A colleague of mine has recently welcomed some new snakes into the world.
Hatchling eastern brown snake (Pseudonaja textilis) siblings. One clutch can produce hatchlings with a variety of patterns and colours.
I’m a repticker (as my recent Quest for 250 saga shows). I have a list of reptiles that I’ve seen. I like adding to my list. I woke up one day in early October and realised I’d never seen Cyclodomorphus venustus. This both shocked and worried me. What if I got hit by a bus today? Was I really happy knowing that I could die at any moment without seeing what is unarguably the most immaculate of all the Cyclodomorphuses? Of course not. But what to do about it? Jumping out of bed, I grabbed my phone and dialed.
“Hello, Jonno speaking.” My good friend and mentor, Jonno Lucas from Educational Reptile Displays, answered the phone. I knew if anyone could find me my target species, it was Jonno.
“Jonno! It’s me, Stewart”, said me, Stewart. “I’ve just realised that I’ve never seen Cyclodomorphus venustus. Can you help?”
“No worries. I know a spot. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
After grabbing my swag, my camera gear and three kilograms of gummi bears, I waited out the front of my house. Thirty-six hours later, Jonno arrived. I tossed my gear in the tray of his ute and climbed aboard.
“So where’s this spot?”, I asked.
“About 100 kilometres west of Windorah.”
“Windorah?!?? That’s 1300 kilometres away! It’ll take at least…” I did some quick calculations in my head. “…14 hours to get there.”
Jonno dumped the clutch and said “That sounds like a challenge.”
Eight and a half hours later we pulled up at the Western Star hotel in Windorah. These outback pubs are well known for having young, attractive, female European backpackers working at them. Sure enough, there was a cute young Irish girl smiling at us from behind the bar. We’d have to turn the testosterone up to eleven. I ordered a can of creamy soda and Jonno ordered a watermelon vodka cruiser. Jonno already has a devastatingly attractive girlfriend, so it was all up to me. Just as well, as I can’t compete with his ponytail and earrings. The Irish lass had been in Australian for just a few weeks before getting the job in Windorah. Unfortunately, she’d been hit on by every guy who’d entered the pub since she arrived and as such, the Irish lass wasn’t in the least bit interested in talking to me. Story of my life, really. At least I still had Jonno.
We downed our drinks and then hit the road again. It was still a few hours before sunset and it was still toasty warm outside. The plan was to drive out of town and see what we could see, before camping overnight and getting to our ultimate destination the next morning. We saw a number of critters on or beside the road.
Yellow-spotted monitor (Varanus panoptes)
Last night I went up to Mt Glorious with some friends to see what we could see. We walked down to a set of waterfalls. On the way down we saw lots of great barred frogs (Mixophyes fasciolatus) and a golden-crowned snake (Cacophis squamulosus). We were heading down to the waterfall to look for Litoria chloris and L. pearsoniana. We ended up seeing something much more interesting than either species by itself.
Rough-scaled snake (Tropidechis carinatus) eating a red-eyed tree frog (Litoria chloris)
This is the third story relating to my quest to take my lifetime list of Australian reptile species to 250 before the end of 2009. For previous instalments, read the introduction, the first story, the second story and the second-and-a-half story.
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After the success I had with finding species 248 and 249, the dismal failure of my attempt to find species 250 was a rude awakening. I knew the first two were too good to be true. Not to worry. There were still a fair few local species that I had a good chance of finding. Unfortunately, if I wanted to keep my inheritance I’d have to deal with the little annoyance that is Christmas. Family committments took up Christmas Day, plus Boxing Day and the un-named following day (known, this year, simply as Sunday). During this time I did manage to see some eastern water dragons (Physignathus lesueurii lesueurii) and a saw-shelled turtle (Wollumbinia latisternum), but neither of these were new species for me. When Christmas was over, my search would have to continue.
Today I had planned to drive north of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. There are a few spots up there that I’ve been meaning to check out for a few interesting species. But a trip to the Bureau of Meteorology’s website quickly put those plans on hold. There was a lot of rain in the areas I wanted to visit. Not just rain, but large thunderstorms by the look of it. I could have always driven up there and hoped the weather was better when I arrived, but I didn’t really want to waste two hours driving up and two hours driving back down. Today the Sunshine Coast was not lviing up to its name.
