Sooner or later, one’s luck has to run out. Recently I’ve been having a great run, tracking down repticks left, right and centre. It should come as no surprise, then, that eventually I’d head away for a weekend and not find a single reptick. And yet I was surprised. I’m used to going to Arnhem Land and finding large pythons. Or tracking down dragons in Queensland that haven’t been seen in more than twenty years. I’m not used to failure. And, quite frankly, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I shouldn’t really complain. I should be thankful that I’m able to live a life that lets me travel to find and photograph amazing animals. Needless to say, this blog post won’t be documenting my 340th reptick…
One Friday afternoon I set off with two friends to spend the weekend exploring the Mitchell Grass Downs region around Hughenden, Winton and Richmond. This bioregion is characterised by the flat, seemingly endless plains of Mitchell grass.
Typical habitat in the Mitchell Grass Downs bioregion
We left town and managed to get just south of Hughenden before we pulled over and set up camp for the night. Wandering around, we managed to find a few reptiles active despite the low temperatures.
Eastern spiny-tailed gecko (Strophurus williamsi)
Tree dtella (Gehyra variegata)
Tree dtella (Gehyra variegata)
Bynoe’s gecko (Heteronotia binoei)
We spent all of the next day hoping to come across some of the diurnal reptiles that call these black soil plains home. The best we could muster up was a dead Demansia rimicola (if it had been alive, it would have been a reptick for me), plus a couple of fairly common and widespread lizards.
Eyrean earless dragon (Tympanocryptis tetraporophora)
Eastern striped skink (Ctenotus robustus)
Still seeing nothing on Sunday morning, we packed it in and headed north to Porcupine Gorge. We saw a couple of skinks running around the place, including Morethia taeniopleura and Cryptoblepharus pannosus. We could only spend a short period of time there, but it will definitely be somewhere I’ll get back to soon.
Porcupine Gorge
Porcupine Gorge
Ragged snake-eyed skink (Cryptoblepharus pannosus)
Running total of Australian reptiles I’ve seen: 339 (still)
No repticks. Not even a fleeting glimpse of one.
