St Peters Billabong sits within St Peters Park and adjacent to the Torrens Linear Park It is situated between the River Torrens, between eighth Avenue and River Street at St Peters.
The site was recovered, previously being a dump, and has been restored as an urban wetlands habitat providing a home to a variety of native birds, insects and reptiles. Interesting fact Mary, one of our participants was involved in some of the plantings at this location. The habitat consists of River red gums Desert Ash and a Chilean pepper tree.
Prior to visiting the park, there were 110 species recorded within the project boundaries, this increased to 143 at the time of writing this blog an impressive increase of 33 species or 30% of the previous total The weather was cooler and we expected few invertebrates and potentially several species of fungi. As with our previous excursion to the park, unfortunately, there were only a few waterbirds in the park with only thirteen species represented. The group were very enthusiastic with on of the first significant observation was a large number of caterpillars of Boisduval's Autumn Moth's Oenosandra boisduvalii hiding under the bark of several eucalyptus trees on the edge of the billabong. While several people made observations of different individuals it appears that only one person uploaded their observation.
Caterpillars of Boisduval's Autumn Moth Oenosandra boisduvalii were found under the bark of a gum tree along the edge of the billabong (above, picture by Stephen Fricker). An Adult female Boisduval's Autumn Moth Oenosandra boisduvalii was observed in St Peters Billabong in late April 2021 by Thábata Muta (below).
The park was damp and the edge of the billabong had many fungi present, both on wood, trees and in the soil. The group found this intriguing, and the use of a mirror to make an observation of the other underside in addition to the top of the fungi as well check out all the Fungi observations here.