Table Of Content

FROM FIELD AND STUDY a Dugite, Pseudonaja affinis was in the early stages of subduing a Tiger Snake, Laughing Turtle-Dove feeds on seeds Notechis scutatus and attempting to of Isolepis oldfieldiana - The Laughing swallow it. The Dugite had three coils Turtle-Dove Streptopelia senegalensis around the Tiger Snake which it also normally occurs on the Maylands used as support against which to mudflats in ones and twos, the birds manoeuvre while swallowing the Tiger roaming around and paying special Snake’s head. This was the most attention to areas where the grassland difficult and time consuming part of the has been burnt. In January 1985 a large process. Once the head was swallowed patch of Isolepis oldfieldiana was burnt the Tiger Snake was quite subdued and and some 100 doves fed over it for three the Dugite drew it out lengthwise and weeks. This is one of the few records of swallowed it much more readily. The this dove feeding on seeds of native entire process took one hour. The plants. Dugite was approximately 1.5m long and the Tiger Snake approximately 60 - R.H. STRANGER, 28/76 East Street, cm. The entire sequence was recorded Maylands 6051. on colour print film. Reed Warbler nests in Pampas Grass - - ANDREW CHAPMAN, PO Box 264, The Reed Warbler Acrocephalus Ravensthorpe WA 6346. stentoreus is intimately tied to the rushes of freshwater swamps and streams, and Frost damage to vegetation - Between 15-23 July 1997 well below average it is popularly believed that it never temperatures were recorded in southern leaves them. However in my experience WA due to cloudless skies, light the Reed Warbler does occasionally northerly daytime winds and very still leave the rushes and in Birds of Western nights. At Carracarrup 19km south of Australia (Serventy and Whittell, 1976) Ravensthorpe t recorded 8 consecutive the authors cite the Reed Warbler as frosts; daily minimum temperatures were having nested in Melaleuca. always zero or below, including a In March 1985 I found a nest of this minimum ground temperature of minus species in the south quarry of the 6' C. In early August some vegetation, Maylands peninsula It was attached to particularly growing in river or creek two leaves of a Pampas Grass Cortaderia valleys began to exhibit signs of frost selloaria, the plant having been left high damage; leaves were ’browned-off’ - and dry when the water level fell during similar in appearance to herbicide summer. A bed of sedge was half a metre application. This applied in particular away but there was no Typha or Juncus to Acacia rostellifera where it grew nearby. without any overstorey, the leaves were - R.H. STRANGER, 28/76 East Street, often entirely ’browned’. Acacia cyclops shrubs to 1.5m growing along creeklines Maylands 6051. without overstorey were killed by this Dugite eats Tiger Snake - On 9 April frost. In the West River valley 1997 at West Beach in Fitzgerald River Eucalyptus tetragona where it was low National Park in low coastal heath I growing only i.e. <1.5m had the distal observed two smakes writhing on the and marginal portions of leaves ground. Closer inspection revealed that ’browned'. Taller plants were 209