Djarawong

Heavier than it looks and far harder to spot than a bird this colourful ought to be. It feeds high in the canopy and gives itself away with a low, rolling call rather than by showing itself.

Australia's smallest parrot, and hard to find. It feeds quietly on figs high in the canopy and nests in a hollow it chews out of soft dead wood.

Takes bees and wasps in flight, then beats the sting out against a branch before swallowing. It nests at the end of a tunnel dug into sandy ground.

Intelligent, social and extremely loud. Powerful beaks crack seeds and nuts open, and the feeding habit spreads them through the landscape.

Feeds on nectar and pollen with a brush-tipped tongue, and moves through the canopy in loud, fast screeching flocks.

Tiny, fast and drawn to anything flowering. It builds a hanging, teardrop-shaped nest with a side entrance and a little porch over it.

Flies low and fast through the understorey and feeds on fallen seed and fruit. This one was photographed at Mission Beach.

It does not sit on its eggs. It rakes a huge mound of leaf litter together and lets the heat of the rotting compost do the work. Mounds are reused for decades.

Works the dim middle layer of the forest, fanning its tail and snatching insects off leaves. The black mask around the eye is where the name comes from.

Noisy, fork-tailed, and willing to chase off birds several times its size. The spangles are iridescent flecks across the chest and throat.

Moves in flocks to whichever tree is fruiting and strips it. Between them, figbirds shift a great deal of seed around the forest.

Arrives in the Wet Tropics to breed and hangs hundreds of woven nests in a single tree. Glossy black, red-eyed, and never quiet.

Sits motionless on a trunk at about eye height, sometimes for hours. Unlike most lizards it does not bask; it lets its body temperature follow the forest's.

Australia's longest snake. It hunts the forest floor and the canopy after dark, and keeps the numbers of rats and pademelons in balance.

Named for exactly what you would guess. It works through the leaf litter at night hunting snails, with teeth shaped to crush their shells.

Lives in the creeks and pools that cross the block, feeding on insects, snails and fallen fruit. The saw edge is on the rear of the shell.

A small, solitary wallaby of the rainforest floor. It thumps a warning with one foot and disappears into the understorey, and it feeds on fallen fruit and leaves at the forest edge.

A native water rat with a white-tipped tail, working the creeks at dusk. It hunts in the water and carries what it catches back to the same spot on the bank to eat. One of very few Australian mammals that lives mostly in fresh water.

Digs small conical holes through the night hunting grubs and worms. All that digging turns and aerates the forest floor.

A carnivorous marsupial the size of a mouse, and a ferocious one. The males breed in a single frantic season and then die, all in the same few weeks.

Small, iridescent and common in the creeks that cross the block. Their presence is a useful signal: rainbowfish thin out quickly when water quality drops.

The palm Mission Beach is known for, with circular leaves up to two metres across. It grows in dense stands on wet lowland soil and holds deep shade over the forest floor.

Fringed white bell flowers first, then bright blue fruit that cassowaries eat and carry. It grows fast, which makes it one of the first trees planted when rainforest is being repaired.

Flowers straight off the branch in bright red powderpuffs, close to the ground where the forest is dark. New leaves come through pink before they harden to green.

Flowers directly on its own trunk and heavy limbs rather than out at the tips, which puts the nectar where flying foxes and possums can reach it.

Spreads through the understorey and fruits blue. Long used as food on this Country, and a good sign that the forest floor has not been cleared.

Not a fern and not a palm. Cycads are among the oldest seed plants still growing, and this one has been in these forests far longer than the flowering trees above it.