Wallum wildflowers 2 – and birds

This week I have been out walking through my favorite patch of wallum again. However, it has taken me three days to actually be able to post about what I found. First I had trouble getting good photos – my usual subjects are birds and their environment – not close-up flowers! Anyway I can say that I have learnt a lot in a couple of days. Then, I could not identify what I had seen so I took out a friend with a lot more experience in identifying wallum plants than me. The first flower is a Slender Sun Orchid (Thelymitra pauciflora) and apparently quite rare for around here. It is growing down in a damp swampy area of the wallum.

The other flower was up on a ridge growing on a rocky piece of ground where hardly anything else was growing. My friend had never seen this flower before, although we eventually found it described in a book about the vegetation of the Noosa area. It is a Small Waxlip Orchid (Glossodia minor).

Please feel free to correct any mistakes I have made in ID of plants.

The first afternoon I was walking through the bush I could hear lots of Rainbow Lorikeets and Noisy Friarbirds. This usually means there is a good honey source but it took me a while to discover that they were apparently getting nectar from the flower stems of the Xanthorrhoea. There are both species of Xanthorrhoea – fulva and johnsonii - in close proximity in this area. There was one patch of bush where every flower stalk had a bird swinging on the stems and busily getting nectar.

Rainbow Lorikeets up, around, and down on the flower stalks of Xanthorrhoea.