Club Meeting, 21 October 2024 – Speaker John Moss: Mistletoes and the bird connection

Speaker: John Moss

Our speaker for the 21st October meeting is QNC member and naturalist, Dr John Moss, talking about mistletoes and their crucial relationship with birds. John is a retired medical practitioner with interests in cicada taxonomy, native freshwater fishes, moths and butterflies and their host plants, as well as Australian native plants generally, and has published in all these disciplines. He is a member of the Queensland Region of the Australian Native Plants Society (NPQ), a long-standing member of both The Queensland Naturalists’ Club Inc and the Entomological Society of Queensland, as well as a foundation member of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), the Australian and New Guinea Fishes Association (ANGFA) and of the Butterfly and Other Invertebrates Club Inc (BOIC). John currently lives in the Redlands east of Brisbane, on a small acreage block, where he grows his native plants and encourages the wildlife to come and eat them!

John’s illustrated talk will give an overview of the flowers and fruit of Australian mistletoes, the function birds have in utilising them and some of the moths and butterflies hosted by them. He will then discuss the range of birds involved and how and why they benefit from the availability of mistletoes. John has written many articles & papers and several books, including “The Mistletoes of Subtropical Qld, New South Wales and Victoria”, “Butterfly Host plants of SEQ and northern NSW”, as well as a chapter on insects in “A Nature Guide to North Stradbroke Island – Minjerribah” about the butterflies and the cicadas of the island. Copies of his books will be available for purchase at the October meeting (at $40 and $25 respectively each).