Black and white, with the pattern varying across its range. The back of its neck, upper tail and shoulders (on its wings) are white in males and grey in females, and (across most of Australia) the rest of its body is black. In south-eastern, central and south-western Australia, including Tasmania, its back and rump are entirely white. Its eye is red-brown. Young birds are usually grey rather than black and have dark eyes.
Distinctive feature
One toe faces backwards and three face forwards. It has a square-tipped tail.
Also known as Blueberry Lily, a long, feathery shrub with flowers sticking up above the leaves.
Long green pointy leaves with vibrant blue to purple inflorescences (flower clusters). Grows up to 1.5 m high.
Leaves
Long, feathery, smooth green leaves. 15 - 85 cm long with 4 - 15 mm width. Pointy ends and long and stiff throughout. Can sometimes appear red towards base but this is rare.
Flowers
Flowers stick up above the leaves, consisting of 6 purple petals (7 - 12 mm length) and 6 stamens (pollen-bearing part of the flower) in a ring. These are long, thick and have brown to black tips with yellow stems.
Its pear-shaped float (bottle) is a translucent blue, with a wrinkled top which might be tinged with green or pink. It has a single main tentacle, and many shorter tentacles, all of which are blue and hang from its float.
It is not a single animal but rather a colony of four kinds of individuals known as polyps. Each polyp has its own function: one is the float, another captures food, another digests the food, and another is responsible for reproduction.
Size
Float is 2 – 15 cm long, and tentacles up to 10 m.
Brahminy kites are medium sized birds of prey common in coastal areas. Adults have an unmistakable white head and chest with a chestnut brown coloured body. They have dark coloured eyes and a strongly hooked, yellow beak. The tail is relatively short and can have white tips.
Size
male 45 cm, female 51 cm with an average wing span of 120 cm
Spreading small to medium-sized tree with trunk covered by white, beige and grey thick papery bark.
Usually grows to 8 – 15 m high (sometimes 25 m) with a spread of 5–10 m.
Leaves
Grey-green leaves are egg-shaped. Young growth hairy with long and short, soft hairs. Leaves arranged alternately; flat, leathery, 55 – 120 mm long, 10 – 31 mm wide.
Flowers
Flowers cream or white bottlebrush-like, arranged in spikes on ends of branches which continue to grow after flowering. Spikes contain 5 to 18 groups of flowers in threes, up to 40 mm in diameter and 20 – 50 mm long. Petals 3 mm long and fall off as flower ages. Stamens (male organ of a flower, consisting of a stalk and a pollen-bearing portion) white, cream-coloured or greenish and arranged in 5 bundles around the flower, 5 - 10 stamens per bundle.
The Channel-billed Cuckoo is grey all over, with dark scalloping on its back and wing-coverts, a whitish belly and abdomen, and fine dark barring on the lower underbody. Its long tail is pale-grey on top with two central feathers tipped with white, with a black band near the tip; the undertail has black-and-white barring. In flight, its tail and wings give it a cross-shaped silhouette. Its eyes are bright red and there is a bare patch of red skin around the eye and near the base of the bill. Its legs and feet are dark grey.
Young birds are mottled buff, brown and grey, have an olive to brown eye and lack the red-colouring around its eye.
Distinctive feature
Its large, downward-curved beak which is greyish with a paler tip.
Shrub or small pyramidal tree, yellowish green or bronzy. Commonly 8 - 10 m high.
Numerous branchlets are hairy and flaky at first then become smooth and straight.The swollen orange to red stalk preceding the small hard fruit is often mistaken as the fruit itself.
Leaves
Scale-like, triangular, 0.5 mm long and 2 – 3 mm long on new growth.
Flowers
Yellow-green flowers in short, dense, clusters that are usually 6 mm long. Flowers appear in early spring to autumn (September to May).
Tree to 25 m high; bark grey-brown, thick, roughly tessellated (mosaic-like). Its smaller branches are striated (striped with parallel longitudinal ridges or lines).
