Our next Paluma working bee will be held this coming Saturday from 2-4 pm followed by drinks at the Community Hall. Depending on the number of volunteers we will finish clearing fallen tree branches from Bruno’s house, and clear some roadside vegetation from the cutting.
We will meet up at the Community Hall first.
See you there
Bobbi Parker is holding a memorial celebration at the Community Hall at 12pm on April 20th to honour Glenn Parker who died recently at their home in Paluma.
Friends and relatives from Townsville and other parts of Australia will be attending, and Paluma residents are also invited to participate. There will be an open bar. You are invited to bring a plate of finger food.
Don’t forget that this Friday evening (6-8pm) will be our second Social Drinks session at the Hall.
As an additional attraction to quicken your pulse (and before we get to the drinks nibbles and games), Wilfred will give a very brief (5min) talk on how to access and open up the defibrillator. See you there!
To All Our Quiet Achievers aka Volunteers
Our Paluma Community Easter Market is on Sunday March 31st from 9am to 1pm. There are a range of tasks that need some ‘quiet achievers’ to help with to ensure a successful market. You will be working alongside some of our more well known ‘quiet achievers’ (ok, maybe they’re not always quiet, but there’s the fun in it) who will be more than happy to guide you in whatever’s required… in case you’re new and want to help. All are welcome to come and be part of this community event and give a hand, even if it’s for a 1/2 hour (which would be brilliant!).
If you are interested in doing some volunteering, below are a list of jobs that need support. If there is a name beside them, that means they are managing that task and absolutely still need some help.
Easter Market Job List
This list will be on a signup sheet displayed at the hall on Saturday evening at the St Paddy’s day gathering. It will also be available for signup on Saturday 23rd at the hall at 10am or see/email Wilfred or Juanita and let them know what you can do to help.
Day before:
On the day:
The Rural Fire Service defibrillator, which normally resides in the fire truck, has been moved to the box at the Hall entrance so it is available in the case of an emergency until the PDCA unit is back from service. The RFS has agreed that whenever the PDCA unit is out of commission, or out for service, the RFS unit will be moved to the Hall entrance.
Members (and prospective members) are advised that the Annual General Meeting of the Paluma & District Community Association Inc. will be held on:
Saturday, April 6, 2024, at 12pm for a BBQ lunch followed by the AGM at 1:15pm in the Community Hall
Nominations are open for all Executive Committee positions. Nominations should be forwarded to any member of the Executive Committee or by email to PalumaPDCA@gmail.com. Please use the nomination forms, which can be downloaded here.
Positions are:
Members are reminded that Annual Subscriptions are now due and should be paid prior to the commencement of the AGM. Membership is $45.00 Please use the subscription form here to submit your dues. New members are more than welcome and should use the same form.
Please note that you must be a PDCA member to nominate someone to the Committee or vote for any Committee member.
The AGM will be followed immediately by a normal General Meeting with the new Committee.
AGM AGENDA
Normal General Meeting Agenda
The PDCA defibrillator outside the entrance to the Community Hall is temporarily unavailable as it is being serviced. There are two other defibrillators inside the Hall, owned by the SES and RFS. In the event of an emergency please contact any member of the RFS or SES to gain access.
Over the wet season two species of mistletoe (Amylotheca subumbellata and Amylotheca dictyophleba) have been flowering and fruiting in the village.
This is a window of seasonal plenty for Mistletoe Birds (Dicaeum hirundinaceum) who live mainly on the mistletoe fruit and repay the favour by spreading the seeds of mistletoe.
The photo here of a female mistletoe bird was taken from the back deck of #56 at the start of the rainforest walk in mid-February. It wasn’t until the photo was uploaded and cropped that it became apparent the shot had captured a gluey seed locked and loaded for dispersal.
Although there are other birds that can spread mistletoe, the mistletoe bird has evolved a highly specialised and efficient method of ensuring future crops of mistletoe berries.
As a parasite, mistletoe seed needs to be placed in a particular way in the (usually) upper branches of the host tree. Mistletoe minimizes opportunistic feeding by less specialist dispersal species by producing few, inconspicuous fruits. The fruit is low in protein and so the mistletoe bird must eat large quantities for reproduction and moulting.
The mistletoe bird has evolved a digestive system that processes the fruit particularly quickly and with little damage to the seed. It takes between four and 25 minutes for the fruit to be processed and ready for “planting”.
The fruit emerges with a sticky coating that requires the bird to employ a special technique to detach it from the anal vent. Mistletoe birds often stand facing the host plant and with a wiping action deposits the fruit in a string along the perch. Seeds that emerge from mistletoe birds are much stickier than those of honeyeaters who also snack on mistletoe fruit. Seeds ejected by honeyeaters fall randomly and often miss the strong bonding to the host tree branch that is essential to keep the mistletoe supplied with a source of fluid as it grows.
Mistletoe birds occur throughout Australia in any habitat where mistletoe occurs. They are the only Australian representative of the flowerpecker family, Dicaeidae, which comprises 50 mistletoe-loving species distributed through tropical southern Asia and Australasia.
The male mistletoe bird is brightly and colourfully feathered while the female has more demure plumage, dark grey above with a white throat, light grey underparts and just a touch of pinkish red under the tail.
Jamie Oliver previously posted a link to a great David Attenborough segment that captured the whole process including a time-lapse of seed germination. That link is here.
In early March a number of mistletoes were flowering nicely in “the cutting” around 21-27 Mt Spec Road.
Text by Peter Cooke
Note: no AI used in producing this post, just good old cut and paste plagiarism from various sources.
Nearly six years ago, in a rush of enthusiasm, I published what I hoped would be the first in a monthly series of articles on Paluma Birds. That post featured the Satin Bowerbird. Unfortunately, I never followed up with further articles, despite my feeling that this was a worthwhile project that could be a nice complement to Colwyn Campbell’s very successful Tree of the Month series, which persisted right up to the end of 2021.
I am delighted that the series is now restarting with the able support of Peter Cooke, whose first post features the mistletoe bird. Peter and I have several birds lined up for future months and are confident we will be able to keep the series going at least for this year. However, we would be delighted to receive contributions from other residents. If you have a well-framed, sharp portrait of a local bird that you would like to write about please contact us. We can help you write the text, or contribute some text to go with your picture. In either case, let us know! We are very keen to use photos by residents as our primary source of illustrations for the series. if you realize you have a great shot of one of the birds we feature in a post, and would like to share it, I can include it in a comment on that post after it’s published (unfortunately the system does not allow general users to include photos in the comments section).
I hope you find the series informative and interesting.
Jamie Oliver
The Artists@Rollingtone team is calling on artists and arts & crafts enthusiasts from the region to participate in the Annual Art and Craft Show and Sale. Saturday 27th July 2024. More details are in the poster below.
