Ravens and Crows

So sleek and glossy
And darker than night
But agressive and bossy
And his call is a fright

Ah ah ahhhh quoth the Raven
Its road kill I’m cravin'
Oh oh oh way to go
Says the old Aussie Crow
Ark ark ark says his little mate
Dig in quick no time to wait

Is it a crow or a raven? I was listening to a radio talk back show when a listener rang in to inform everyone that there were no crows in Perth only ravens. Well, it is true that ravens dominate in Perth but there are crows here as well and they are difficult to tell apart. The Australian Raven is the dominant corvid in Perth and the southern forests while the Australian Crow dominates north of Perth and through the tropics. Perth also has Little Crows that dominate in arid Australia and Indian Crows sometimes stow away on ships and are occasionally seen near the Fremantle Port. Australia also has the Little Raven and Forest Raven confined to the SE forests of Victoria and Tasmania respectively.The Australian Raven has long throat hackles and grey bases to its feathers while the Australian Crow has white bases to its feathers. The Little Crow is like a miniature Australian Crow. The Raven has a powerful ah ah ah aaah call that Peter Slater describes as falling off like a death rattle. The Australian Crow has a high pitched staccato oh oh oh oh oh call and the Little Crow a nasal nark nark nark nark call. The infamous Graham Kennedy crow call was undoubtedly based on the cry of the Little Crow. Crows are intelligent, mischievous and can be serial pests if it is your garden that they decide to make their playground.

Crows are everywhere but Australia is the land of crows and the home of their ancestors. Villified as carrion feeders and wicked eye peckers the crow is a universal symbol of death and decay but this is only part of the story. Like all scavengers they serve an important ecological role in recycling dead carcasses and they are astonishingly clever. Watch the David Attenborough You Tube video called Clever Crow.  It shows Japanese Crows that have not only figured out how to crack nuts by dropping them in traffic but have also learned to drop them on pedestrian crossings so that they can retrieve the cracked nut safely on the red traffic light. I like crows a lot and while their harsh cry is grating it always reminds me of home.

Blue Tongue

This lizard is well known I think

To me and also you

His gaping mouth is vivid pink
His tongue a brilliant blue

He is a true blue Aussie
Despite his All Blacks tongue
Beautiful and glossy
As he lies there in the sun

He slowly and with quiet dispatch
Will eat the grubs and snails
That infest your vegie patch
When pesticides all fail

But being useful and iconic
Is no defence to cats
Nor to careless drivers
Who kill them with a splat

The Blue Tongue is a national icon. It is harmless and inoffensive and probably our best known and most loved lizard. For most of the year this reclusive and well camouflaged creature remains well hidden but in spring they seem to be everywhere as they emerge from their winter dormancy to feed and mate. This is also the time they are at their most vulnerable as they get squashed on the roads by inattentive drivers and consumed by the dozen by domestic cats and dogs. William Dampier may have considered them foul to the point of being inedible when he first dissected one in 1699 but the average cat does not share this opinion. A Blue Tongue is a slow moving and defenceless creature relying on bluff and camouflage for its survival. A gaping pink mouth and vivid blue tongue are not much defence against a cat.

Blue Tongues are very useful in the garden where they happily consume garden pests such as slaters, grubs and snails. They will also unfortunately consume snail pellets with fatal consequences so think carefully before you are too liberal with the snail pellets.

We have many kinds of Blue Tongues in Australia including rough scaled and stumpy tailed “Shingle-backs" and the sleek and glossy classic Blue-Tongued Skinks but they have many things in common as well as their blue tongues. They mate for life and have about 25 young each season which unlike most lizards are born live rather than as eggs. They also live for decades. So look after these special creatures by providing them with a lizard friendly environment with plenty of hiding places, logs to sun themselves on and of course a large variety of plant life which in turn will support many insects and other creatures. The Blue Tongue will eat them all as well as many of the plants. Did you know that the Blue Tongue is about 500 times more resistant to 1080 poison than a fox or a cat due to its high natural concentration in Western Australian plants? And of course do what you can to protect them from cats and dogs although with cats this is very difficult. You will in turn be rewarded by the sight of a garden full of these gentle, beautiful and interesting creatures who will work very hard and effectively at protecting your vegetables and prized flowers from pests.

The Red Weed From Mars

In its native southern Africa
It is beautiful and rare
But a curse in poor Australia
That fills us with despair

Escaping from a garden
So English and so neat
It marched across the country
Leaving wasteland at its feet

Where once was biodiversity
A monoculture stands
Sickly pink and hideous
And a blight upon the land

Gladioli and Watsonia
And sweet Salvation Jane
Brought here in ignorance
And causing untold pain


There is an old maths question that is great for kids. If a waterlily doubles each day and takes 29 days to cover half a pond, how long will it take to cover the whole pond? The answer of course is 30 days and therein lies the problem with environmental weeds. Their spread is initially slow and insidious and we hardly notice them until one day we look at on a sea of sick Pink Gladioli and wonder where it came from. By then of course it is too late to do much about it.

We have few weeds on our property but Pink Gladioli are trying hard to get a foothold. At this stage they are mainly confined to the firebreaks and in low numbers, or so we thought until we went around pulling them out in their hundreds yesterday. Often the bulbs break off so it will be the work of some years to rid the place of this curse but at least the flower heads with their thousands upon thousands of papery wind-borne seeds are gone.

Gladioli are a curse but not the worst one by far. Thickets of Watsonia and Arum Lilly choking our waterways and the purple fields of Salvation Jane now more aptly namely Paterson’s Curse are far worse, at least for now, but the pretty aromatic Pink Glady’s are bad enough. They are outcompeting the magnificent Red and Green Kangaroo Paw, Blue Leschenaultia and thousands of other sand plain species in Western Australia’s biodiversity hot spot and doing untold damage.

And the key question is why? Just because some settler homesick for merry England and oblivious and dismissive to the native beauty in abundance around them wanted something pretty to look at. And inevitably they escaped from the gardens and with no natural controls have wreaked havoc. But the saddest thing of all is that it is still happening. We have learned little! There is growing awareness about potential environmental weeds but gardens and nurseries throughout the country continue to propagate a huge variety of plants from all corners of the globe. Our next major invasive weed, and possibly our next 10 are likely already to be growing in someone’s garden.