the ground etc. However, I threw a stick nearby and it moved into the ferns then. I saw it go but I still didn’t want to walk on the track. I made a large detour via the alternative track. Spotting a snake is a first for me at Dick’s creek.
I notice this shrub each time I walk near site A and a few have popped up elsewhere as well.
I finally asked for identification via the facebook group ‘NSW plant identification’. Best guess appears to be: Claoxylon australe (Brittlewood)
It’s not part of the Hunter Valley Moist Forest profile but it is endemic to the East coast of Australia so it gets to stay.
I got back to the target site where I have been working for the past few weeks. It was sad to see the bower bird’s bower had been flattened.
I am not sure if that is their normal behaviour or if something interrupted them but I have been seeing the female bower bird a lot lately so I think they have moved onto raising some young.
It has been quite dry and warm for the past few weeks. It made it easy to spot any lantana that was missed previously.
On the down side, the dry soil does make it a bit harder to pull out plants with the roots attached.
I started from where I left off last week…
I believe the clump of trees & shrubs is on the mound which I remember from years ago when it was just a few instances of false bracken fern battling against the lantana. The false bracken fern is still there but so is a lot of other plants… Privet (of course), lantana still, tobacco trees, poison peach, bleeding hearts, sandpaper figs, lilly pilly, a tree fern and some others I am less sure of. I freed up most of the natives so it should all be heading in the right direction once again.
A lot of the plants lean on each other and so take a while to straighten up after the exotic species are removed. You can see that here with the bleeding hearts and the false bracken fern.
With the exotic species gone, the remaining natives are going to be getting a lot more sun. I am hoping for some rain to help them transition.
There is still much more to be done so it will be a similar working bee next week.