2020 NSW Volunteer Team Award

WIRES Mid-South Coast volunteers have won the 2020 Volunteer Team of the Year Award, jointly with the Foodbank NSW & ACT Distribution Centre. This is quite an achievement given that 2020 has been “an unprecedented year of volunteering”. According to the Centre for Volunteering, which runs the awards:

The 97 volunteer team members from the Mid-South Coast Wires Branch gave their all during this period. They gave their land and lounge rooms to help care for sick and injured animals at a time when they so desperately needed care and assistance. They performed all sorts of rescues from wallabies, wombats, birds and snakes – all while their own homes and those of their friends and family were also under threat.

In all they completed more than 2,750 rescues from early 2019 to early 2020 – with a 60 percent increase over the bushfire period.

Black Snake Rescue

by Kay Mallitt (Reptile Coordinator)

During November I received an XMatters call for a red-bellied black snake at Long Beach. The snake was totally entangled in black netting as well as wrapping itself in the lattice work (see photo).

Ideally, two rescuers would be needed to safely remove a snake from netting. As we have very few handlers I attended the rescue alone. I cut the netting from around the snake and after slowly coaxing it to release itself from the lattice work I bagged it.

Once removed from the house I was able to examine it more closely. I was able to remove most of the netting wrapped around its body but realised that I would definitely need help with the netting wrapped around the snake's head and through its mouth.

After a few phone calls to different handlers, Sandy rang back to say that she was home and could help.

It’s always a little scary when a venomous snake needs to be pinned by the head, but by remaining calm and focused on the job at hand Sandy and I were able to safely remove the netting,

There were no significant injuries to the snake, besides having his pride hurt and wasting venom on the tools that held his mouth open while the netting was removed.

He was released into a nice swampy area that was teaming with frogs, and far away from people and their gardens.

I did advise the member of public about using Wildlife Friendly Netting and he seemed happy to take that information on board. I gave him some basic snake first aid guidance and stressed the importance of having a compression bandage (or 2) in their First Aid Kits and knowing how to use them. It is wise to treat every snake as if it was venomous.

Meet Zac

by Beris Jenkins (Mac Coordinator)

This is young Zac, an eastern grey boy from Long Beach. He’s with his temporary new mum Caroline (Caz) Roberts, also from Long Beach. Zac was spotted one afternoon in November, alone without his biological mum. None of the females would let him near their pouch and when the huge storm approached that evening he followed the mob and was not seen again till the next afternoon, looking very dehydrated and alone.

He would have died if he had not been rescued. Caz pouched little Zac and, as she’d just undertaken the recent macropod course, offered to care for him until he was stabilised and we could find him a longer-term carer. Zac has recovered really well with expert love and care. We are very grateful for Caz's help and she can feel proud that she saved a precious life.

Tawny Frogmouth Reunion

Shane O’Keefe responded to an XMatters call for a tawny frogmouth chick sitting on a container in a backyard that was surrounded by very tall trees. She managed to spot a parent way up in the trees, an accomplishment in itself given their ability to disguise themselves as part of the tree.

Kay Mallitt joined Shane and the elderly couple who owned the property and together they managed to tie a rock to a rope and, with Kay on the ladder, throw it over a high branch. They then placed the chick in a nest made from a hanging basket (see photo above) and pulled it up to the branch.

It was hard to know if the parents were feeding the chick as they would have done so after dark. Nevertheless the couple sent Shane photos each day of the chick. After a week when Shane was losing hope, she came along to find the chick was gone! When they recovered the makeshift nest they found it was full of droppings, showing that the chick had been fed and had left the nest once it started to fly.

Another time Shane had placed a tawny frogmouth in its artificial nest and as she watched in the dark it wasn’t calling to its parents. So she found a video of a chick calling to be fed on youtube (see example above) and played that.

Amazing Tawny Frogmouths

Although tawny frogmouths look like owls, they are not owls. However like owls they hunt at night. Unlike owls they usually catch their prey (mainly insects) in their beaks.

They are “masters of disguise”, using their camouflage and ability to stay absolutely still to look like part of a tree (see photo below). For this reason they prefer old trees to nest in. They mate for life.

Tawny Frogmouths survive cold winters by going into torpor for hours at a time. This involves lowering their body temperature and slowing their heart rate and metabolism to conserve energy. In hot temperatures they cool the air they breath with mucus in their mouths.

Ref: Les Christidis, Hard to spot, but worth looking out for: 8 surprising tawny frogmouth facts, The Conversation, 20 October 2020.

Diet in Care

It is important to note that tawny frogmouths are not carnivores but rather insectivores and should not be fed mice when in care, except as an occasional treat. Mice are difficult to digest and birds are likely to build up unhealthy and potentially life-threatening fat if fed a diet of mice. Click here for info on what tawny frogmouths should be fed while in care.

Wombats’ Deadly Bums

The wombat has a rock solid rump that is composed of four fused plates of bone surrounded by cartilage, fat, skin and fur.

Legend has it that wombats use their bums to crush the skulls of predators, such as foxes and dingoes, against the compacted dirt walls of their burrows. However there is no evidence of this, apart from the crushed bones of predators outside wombat burrow entrances (see photo).

