And the bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him, In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wonderous glory of the everlasting stars.

Banjo Paterson (1889)

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Pilbara Reptiles

Looks like the spring fauna survey work is starting to come in, with work in the Goldfields next week and a large fauna survey in the Kimberleys possibly next month. Most of our work over the past couple of years has been in the Pilbara region, so it will be nice to explore new areas and see some new animals hopefully.

Here are pictures of some of the reptiles we have caught on our recent Pilbara surveys.





A nice light-coloured Bearded Dragon (Pogona minor) found sunning himself on an old dead tree






A Western Hooded Scaly Foot (Pygopus nigriceps), a beautiful-looking harmless legless lizard. He is usually a nocturnal hunter of spiders.






A little story behind this rarely caught small snake (Vermicella snelli) often called a Bandy-Bandy. Brad, our herpatologist for this survey, who seems to have photos of just about every reptile in Western Australia, had never photographed this species. As luck would have it, his camera broke just before we caught this little snake. He was not happy!






A fine specimen of a Rosen's Snake (Suta fasciata), this snake isn't totally harmless, as a bite can cause severe swelling and pain.





This guy is totally harmless, a cute baby Centralian Blue-tongue (Tiliqua multifasciata). He seems to be sticking his tongue out to show us exactly what he thinks of being handled by humans.







A lovely adult Blue-tongue also sticking his tongue out. Often big skinks of the Tiliqua genus will open their mouth and stick out their coloured tongue as a defensive action, trying to scare off an attacker.

4 comments:

TonyC said...

Great shots Richard - I'm a sucker for reptiles too. Love the Blue-tongue shots

Richard King said...

Thanks Tony. I have to say, Blue-tongues are one of my favourites.

Wilma said...

That adult blue-tongue is gorgeous. I especially like the seam up its back with the offset stripes. Great post.

Unknown said...

Its just too bad the photo attatched to the suta fasciata info is actualy an antaresia perthensis