A few photographs of my critters - part 1

[crocdoc]

I made a last minute decision to head out into the bush today - an excuse to step away from the computer and clear my head. It was well worth it.

Visiting my nearest favourite spot, I managed to find a very familiar lace monitor, Varanus varius, that I call 'Bluey', within minutes. I've been photographing Bluey for almost 12 years now and he looked like an old monitor when I first saw him. Now he's looking really old. He hasn't grown at all in the 12 years and I strongly suspect that he was already reasonably old the first time I saw him, given that he was adult sized (it takes them around 8-10 years to get his size in the wild) and not a young looking animal (which is what one would expect from an 8-10 year old animal). Depending on whether my guess is correct or not, he's somewhere between 20-35 years old, if not older. Personally, I'd be surprised if he was less than 30.

These days he's even more scarred up than before and his skin looks terrible.




Unfortunately, this season may be his last, as his right forelimb is badly swollen and he can barely walk.


It will be a bummer to see him go. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I've written him off before and he's reappeared.

Over the next few weeks is the time of year that heath monitors, Varanus rosenbergi, start nesting. I thought I'd check out some familiar mounds, just out of curiosity, and was surprised to find some early pre-nesting test digs.

This mound had three holes - two visible in this shot.


All three holes visible in this shot.


...to be continued in part II

[crocdoc]

Elsewhere on my walk I surprised a male heath monitor in the middle of the track. Unlike lace monitors, heath monitors often freeze when they first see people, rather than bolt, so the two of us had a bit of a standoff while I very slowly pulled my camera out to snap a quick shot. This is exactly how I found him. There was a bit of a 'rabbit in the headlights' look about him and he didn't seem quite sure what to do.


I started walking towards him slowly and he, in turn, slowly turned around and started to walk away. I took some shots - not great shots, but okay as 'voucher' shots, anyway.



As soon as he hit cover he sped up and scuttled off, but I followed him and saw him disappear behind a sandstone slab. I carefully walked up to the edge of the slab and looked down - I could see his tail and his head, but he soon tilted his head up to look at me and disappeared under the rock. I missed getting a shot of his head, but I got these two shots of his tail.

One with my boot (intentional)


And his tail


It turns out that the sandstone slab was concave underneath and he had a burrow heading right under it.


On the way back to the car I found another familiar lace monitor. One I call 'Son of Bluey' or 'Junior' because of his resemblance to Bluey. I'm convinced he's of the same bloodline, as he looks almost identical to Bluey when he was younger and the lace monitors in this area show a fair bit of variation.



...to be continued in part III...

[crocdoc]

On the drive home I stopped to photograph another test dig in a termite mound on the side of the road. One day I'll get into trouble for craning my neck while driving at high speeds. For something that certain people (who pride themselves on their field skills) claim don't exist, these scars can't be too subtle if I can find them on the far side of a mound, on the other side of the road, while driving a car at 90km/hr.



Telltale scratches around the holes. I photographed these because someone recently accused me of being 'arrogant' for asserting holes like these were made by monitors. The person in question didn't come up with an alternative mysterious hole-making-monster, so I'm guessing they must have been made by low flying miniature planes or (BarelyBreathing's suggestion) unicorns. Maybe unicorns use these mounds like pencil-sharpeners?



I'm going to finish this off with a non-monitor (non-reptile, even) photograph. I'm not a macropod/potoroid expert, But I think these prints belong to a tiny swamp wallaby, Wallabia bicolor, fresh out of the pouch. Either that or a potoroo with fat feet. I should have put something in the photograph for scale, as they were really cute.

[millertime89]

oh to live in the land of varanids and morelia... Thanks for sharing man, I always appreciate your pictures!
Ever considered "adopting" son of bluey and ensuring his lineage carries on? Or is that something that is frowned upon/illegal in Oz?

[crocdoc]

Aside from it being both illegal and frowned upon, Kyle, I find the idea personally abhorrent. Don't take that the wrong way - my guess is that you would, too, once you saw monitors wandering around in the wild. It's one thing to raise a captive bred monitor in the confines of captivity, but the idea of taking an adult animal out of the wild, one accustomed to moving several kilometres a day, and putting it into a box makes me cringe. They are such active, curious animals it would be cruel.

Aside from all of that, I am sure Son of Bluey does alright on his own with the ladies, without my help. Removing him from the wild would stop his lineage (from a Darwinian sense), no matter how many offspring he produced in captivity, anyway.

[infernalis]

Originally Posted by crocdoc

once you saw monitors wandering around in the wild. It's one thing to raise a captive bred monitor in the confines of captivity, but the idea of taking an adult animal out of the wild, one accustomed to moving several kilometres a day, and putting it into a box makes me cringe. They are such active, curious animals it would be cruel.