While biding my time and looking at random files on my computer, I came across a journal article describing five new species of skink. One of the newly described species was Lampropholis amicula. This was one of the species I thought I might be able to find locally, but I still thought I’d have to drive for an hour or so to get to some suitable habitat. After reading the article I was surprised to learn that part of the type series of this species had been collected in a patch of bush just around the corner from me. Though it was raining at my place, it wasn’t pouring. I scrapped my plans to go to the (decidedly lacking in) Sunshine Coast and headed to Daisy Hill Conservation Park.
Daisy Hill Conservation Park sign (with a reflective self-portrait as a little present for the ladies).
This is the second-and-a-half story relating to my quest to take my lifetime list of Australian reptile species to 250 before the end of 2009. For previous instalments, read the introduction, the first story and the second story.
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I just needed to find one more species to achieve my goal of seeing 250 Australian reptile species (over my lifetime) before the year ended. I decided to go up to Mount Coot-tha on the north side of Brisbane to try my luck at finding Oedura jacovae. Long story short, I didn’t find it. I did manage to see some dtella geckos (Gehyra sp.), lots of Asian house geckos (Hemidactylus frenatus), some dwarf sedge frogs (Litoria fallax) and the ubiquitous cane toad (Bufo marinus). Species number 250 had eluded me. The search would have to continue.
Eastern sedge frog (Litoria fallax)
This is the second story relating to my quest to take my lifetime list of Australian reptile species to 250 before the end of 2009. For previous instalments, read the introduction and the first story.
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I was on a high after the success of my mission to find Lampropholis couperi (species 248 out of my target of 250). The next species on my list was the eastern crevice skink (Egernia mcpheei). Split off from Egernia saxatilis in Wells and Wellington’s 1984 paper, Egernia mcphee is found along the Great Dividing range in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. A couple of my friends had recently seen this species on a walk in the Binna Burra section of Lamington National Park, so this was where I’d planned to start searching. Ryan and I headed down on Wednesday to try our luck. As we started driving up the mountain, the heavens opened up. Really opened up. We could hardly see the road in front of us. This wasn’t looking very promising, but we weren’t going to let a little water get in the way. We pressed on. When I was trying to convince Ryan to accompany me on today’s mission, I told him that it would be just a short walk. As we drove closer to the park I thought I should tell him that it would actually involve a 10km return walk. I personally don’t mind walking 10km for a little brown skink, but Ryan doesn’t really share my enthusiasm (or aerobic capacity).
We arrived at the park and stopped in at the visitor centre to see if they thought the rain would clear any time soon. We chatted to the friendly volunteer visitor centre lady for about half an hour, during which time it continued to rain steadily. The rain did, however, eventually stop. I looked out the window to see sunshine and a large, black skink.
Land mullet (Egernia major)
The plain-backed sunskink, Lampropholis couperi. ‘Coup’ to his friends. Found in rainforests on mountain ranges from about Rockhampton south to Mt Nebo. To most, a little brown skink. To me, species number 248 on my life-list. I didn’t muck around. I went straight to the source of the skink’s patronym: Patrick Couper from the Queensland Museum. Patrick told me that his namesake skink is common along rainforest walking tracks up at Mt Nebo, on the northern outskirts of Brisbane. Sorted. I had a target and a destination.
Mt Nebo sign
After my last fauna survey, I tallied up my list to count all the reptile species I’ve seen over the last couple of years. I was surprised to find that I’d seen only 244 species*. That may sound like a lot, but I’ve got a long way to go given that there are about 923 species of reptile currently recognised in Australia. 244 is such an untidy number. I’ve decided to try to take my tally to 250 species before the end of the year. This leaves just twelve days to tick six species. A challenge, certainly, but one I’m happy to take on.
Without even leaving the house I managed to tick three new species. I’d taken some pictures of a gecko on a recent field trip, but I didn’t get around to identifying the species. Today I got out the books and studied the photos. Gehyra purpurascens: tick!
245: Gehyra purpurascens
The musings of Stewart Macdonald, an Australian wildlife ecologist.