Stewed Thoughts

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)

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Some pics from a quick (and decidedly cold) trip to Alpha in central Queensland.

Curl snake (Suta suta)

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On returning to Alice Springs after my two week stint in the Tanami Desert, I had a spare weekend. Knowing that Ryan likes nothing better than to drive huge distances to find little brown lizards, we jumped in the car and drove to Coober Pedy. I was after three repticks, but only managed to get two. Instead of finding the gibber dragon I was after, we ended up finding a gibberbird. Still a tick for me, but with slightly more feathers than I’d hoped.

Timid slider (Lerista timida)

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Since my big trip to Alice Springs (13 repticks) and Melbourne (5 repticks) earlier this year, the only beast hunting I’d done was an accidental trip to Sydney (one reptick) and a quick dash out to the Brigalow Belt (one reptick). I decided that it must be time to smash out some new critters, so April saw me flying back to Alice Springs and heading up to the Tanami Desert for two weeks. I got to poke around in a variety of habitats, included that perennial favourite: red sand and spinifex.

Spinifex sand plain

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After my close call with trying to reach my goal of seeing 50 new Australian reptile species in 2010, I decided to start early in 2011. With the new year just days old, a mate and I packed his car and drove out to Alice Springs. He had to get back work, so we didn’t have much time to look for beasts along the way. We did, of course, stop to investigate anything on the road that looked interesting, be it dead, alive, or in between.

Dead shield-snouted brown snake (Pseudonaja aspidorhyncha) seen on the Stuart Highway in South Australia.

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The other week I tried to drive to the shops to get some milk. I took a wrong turn and ended up in Sydney. Always one to make the most of a bad situation, I decided to poke around and see what I could find.

Broad-tailed gecko (Phyllurus platurus)

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Recently, a friend of mine from Townsville visited Brisbane. It’s not unreasonable to assume that most friends of mine are also interested in wildlife, and Gus is certainly no exception. We decided to spend a few days out in the brigalow belt to track down some elusive critters, such as Bynoe’s geckos and apostlebirds. Before we went out to the brigalow belt, we spent a night in the mountains looking for bits and pieces. The only interesting bits and pieces we found were some stoney creek frogs (Litoria wilcoxi)

Stoney creek frog (Litoria wilcoxi) pair in amplexus

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