We found it in flower in the middle of November in Woowookaung Regional Park, on a sunny north-facing slope not far from the lookout.

The plants were less than knee-high, but they grow taller in other places. Heath milkwort is not a common plant in the Ballarat district, although it is found at quite a few widespread forested places. Populations are usually small.

To botanists it is Comesperma ericinum, and, despite its appearance, it is not a member of the pea family, instead belonging to the family containing plants often known as milkworts.

Its flowers, although with spreading "wings" when fully open, are not quite the same shape as those of most pea-flowers. The leaves are small and linear.

It grows mostly in open, lightly-forested situations, or on the sunny edges of forest. In more southern parts of Victoria it grows in damper heathland.

Also in the same genus (Comesperma) is the popular love creeper, an earlier-flowering twining and scrambling plant with eye-catching blue flowers.

The milkworts are a family of plants found throughout the world. The odd name is an old- English one, arising from the belief that cows eating the European plant produced more milk.

Other flowers of late spring and early summer include showy podolepis and trailing shaggy- pea - the first like a large dandelion and the second a bright apricot-coloured trailing pea with wider, richer-green leaves than most of our local pea plants.

Blue pincushion and magenta storksbill are another couple of showy wildflowers on display at this time of the year, as the main wildflower season concludes.

Square-tailed kite, brush bronzewing, blue-winged parrot and satin flycatcher were some of the more interesting birds found at Nerrina last weekend on the monthly outing of Birdlife Ballarat.

The square-tailed kite is a large hawk that visits the Ballarat district in small numbers each year. There was a report last month at Clunes. It is mostly a spring and summer visitor.

The brush bronzewing is an uncommon resident in several places locally, but is not always easy to find.

The blue-winged parrot is another bird that is seldom easy to find, even though it is recorded from many places in the Ballarat district, from open country to dense forest.

From Indonesia, the satin flycatcher migrates here each spring to nest. It can be reliably found in some of the region's denser streamside vegetation.

I love this grass, but I don't know its proper name. Can you tell me?

P.C., Waubra.

Officially this is large quaking-grass, but it has a few unofficial names, such as shell grass, shivery grass and blowfly grass.

Briza maxima is its scientific name and it is an introduced and often weedy grass, although highly ornamental. It is rather short-lived, germinating in autumn, seeding in late spring and early summer, then dying off in mid-summer. Large quaking-grass is a native of the Mediterranean region.

It is very common in the Ballarat district, mostly occurring under trees on roadsides and in open forests.

It is sometimes cultivated in Europe for its ornamental appearance, but it seems to be too common here for it to be specially grown in gardens.

Infestations of this grass can impede the growth and regeneration of small indigenous plants. There is also a lesser quaking-grass.

Email questions and photos to rthomas@vic.australis.com.au, or send to Roger Thomas at The Courier, PO Box 21, Ballarat, 3353.

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