Jim’s Australiana Spot – 2UE - September 4, 2011

SPRING IS IN THE AIR

In Europe Spring is signaled by the FIRST CUCKOO and garden competitions.

In Sydney we have: •The FIRST BLOWFLY! •The FIRST KOEL • sleepy blue tongue's in the backyard • WRETCHED INDIAN MYNAHS nesting! •Spring Racing •Footy Finals •Tulips at Bowral •••• for me … it’s the first time I use the car air conditioner!

QUESTIONS: WHERE do these Springtime creatures COME from?

When we were kids ... … the OFFICIAL switch from long trousers to SHORTS! (remember ‘boxer shorts’ …. Shorts and long socks?) For girls the switch from serge to cotton uniforms at school .... Remember whitening your tennis shoes?

KOEL: The call of the Common Koel is a ‘Cooee’. The male is glossy blue-black with a red eye and a long rounded tail. The female is more showy with cocoa-brown, white-spotted back and pale lightly striped chest, black face, white mark above a black throat stripe. Although wary it can be seen alone, in pairs or in parties in leafy, fruiting trees. The male is noisy when courting and will chase and fight other males. In spring Koels migrate from Indonesia and PNG often as far south as Sydney.

Koel	Blowfly

BLOWFLY: The maggots of the blowfly pupate and chemical changes in the maggot’s skin transform it to a rigid barrel-shaped puparium (cocoons which resemble rat droppings or egg case of cockroaches). Inside the puparium the maggot metamorphoses into a fly. If soil temperature is less than 15°C, development halts. As the soil warms larval development restarts slowly and this “overwintering” population emerge en masse in spring.

In Sydney we have a short Spring and a long summer...here's a poem about that Dorothea Mackellar

Spring Song of Sydney
Dorothea Mackellar

Spring has come back to this Sydney of ours; All the deep gardens brim over with flowers; All the steep gardens climb down to the harbour Frothing with blossoms on trellis and arbour. Clematis, jasmine, wisteria, rose, Who can keep tale of the pageant that goes, Scented and hued like the suite of a bride, Toward the delphinium-blue of the tide? Hark to the magpie, and in the hush Now the sun’s riding high – listen, a thrush! Soon, soon the locust will silence their song, Spring is swift-footed but Summer broods long...

Tune in to hear Jim on 2UE every Sunday at 12.30 pm