On the second weekend of May, we held our penultimate walk, at the Southern parklands Carriageway Park, the park is bounded by Greenhill Road, Beaumont Road, South Terrace and Hutt Road. The park features a carriageway of historic elm trees, dating from the 1870's, that form a gentle arc through the centre of the Park. As a 'Trees for Life' bush care site the park is revegetated with native grass.
Interestingly this location lead to the inaugural Australian site for Arbor Day which took place in the adjacent Victoria Park. The group examined a large river gum and found a family of Social Huntsman Spider's Delena cancerides under the bark as well as some Southern Marbled Gecko's Christinus marmoratus this was very exciting for everybody. We then proceeded towards the large hill just north of the South Terrace Croquet Club. There we found a patch of Small-flowered Mallow Malva parviflora (below) and an amazing diversity of invertebrates living upon them including small flies and moths (see below)
Stephen lost in the weeds (photo by Larissa Braz Sousa)
A selection of the invertebrates found on the Small-flowered Mallow (photos by Stephen Fricker)
Heading off to the replanted grassland, and we saw a "Common brown" Heteronympha merope the most observed native invertebrate in South Australia, it landed only a short distance from us and instantly became invisible. This is because the underwing provides excellent camouflage, I pointed the butterfly out to Peter and Thabata but neither of them could see it at first, it took some time before they could see it, as it was so well camouflaged.
The open grassland was then explored, the dryness limited the activity in this area, although there were several species of Fungi, some pupa casings from recently emerged Rain Moths Abantiades spp. and a number of birds around the park. Overall the number of observations increased from 143 to 223 increasing the number of species recorded in the park from a meagre 68 to 95 species, although this will probably increase as some of the invertebrates are identified.
Please check out this interesting urban park on the southern fringe of the Adelaide CBD. To find out the activities around South Australia please have a look at the update by Geoffrey Cox