Thanks, everyone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by millertime89
Thanks for sharing the pictures CrocDoc, I'm jealous of where you live, Morelia, Varanid, and Croc central.
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That's why I moved here. Originally to do research on crocodiles (as per my online nickname, first given to me by my siblings back in the pre-digital days of letter writing. It's how they used to address the envelopes) but now I spend a lot of time out looking at wild monitors, just for fun, and have zillions of photographs. Unfortunately, I have to spend at least some time inside if I'm ever to get anything done. It's also been raining a lot lately, so there's not much in the way of varanid activity to see at the moment.
On the 31st of January I celebrated 31 years in Australia, as I originally grew up in Canada. You'd think that after 31 years the gloss would wear off, but I still get as excited about seeing wild reptiles as I always have. Just yesterday I caught a lizard (a bar-sided forest or rock skink,
Eulamprus tenuis, around 20cm long) in the cockroach trap I had put in one of my kitchen cupboards (a live trap, so the lizard was released unharmed). It's not often I find them inside so I got a bit of a kick out of it.
There's a national park around 35 minutes' drive from here at which I spend most of my time watching wild lace monitors. There are a number of animals there that I can recognise on sight by their patterns, three of which I've been watching for almost 12 years, since I first started keeping monitors at home.
Here's a photograph I took in December. I first saw this animal quite a number of years ago, although it's not one of the three 12-year 'familiars'.
My most recent wild lace monitor photos were taken last weekend, when I travelled to the south coast property of some friends for a wedding. Saturday (exactly a week ago) was an unbelievable day for monitors, as it had been cool and rainy the day before so the warm morning sun had the place crawling with monitors. Despite the day being full of obligatory social events (bridal family lunch and the afternoon wedding) I saw no less than six different monitors cruise within 100 metres of the house and another four or five on short excursions down paths and tracks elsewhere on the property. Normally I just photograph the monitors themselves (like the photograph posted above) and this is another typical example:
Last weekend, though, I decided to take a few shots at a slightly wider angle so one could see where the animals were relative to the house. Here's one of the monitors (same one as the photo above) with the chook-house (chicken coup) in the background.
Here's a shot of a yellow-bellied water skink (
Eulamprus heatwolei) on the wood pile.
The next two shots were taken at a wider angle so you could see what was in the background.
Shot 1, focusing on the skink:
Shot 2, focusing on the background. Look to the right of the woodpile, next to the base of the tree:
Shot 2, from above, cropped:
I also took a video of a red-bellied blacksnake,
Pseudechis porphyriacus, looking for mice in the chook-house itself, with another water skink watching it warily from on top of the laying boxes. That'll have to wait until I have editing time before I can upload it to youtube, which may be a later in the year.
Very educational. I never knew about any of this stuff before now! 
Hybrid Mode