However they do use their bums to block the entrances to their burrows to stop predators from entering them and to present the best armoured part of their anatomy to their enemies. Even as joeys they will present their rumps to their mother if she bites them or to other juveniles when they are play fighting.

Bum biting is also part of the flirting ritual between courting wombats. Such love bites remove tufts of fur which you might see about the place.

Ref: Matilda Boseley, Wombats' deadly bums: how they use their 'skull-crushing' rumps to fight, play and flirt, The Guardian, 4 November 2020.

Two New Species of Greater Glider

A recent study of greater glider genetics has found there are actually three species rather than just one.

The northern glider is the size of a ringtail possum and is found between Mackay and Cairns in Queensland’s eucalyptus forests. The central glider is a bit bigger and lives in southern Queensland.

The southern glider is the largest and is the one we see (if we are lucky) in our area. Although it looks like it is as big as a brush tail possum, most of that bulk is fur, its body is much smaller and lighter so it can glide up to 100 metres at a time.

The once common southern greater glider has declined by 80 percent in Victoria’s Central Highlands and has become extinct at Jervis Bay and in the lower Blue Mountains. "Habitat loss from logging and urban development, coupled with climate change, have pushed them out of many former strongholds."

Ref: Mike Foley, 'Australia's biodiversity just got a lot richer': Two new mammals discovered, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 November 2020.

Saving Parma Wallabies

Parma wallabies were once thought to be extinct. The 50cm high wallabies had not been seen for 20 years when they were discovered on Kawau Island in New Zealand. It was thought they were a threat to pine plantations on the island and there was an eradication program underway.

When he heard about them, Peter Pigott built an enclosure with a suitable ecosystem for them on his property at the Blue Mountains at the cost of a million dollars. In 1988 Pigott, together with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, tried to return 47 of them to the Illawarra Escarpment where the species had once lived. But they were all killed by foxes within weeks.

There are currently 180 parma wallabies in Piggott’s wildlife reserve but he is 84 years old. "He is now concerned about what will become of the wallabies after his death. Their diet alone costs $20,000 per year and he also spends $8000 per year on rates, because his property falls below the 20-hectare threshold required for a conservation agreement."

Ref: Harriet Alexander, 'We've got to bring those wallabies back': how a species was saved, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 2020.

Bettongs, Fences, Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) and WIRES

by Julie Mills

In August Mark and I visited one of AWC’s properties near Townsville. The 60,000-ha property is called Taradale Mt Zero and its landscape includes savannah, rainforest and open woodland. It is home to a number of threatened species – the southern cassowary, masked owl, northern bettong and northern quoll. To get there you take a hairpin bend narrow road west from Townsville, with your heart in your mouth as you drive.

AWC is the largest private landholder of conservation land in Australia and we are supporters. AWC purchases properties with distinct biodiversity features, staffs the properties with ecologists and land managers, and reintroduces threatened species. Increasingly feral proof fencing is used to create safe havens for species to breed and then be reintroduced to the wild.

During the bushfires we introduced WIRES and AWC chief executives, and to our delight, WIRES announced that it would give $1.6 million to support AWC. This includes money for the creation of a predator proof fence to protect bettongs at Taradale.

We spent 2 days with Felicity and Josh at Taradale. They are overjoyed at the announcement. We went to the 1000-acre enclosure site. The road is rough (5 km per hour driving style rough!) and the fence will skirt tall trees and a gully. As we drove, we saw feral pigs and the need for the fence was obvious. Felicity and Josh couldn’t thank WIRES enough. They live alone in this remote location. Josh manages feral animal eradication, ecological burning and road maintenance. Felicity is an ecologist – studying fauna and planning landscape management.

We left feeling grateful that WIRES was directing funding to AWC and feeling immensely proud to see WIRES money, which our branch played such an integral part raising during the fires, so wisely directed.

South Brooman State Forest

NSW government-owned Forestry Corporation has been accused of breaching "a ban on the felling or damaging of so-called hollow-bearing trees that provide shelter and food for dozens of threatened species”, such as the yellow-bellied gliders and powerful owls, in the South Brooman State Forest.

The ban was introduced after the forest was badly damaged during the summer bushfires. The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) stopped the logging after an investigation prompted by complaints of non-compliance by the local conservation group Coastwatchers. However within days of the Forestry Corporation resuming logging, Coastwatchers have found more hollow-bearing trees that had been felled. Such hollows take hundreds of years to form, according to Joslyn van der Moolen, a member of Coastwatchers.

Ref: Peter Hannam, 'Unacceptable': Timber battles resume in fire-hit South Coast forests, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 2020.

Rock Shelf Walk, Broulee

When: Saturday 12th December 11.30am

Where: Meet at Broulee Surf Club to sign in

Cost: Free for members, bookings required. Membership of the Nature Coast Marine Group is $15 per family, which also covers other excursions during the year.

Be prepared for rock hopping, wear solid shoes and sun protection.

"Help us find waratah and shell-grit anemones, several species of seastars and hopefully brittle stars with their snaky arms. Learn why the ugly cunjevoi seasquirts are our closest invertebrate relatives, and find out who barnacles are related to. We might even be lucky enough to find an octopus (or two)"

More info: Jenny, 0492 176 148