Leaves
- Often whorled (arranged as a ring of leaves), lance-shaped and sometimes broadest in the upper third
- 4 – 10 cm long and 1 – 3.5 cm wide
- Coloured differently on the two surfaces: upper surface dark green, dull to shiny; lower surface white and covered with dense intertwined hairs
- Pointed or having a broad shallow notch at the tip
- Adult leaves have entire margins while juveniles will have a few short teeth, flat or slightly curved backwards
Flowers
Flowers mainly January - June. Pale yellow cylindrical spikes forming a bottle-brush shape. Each flower head is 6 – 12 cm long, 5 – 8 cm wide and attracts insects and nectar-eating birds.
Black and white, with the pattern varying across its range. The back of its neck, upper tail and shoulders (on its wings) are white in males and grey in females, and (across most of Australia) the rest of its body is black. In south-eastern, central and south-western Australia, including Tasmania, its back and rump are entirely white. Its eye is red-brown. Young birds are usually grey rather than black and have dark eyes.
Distinctive feature
One toe faces backwards and three face forwards. It has a square-tipped tail.
It has a grey back and head, and bright-yellow underparts. Southern birds have an olive-yellow rump, while birds in northern Australia have a brighter yellow rump. Its throat is off-white and when seen in flight, it has a pale bar on its wings. Its bill is black. Young birds are rufous-brown with paler streaks.
Size
13 – 17 cm long, the males are slightly larger
A reference to its yellow resin, Xanthorrhoea literally means "yellow flow" in Ancient Greek. Grass-tree is a misnomer. Its not a grass, nor a tree.They are actually distantly related to lilies.
Perennial flowering plant. Trunk resembles a tree above ground or exists under the earth’s surface. Trunk is woody and made up of tiny packed leaves.
Leaves
Clustered in a terminal crown, 30 - 140 cm long, rhombic (kite-shaped) to wedge-shaped in cross-section, tapering at the ends.
Flowers
Borne as flower clusters on a cylindrical and spike-like woody axis.
In the bush the flowers could reveal directions, since flowers on the warmer, sunnier side (usually north) of the spike often open before the flowers on the cooler side facing away from the sun.
Its head and upperparts are mostly dark grey, with a white eyebrow and throat, a narrow grey band across the upper breast and a creamy-buff belly. The feathers of its long tail have white edges and tips, and the tail is often fanned out.
Size
14 – 16 cm long
Dark grey to black on top and usually white on the belly. Humpbacks have very large, elongate pectoral fins, a small but prominent dorsal fin and a large, bushy blow (up to 5 m tall).
The large fins, dark tail with white underneath, active breaching and tendency to “hump” their backs and raise their tail out of the water before diving, distinguish humpbacks from other whales.
Size
Adult humpbacks can reach a length of up to 15 m.
A black and white bird, the pattern varies slightly between sexes. The male has a white eyebrow above a black horizontal eye-stripe, a black face and throat, while the female has a white face and throat, with a broad vertical stripe through the eye, and no white eyebrow. Both sexes have a thin white bill and black legs and feet. Juvenile Magpie-larks have a black forehead, white eyebrow and a white throat.
The top of its head and its hindneck are black. Its forehead is covered with bright-yellow skin, which hangs down to form wattles. The rest of the head is white. Its back and wings are pale grey-brown. Below, black plumage extends from the hindneck onto the sides of its breast, and the rest of the underparts are white. Its long legs and feet are reddish and its bill is yellow. It has a prominent spur on each wing.
Juveniles are similar to adults, but have dark ‘scallop’ markings on the back and wings, and the wing spur and wattles are either smaller or absent.
Distinctive feature
A yellow wattle that extends from its forehead to behind its eye and hangs down beside its chin.
Black and white, with the pattern varying across its range. The back of its neck, upper tail and shoulders (on its wings) are white in males and grey in females, and (across most of Australia) the rest of its body is black. In south-eastern, central and south-western Australia, including Tasmania, its back and rump are entirely white. Its eye is red-brown. Young birds are usually grey rather than black and have dark eyes.
Distinctive feature
One toe faces backwards and three face forwards. It has a square-tipped tail.
A colourful bird, the upper part of its back is bright green, merging to light blue on the lower part to its rump. Its tail is black, tinged with blue, and has two long central feathers (called streamers) that extend beyond the tip of the tail. Its forehead is blue-green and the top of its head is golden. A bold black eye-stripe runs from the base of its beak and is bordered below by a narrow blue line. Its chin is yellow, changing to chestnut on its throat, below which is a broad black band. It has a green breast, becoming paler on the belly and changing to light blue from the lower belly to the vent. It has a long, slim, curved black beak and its legs and feet are grey-black.
