Off to chill I go

The blog’s been quiet since my last posting, but the thoughts have certainly been stewing. I’ve been run off my feet chasing down little brown skinks to photograph. My goal of seeing 50 new reptiles this year, taking my life-list to 350 Australian reptiles, is well and truly in my sights. I’ll try to post a new story weekly to catch up on where I’m at. We can start with a trip to Chillagoe in July, with my running total of Australian reptiles clocking in at 334 at the start of the trip.

A friend (let’s call him SMZ4) and I took a weekend trip up to Chillagoe, west of Cairns. We had a number of species we wanted to see over the weekend – some of which he’d already seen, some of which I’d already seen, but enough new stuff to keep us both interested. We headed out through Mareeba, stopping briefly to catch up with some locals.

Mareeba rock-wallaby (Petrogale mareeba)

Squatter pigeon (Geophaps scripta peninsulae)

Tommy roundhead (Diporiphora australis) showing gular fold

We arrived in Chillagoe in the late afternoon and got straight to work, poking around at the foot of a limestone karst formation. We soon turned up the three species we were hoping for in this area.

Slender mulch-skink (Glaphyromorphus cracens)

Chevert’s gecko (Nactus cheverti)

Cape York mulch-skink (Glaphyromorphus crassicaudus crassicaudus)

My friend (let’s call him Zozizzle) claims to have also spotted a collared whipsnake (Demansia torquata), a species that would have been a reptick for me, but the beast in question somehow managed to evade capture (or was shooed away to spite me).

As night fell, we headed to a nearby creek to look for Macleay’s water snakes (Enhydris polylepis). It didn’t take long before one of us (let’s call him Stewart) spotted one resting on the bottom of the creek. We watched it for a bit, scratching our heads and wondering how best to photograph a snake two metres underwater without an underwater housing. The snake eventually simplified matters by swimming off and out of sight. I went back to the car and donned my snorkelling gear in order to get a look at the creatures underwater. I couldn’t photograph them, but it would still be cool to see them doing their thing in the relatively clear waterway. I managed to see one other snake from my watery vantage point, while Zozizzle got a glimpse of one from the surface. We were pretty happy having seen three in one night, but were going to remain unsatisfied until we’d been able to photograph one. We called it quits and set up camp in an isolated paddock. I woke up terrified in the middle of the night, convinced that aliens were attacking my swag, only to realise that the noise was just a rodent running across the flyscreen of my swag.

The next day we got up and continued poking around the general area for more interesting beasties.

Fire-tailed skink (Morethia taeniopleura)

Northern bar-lipped skink (Eremiascincus isolepis)

That night we headed back to the waterway to try our luck again. We came across another two water snakes in equally unphotographable positions, before we finally came across one that was happy to pose for us.

Macleay’s water snake (Enhydris polylepis)

Macleay’s water snake (Enhydris polylepis)

Running total of Australian reptiles I’ve seen: 337

Repticks:
Glaphyromorphus cracens
Glaphyromorphus crassicaudus
Nactus cheverti