Birds, Bees and Butterflies

There are many different native animals that use the habitat within Olive Pink Botanic Garden - some live there most of the time, while others visit the Garden after rains to feed or breed. Click here for a list of the mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs recorded in the Garden. You can also visit our photo gallery to see images of some of these animals.

The most obvious and easily seen residents are euros (or hill kangaroos; Macropus robustus) which bask around the Garden in the cooler months, or can be found sheltering under the shady trees and shrubs during the hot summer months. Less commonly seen is the black-footed rock-wallaby (Peterogale lateralis lateralis) – a much smaller, more finely built macropod that lives in the rocky hill habitat on Annie Meyers Hill. Black-footed rock-wallabies are listed as a nationally threatened species mostly because of declining numbers due to fox predation – luckily around Alice Springs there are small populations like to one in the Garden that have managed to persist despite the pressure from wild dogs and cats.

Amongst the 80-odd native bird species recorded in the Garden, the western bowerbird is arguably the most prominent. There are around eight resident bowerbirds, and generally at least one active bower. These birds construct a bower by bending grass stems into a roof-like structure, and then decorate the entrance with all manner of found objects – in this species’ case objects that are coloured white, silver or green. At the Garden the bowerbirds regularly deposit green quandong fruit, bleached bones, or ring-pulls from aluminium cans at the bower entrance. The bowers are used for courtship displays by males trying to attract female mates. Another very noisy avian resident in the Garden is the grey-crowned babbler which hangs out in rowdy family groups flicking through the leaf litter for insects, or gleaning bugs off trunks and branches of garden plants.

Some birds only visit the Garden at particular times of the year. Striated pardalotes and grey warblers are much more prominent vocally in the Garden in the cooler winter months, while summer avian visitors include rainbow bee-eaters and spiny-cheeked honeyeaters. The elusive grey honeyeater has been recorded in the Garden when the mulga groves are in flower - around September if rains have been favourable. Visit the Alice Spring's Field Naturalist's marvellous website to get information about good places to view particular bird species around the region.

Summer is the time that reptiles come into their own at the Garden. Skinks, geckos, and dragons are the most commonly seen groups of reptiles. There is a resident perentie (Varanus giganteus) in the Garden, and this large goanna can occasionally be seen feeding on feral rabbits or young birds that it steals from nests. Long-nosed dragons (or tata lizards; Lophognathus longirostris) are commonly disturbed in the leaf litter in summertime, but it is rare to see snakes in the Garden – although they do doubtless inhabit the rocky hill surrounds.

The caper white butterfly is one of several butterflies that become prominent in the Garden in early summer. The larvae of this butterfly feed voraciously on the native passionfruit (Capparis spinosa var. nummularia) in the bushfood display gardens – sometimes defoliating these plants. All stages of this insect’s lifecycle – caterpillars, pupae and adult butterfly - can be seen at one time on the host plant.

Being a desert environment, populations of insects fluctuate dramatically according to rainfall. Good rainfall events can produce extraordinary pulses of caterpillars, termites, grasshoppers and cicadas, which in turn feed increased populations of babblers, honeyeaters or black-faced cuckoo shrikes. Conversely, long dry periods result in many insect populations crashing, so that the reptiles and birds that feed on them in turn die-off or move to better feeding grounds if they are relatively mobile.