Young birds are generally duller and greener. They lack the black band across the lower throat and the long tail streamers.
Distinctive feature
The sexes differ in the length of their tail streamers: the male has longer, more slender streamers.
Perennial, rhizomatous herb with strappy leaves.
Leaves
Glossy green, firm and flat. Long and thin up to 1 m long and roughly 1 cm wide. Leaves are usually taller than the flowering stem. Leaf base is broad with brownish edges. Tips of leaves have teeth.
Flowers
Grow in a whorled cluster attached to a straw-coloured bracts. Individual flowers are roughly 4mm long, but the cluster and leaf grow to 50 cm. Have a strong scent. Flower head is brown – during flowering petals are creamy yellow.
Evergreen tree, greyish-brown bark has oak-like appearance, branchlets spreading or drooping. Can be found solo or in dense stands.
Usually 8 – 15 m high. Can reach a maximum of 20 m high (rarely) and only reaches 2 m high on clifftops. The trunk can be up to 35 cm in diameter. This tree is also found in prostrate form (lying flat on the ground), reaching 30 cm high and 2 m wide.
Leaves
Segmented branchlets with very small teeth-like leaves (0.6 - 0.9 mm long), 12 – 17 leaves arise at the nodes of segments. New growth is strongly recurved (bent or curved backwards or downwards) and become erect as they mature.
Flowers
This species is dioecious (male and female reproductive structures develop on different individuals). Male inflorescences (arrangement of flowers) are spikes, growing 1.2 – long with 7 - 10 whorls per cm (ring of floral parts borne at the same level) and a 0.8 mm long anther (pollen-bearing part of the stamen).
It was first described by renowned botanist J.E. Smith, the founder of London’s Linneaen Society.
Evergreen shrub with smooth, purplish brown or light green bark. Up to 0.3 – 3 m high.
Leaves
Narrow, straight or very slightly elliptic, and blue-green. Each leaf is about 5 – 15 cm long and 2 – 10 mm wide, with a prominent vein down the centre. Its surface is hairless and covered with a fine white powder. It grows at right angles to the stem.
Flowers
Pale yellow to white and ball-shaped. Each flower is 4 – 7 mm in diameter and is found in clusters of 5 – 10 flowers aligned along an axis of 1 – 3 cm long. They are sweet smelling and enclosed in overlapping bracts (modified leaves) before opening.
Metallic blue-black on top and light to dark grey on its breast and belly. Its forehead, throat and upper breast are rust in colour. It has grey legs and feet, and its eyes and bill are black. A young Welcome Swallow has shorter tail feathers than an adult and its forehead and throat are a creamy beige (instead of rust).
Distinctive feature
A deeply forked tail with a white band or row of spots on the long tail feathers.
A large bird of prey with a dark grey back and a white head, white chest and white belly. Their legs are also white and have long black talons. They have dark eyes and a light-coloured, hooked beak. When viewed in flight, the undersides of the wings are a distinctive half white and half grey-brown.
First-year juveniles have a buffish and ‘spiky’ head, contrasting with patchy cream and dark brown body and wings; underwing pattern also patchy, but note half-moon at base of tail feathers. Older juveniles have a pale buff-grey tail.
Their nests are massive, made of sticks and branches, usually found in a tall living tree near water or on a remote coastal cliff (on ground if on an island).
Distinctive feature
A wedge-shaped tail, distinctive when seen in flight.
A medium-sized black and white honeyeater. It has large bright yellow tail and wing panels, with a large conspicuous white cheek patch on a mainly black head. Young birds are duller with brownish plumage.
Size
16-18 cm
Mostly light blue-grey in colour. The forehead, crown, chin and upper throat are white. It has a long, slim neck and a pointed grey-black bill. The legs are long and dull yellow in colour. Easily identifiable when seen from below with the dark flight feathers of the wing contrasting with the paler grey plumage.
Males and females are similar. When breeding, the birds have long feathers (nuptial plumes) on the head, neck and back. Young are similar in appearance to non-breeding adults, with little to no white on the face; underparts often have a reddish colour.
Distinctive feature
Its characteristic white face.
