Youngs Siding Flora and Fauna
Since we have moved onto a quarter-acre block in town, of course we do not have the variety of native animals and plants that we had when we lived on the farm. But the native garden we are working on at the front of the house does attract some birds and there are a few other animals living in our backyard and in the patio and the pond.

Bird list: farm

The following list is restricted to birds actually seen by us on our farm:

Bird list: in town

These are the birds we have seen at our house in Denmark:

Authority: Storr, G.M. and Johnstone, R.E. (1985) A Field Guide to the Birds of Western Australia. Second Edition. Published by the Western Australian Museum.

Experience has taught us that some of the colour rendition in some of the photos in this book are far from realistic (maybe preserved specimens were used, or just poor printing?) so we have learnt to check sightings in "A Field Guide to Australian Birds" by Peter Slater, which seems to have much more accurate colours.



Frog list: on the farm

The following list is restricted to frogs found by us on our farm:

... and in town:

Authority: Tyler, M.J. et.al. (2000) Frogs of Western Australia . Third Edition. Published by the Western Australian Museum.

We have the newly-revised edition of this book which was first published in 1984. Some West Australian frogs can be more difficult to identify than you might think. In particular members of the Crinea genus of small frogs can be very variable, but members of different species can look very similar. In fact Tyler, et. al. suggest that C. insignifera and C. pseudinsignifera are indistiguishable in external morphology, only being told apart in the field by their calls, and that a hybrid zone exists where their ranges overlap on the lower west coast. Our identification relies on the farm being outside the range of one of the species. And yes - it is noisy with all that quacking, bleating, motorbike gear changing and moaning going on!



Dragonfly list: on the farm

The dams and the pond attracted quite a number of dragonflies and damselflies. The little handbook which we have to identify them is quite old now, but still may be the definitive reference. Our list is limited because without a microscope it is very difficult to see some of the features required to identify dragonflies (and in adition most of them are not easy to catch). There do not appear to be any common names for these insects.

Authority: Watson, J.A.L. (1962) The Dragonflies (Odonata) of South-Western Australia. Handbook no. 7. Published by the Western Australian Naturalists Club, Perth.

We found one amazing damselfly (which we could not identify, but it appears to be common) on the farm, laying its eggs on the wooden "piles" of our small jetty in the dam. This does not sound so strange, except the female is totally immersed three to five centimetres under the water, and stays there for at least five or ten minutes while she grasps the wood and lays her eggs. When she is finished she appears to leave the water still well and truly alive.


Farm plant list

This list only includes native plants growing on our farm, and represents just a small fraction of its complete flora. Our 17 hectares (43 acres) had a very limited selection of the plants of the surrounding region, since sheep have had free access to the uncleared areas for many years, and the farm represents a small and rather uniform sample of the surrounding countryside.

There are lots of introduced species, including eastern states eucalypts, pasture plants, garden plants and weeds.

We have difficulty accurately identifying all but the most common and well-known of our native plants. We only have volumes one and four of the authoritative reference (Blackall, W.E. and Grieve, B.J. (1988) How to know Western Australian Wildflowers 2nd Edition, published by University of Western Australia Press) which covers only the southern half of the state but still needs four volumes just for the Dicotyledons, with another for the Monocotyledons and ferns. On a world scale the southwest of Western Australia has an extremely high floral diversity (around 10 000 species of flowering plants), with many bizzare specimens including an orchid which grows and flowers entirely underground (very few specimens have ever been found!).



Fungi list

After moving to the farm we became interested in the local fungi. Youngs Siding seems to be a good area for them, and the farm had many different mushrooms, wood fungi, toadstools, puffballs and other examples of these organisms.

Fungi are notoriously difficult to identify; currently we are referring to Neale L. Bougher and Katrina Syme Fungi of Southern Australia, as well as Neale L. Bougher Perth Urban Bushland Fungi Field Book. We also use Patricia Negus The Magical World of Fungi to aid with initial visual identification, and Fungi Down Under, the Fungimap guide.

Over the years we collected pictures of the fungi on our farm and tried to identify them, but remember that any idenfication made on our web site is just our best guess!



Mosses and Lichens

While photographing fungi we noticed a wonderful selection of lichens, and mats of mosses.

This collection of pictures of moss and lichen on our farm is just to celebrate their existence. A number of the photographs are of the same species, showing more or different detail.