The wet season is a time of change in the Far North.
In the Wet Tropics garden, during the dry period before the Monsoon rains, the intense summer light and heat can be a trigger for the trees to drop their leaves. This is a time when the rainforest canopy opens and allows light to penetrate to the forest floor.
Small trees that have sat in the shadow of their parents for many long years, waiting for the sunlight’s energy to allow them to grow upwards as they already have their roots deep down into the moist subsoil.
Epiphytes, climbers and ferns cover the trunks and branches of old rainforest trees. These plants create a home for many rainforest animals and insects. Before the rains arrive the plants shrink and droop, reducing their growth in an attempt to stay alive.
Around them on the forest floor the giant King fern, Angiopteris evecta’s massive fronds bow low over the debris of fallen leaves. Along the banks of the shrunken creek, the little selaginella ferns have shrivelled and appear to be dead.
As summer days continue the heat and humidity increases and the life giving water remains captured in the humid atmosphere.
Now the clouds, heavy with water, have released their burden and rain is filling the creeks and refreshing the rainforest.
The powerful electrical storms of the northern Monsoon have arrived with bangs and blasts providing the ingredients to transforms the thirsty rainforest with a massive spurt of growth.
The leaves in the rainforest canopy swell and once again shade the delicate ferns and small plants of the understorey. The shrivelled selaginella which appeared dead during the dry are refreshed as their brown fronds are green again and their frilly fingers extend to catch every raindrop.
Thirstily the giant King Fern sucks up the water into the stalk of its long fronds and, as if pulled by a hydraulic force, once again straightens its back to stand tall along the now gushing creek bank.
The storm clouds open every afternoon and cool nitrogen laden water spills over the forest canopy.
Red, orange, pink and purple leaf buds have emerged in a frenzy of growth, and the sun no longer reaches the forest floor and the juvenile trees must wait again before they grow a little more.
It’s the Monsoon season in the Wet Tropics Rainforest of Far North Queensland and it’s a signal for many insect and animal species to breed. The rainforest throbs with the mating calls of frogs, the dainty green tree frog calls ‘waaaaa’ in waves of sound. The large whitelipped tree frog chortles for hours, drowning out the call of all other frogs.
The mating call of the singing cicadas is a constant summer background noise in Far North Queensland. The long drone like call is made by the male to attract a female.
Once mating occurs she scratches an opening in the bark of a tree, deposits her eggs and completes her life cycle.
Insects multiply quickly in the hothouse conditions. Mosquitoes, whitefly, mealy bugs, grasshoppers and many more, creating a feast for lady bugs, hover flies, spiders and praying mantis.
Winged termites take to the air in search of new sites to invade and consume.
The drumming rumble of the cassowaries threaten other birds to leave their territory as the new stripy chicks are growing.
Flashes of brilliant blue, green and red flutter rapidly about the rainforest trees. The butterflies have emerged from their cocoons and search for the nectar in a flower or the cool moisture held in a shallow pool. Soon the females will be ready to lay eggs on their host plants and begin their renewal.
Nearby, mother crocodile lurks guarding her nest of eggs. She carefully built the nest of sedges and formed them into a mound on the low banks of the river. Soon the hatchlings will break out of their shell and the mother will gather them gently in her powerful jaws and carry them to the safety of the water.
As the rivers swell into their flood plains with the gathering monsoon, ratty and his water loving mates will move into drier abodes, where they are not often welcomed.
The Wet Season is a time of change in Wet Tropic Gardens of Far North Queensland.