Monthly update from Friends of the Bluff
Calling your Bluff.. .
Calling Your Bluff – November 2007
There is a red wattle bird in town that sounds exactly like an automatically activated car door. Now red wattlebirds make a range of noises but most fail to rise above a shrill, strangled screech but this one bird can perfectly mimic the ‘nyup – nyup’ tone of keyless car entry.
Moths, being in season, are the preferred food of this lock impersonating wattlebird which like all honeyeaters acrobatically hunts in flight, at times defying gravity and anatomical logic to acquire its prey.
When a colleague belted a moth senseless with a rolled up copy of the Geelong Ablettiser and disdainfully flicked the corpse off the table, I began to believe that moths get some pretty bad press.
Mentioning this to Bev Wood, she loaned me a book that changed my life – Paul Zborowski and Ted Edwards’ excellent “Guide to Australian Moths”. (I clean toilets for a living – it doesn’t take much to change my life).
As there is somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 species in Australia, moths not only cover the entire gamut of variation but have adapted to every habitat type. Moths range in size from a couple of millimetres to large enough to scare kiddies. There are night flying types with feathery antennae and day flying types with club like antennae and moths that start their life living in koala poo.
Unlike butterflies drenched in Mattissian hues and daubed with the bold geometric flair of a Susie Cooper teacup, moths come in a thousand different shades of drab with designs that evoke an intricate earthiness more akin to Jackson Pollock with a limited palette.
Moths spend an inordinate amount of their life as larvae, chewing herbage and avoiding predators and irate horticulturalists until something hormonal triggers an irresistible urge to procreate leading to another lengthy period pupating in an architecturally brilliant opus of silk and entwined foliage until some inexplicable balance between the moon, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure solicits the adult moth to emerge triumphant and be immediately consumed by a honeyeater that sounds like a door beeper.
Moths play a vital role as pollinators but their real environmental importance seems to be as food. The spring burst of moths coincides with bird and bat breeding season with a moth to suit every size.
However, a vast number of moths remain unidentified while our understanding of the range and biology of moths has all the clarity of an Estonian rap band. Most of what we know about moths seems to be derived from research into how to eliminate them as an agricultural pest and yet they are such a vital part of our environment. It would seem that the health of any given habitat is intrinsically linked to the health of its moth populations.
Friends of the Bluff final working bee for 2007 will be held on Sunday November 18th at 10.00am. Meet in the car park and b.y.o gloves, sunscreen and moth repellent.
Jon Duthie
President – Friends of The Bluff