Opportune visit to Pulyonna Wirra (Wadmore Park) in July

Opportune visit to Pulyonna Wirra (Wadmore Park) in July

Posted at 26 Aug 2020 at 15:02h in Adelaide Parklands, Frogs, Invertebrates, News by
0 Likes

Opportunistically, I dropped by Wadmore Park in mid-July during a visit to Adelaide from the Limestone Coast. The weather was kind and lately had been mostly sunny, so it struck me as a great chance to see what might be calling within the Fifth Creek watercourse and lurking beneath the roofing tile grids. I wasn’t disappointed!!

The first night I recorded frog calls from Fifth Creek to add a new species to the survey – Common Froglet (Crinia signifera). That now makes three frog species – let’s see what we hear in spring. On the second day, my parents Peter and Dianne were willing participants (as scribe and tile lifter), as we wandered the park tracks carefully lifting tiles at all five grids.

Interesting finds included a great variety of spiders and other arachnids including this unusual squeaky species – strategically placed!! One skink braved the winter, a host of caterpillars, cockroaches, slugs, snails, centipedes, ants, millipedes, termites, earwigs, beetles, a flatworm AND a giant earthworm!! Coolest creatures and we loved seeing them all – it is so great to see that this human-constructed habitat (a roofing tile) can be of such benefit to nature and ultimately for our survey too.

A strategically placed children’s toy placed under a tile – posing as a bright-eyed insect!!
Giant Earthworm – little is known about their ecology, but I imagine they are a really important indicator of soil health.

I would like to shout out to two volunteers with expertise in spiders and ants who have been assisting NGT in identifying these diverse invertebrates. David Hirst (spider expert) and John Weyland from UniSA (ant expert). Without your dedication to our wonderful arthropods we couldn’t report back to our readers on what we’ve found. So thank you.

Interestingly, this creature is not a spider, but in fact a Harvestman (Order: Opiliones). They are more closely related to scorpians and mites even though they look like a spider (Order: Araneae).

NGT looks forward to returning in late September for a reptile extravaganza, diurnal insect searches (especially dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies) and nocturnal animal transects and UV light trapping. Then we’ll be back in early November to finish the survey off by doing it all again. We hope to see you out at Wadmore Park soon.

Note: An updated fauna list below. This pdf list is over two pages, so hover your mouse over the bottom to see the second page.

Fauna.list_Aug2020

Bryan Haywood