That sounds almost like what my friend in Africa says about Savs and Niles.

She calls it "Poaching for pets"

[millertime89]

Originally Posted by crocdoc

Aside from it being both illegal and frowned upon, Kyle, I find the idea personally abhorrent. Don't take that the wrong way - my guess is that you would, too, once you saw monitors wandering around in the wild. It's one thing to raise a captive bred monitor in the confines of captivity, but the idea of taking an adult animal out of the wild, one accustomed to moving several kilometres a day, and putting it into a box makes me cringe. They are such active, curious animals it would be cruel.

Aside from all of that, I am sure Son of Bluey does alright on his own with the ladies, without my help. Removing him from the wild would stop his lineage (from a Darwinian sense), no matter how many offspring he produced in captivity, anyway.

No worries. I couldn't tell if he was an adult or a juvie. Scale is a hard thing to judge by a picture and as I'm not the most familiar with the species I went with my gut since he looked pretty small.

[BarelyBreathing]

Grrr, those nasty unicorns always make expert field researchers confused. Keep watching for them, crocdoc, and you will find the real culprites. Shoot those unicorns!

By the way, what great shots. Son of Bluey is a gorgeous monitor. I would love to photograph him. Bluey looks rough, but as sad as that is to see, it's a happy thing, too, to get to see a wild animal live to such a great age.

[infernalis]

Originally Posted by BarelyBreathing

By the way, what great shots. Son of Bluey is a gorgeous monitor. I would love to photograph him. Bluey looks rough, but as sad as that is to see, it's a happy thing, too, to get to see a wild animal live to such a great age.

And people think you and I are crazy for wanting to mimic nature as closely as possible with our captives.

[crocdoc]

Originally Posted by millertime89

I couldn't tell if he was an adult or a juvie. Scale is a hard thing to judge by a picture and as I'm not the most familiar with the species I went with my gut since he looked pretty small.

That's fair enough - there was nothing in the photograph for scale. Son of Bluey is almost the same size as Bluey and is around 1.6-1.7m in length.

Originally Posted by BarelyBreathing

Son of Bluey is a gorgeous monitor. I would love to photograph him.

He's pretty photogenic, so I usually try to snap shots of him when I see him. I'll have to go back through my photographs to find out when I first saw him, but it was at least four years ago. Of the photographs I have of him uploaded to my photo hosting site, the oldest goes back to 2009 but I know I shot video of him before that.

This is him on Australia Day 2009


...and again this past December. I was with a visiting American herper when I took this shot - he'd been to Australia before but hadn't seen any lace monitors, so I promised him we'd find some if we had a sunny day while he was in town. We scored a few times over.

[BarelyBreathing]

Yep, I'm a bad guy because I feed a natural diet to my animals.

[crocdoc]

That's okay. I'm 'repetitive' and 'non-curious' because I let my female lace monitor reproduce successfully year after year and don't want to experiment with her to the point of reproductive failure.
Kingsnake.com - Herpforum - RE: Nest box results for Frank.

By the way, I've gone with the unicorn explanation for the holes, to avoid being called 'arrogant' again by varanusaurus for assuming they were made by monitors.
Kingsnake.com - Herpforum - more mystery holes

[millertime89]

I'm curious to see how that second thread turns out. In my experience people like him will just ignore it, but I hope he doesn't.

[crocdoc]

Originally Posted by millertime89

I'm curious to see how that second thread turns out. In my experience people like him will just ignore it, but I hope he doesn't.

I have absolutely no desire to waste more time on that useless 'discussion' over there. I posted those photographs simply because I thought it was funny that I'd been talking about the two types of 'mysterious hole-making monsters' that dig into mounds coincidentally at the very same times of the year that lace monitors and heath monitors nest, forgetting that it was getting to the latter time of year and there were new holes to photograph. I have dozens of other, older photographs of lace monitor nest holes (what the whole discussion was originally about) on a hard drive that simply weren't uploaded to my photo-hosting site when I posted the photographs of termite mounds to start with.

Them unicorns sure is busy, huh.

Varanusaurus cracks me up. It's one thing to be an Arizona-minion and admit it (that has actually made me think more highly of Moe, funnily enough), it's another to be one and deny it. His failure to make the logical connection between photographs of holes in termite mounds and photographs of monitors in the process of making identical holes, given that the original challenge was "if they nested in termite mounds, there'd be scars", has unfortunately made me jump to the conclusion that he is dim, until proven otherwise. Comparing those photographs to the famous 'lace monitor in a tree' photo (long story - essentially it's a photograph showing absolutely nothing definitive, but it comes with a 'just so' story that's convincing only to the inexperienced) bolstered that impression.

[millertime89]

sigh... I need to get down there sometime.