The Razor Grinders, Black Princes, Red Eyes and Double Drummers rule the forest. Well, not quite. Hunting the cicadas come large Cicada-killer wasps. On locating a cicada, they sting it (which paralyses but does not kill), then manhandle the heavy insect to their burrow. Once installed in the burrow, the cicada becomes the repository for a single tiny wasp egg. The egg later hatches into a grub, which feeds on the still-living cicada before metamorphosing into an adult wasp.

Only rainforest is exempt from the mind-numbing din of cicadas. Up at Dorrigo National Park, fruit-eating birds are busy cashing in on the summer’s crop of Giant Pepper Vine, and the calls of White-headed Pigeons, Wompoos and unusually large numbers of Rose-crowned Fruit-doves are ringing through the canopy. Nectar-eating birds, on the other hand, do not seem to have been drawn to the valley by Pink Bloodwood nectar in the same large numbers as the Flying-foxes. Possibly the birds are still scattered around south-eastern Australia, busily rearing their young. Lorikeets, Friarbirds and Honeyeaters are present in only moderate abundances, as they have been since spring, when a diverse array of flowering eucalypts (Bellinger and Northern Grey Ironbarks, Blackbutts and New England Blackutts, Tallowwoods, Thin-leaved Stringybarks, Turpentines, Sydney Blue Gums and Smooth-barked Apples) was producing nectar, though not in the same enormous quantities as the Pink Bloodwoods are now.

The Bloodwoods should finish flowering in a month or so, resulting in a drop in Flying-fox numbers, though Paperbarks blossoming in February-March should prevent the Bellingen Island camp from shrinking too much. In terms of fruit, ripening crops of Bangalow Palm berries in gully rainforests will attract parties of Topknot (Flock) Pigeons from now till about mid March. To report any interesting sightings, please contact Brian at Brian.Hawkins@sci.monash.edu.au