St Peters Billabong sits within St Peters Park and adjacent to the Torrens Linear Park It is situated between the River Torrens, between eighth Avenue and River Street at St Peters.
The site was recovered, previously being a dump, and has been restored as an urban wetlands habitat providing a home to a variety of native birds, insects and reptiles. Interesting fact Mary, one of our participants was involved in some of the plantings at this location. The habitat consists of River red gums Desert Ash and a Chilean pepper tree.
Prior to visiting the park, there were 147 species recorded within the St Peters Billabong project boundaries, this increased to 164 at the time of writing this blog an impressive increase of 17 species or an increase of 11% the previous total The weather was cooler and we expected few invertebrates and potentially several species of fungi. As with our previous excursion to the park, unfortunately, there were only a few waterbirds in the park with only seven species represented. The group were very enthusiastic, three groups of Boisduval's Autumn Moth's Oenosandra boisduvalii caterpillars hiding under the bark of several eucalyptus trees on the edge of the billabong. this is interesting as we also found this species on our previous visit to the Billabong with the previous group and in Autumn found several adults in the park.
Caterpillars of Boisduval's Autumn Moth Oenosandra boisduvalii were found under the bark of a gum tree along the edge of the billabong (above, picture by Stephen Fricker). An Adult female Boisduval's Autumn Moth Oenosandra boisduvalii was observed in St Peters Billabong in late April 2021 by Thábata Muta (below).
While the park was damp the number of fungi had dwindled to only a few species, I noticed bracket fungi, while some small mushroom species were noticed in the grass. As the weather had warmed up we observed an amazing 47 species all together including 2 reptiles, including the Eastern Water Skink Eulamprus quoyii and Lowlands Earless Skink Hemiergis peronii, 11 species of insect, surprisingly no European honeybee but plenty of evidence of native bees, Three Spiders some examples of the Biodiversity we discovered is below.
