Coobina - Wildlife and Stygofauna

Such a busy time of year conducting fauna surveys for the mining industry, Coobina last week, Woodie Woodie this week and Port Headland next week. Will it last, seeing the government has recently announced a huge increase in mining taxes? Up to 40%, so miners aren't very happy and may cut back on projects.

Here are some pictures from the Coobina site survey east of Newman.

The survey site was a beautiful area, but birding was hard at this time of year, especially after a long hot and dry summer. The most exciting sight was a flock of 6 Ground Cuckoo-shrikes at the mine area.

A nice area to the north of the survey site.

This area was the home of a pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles. You can see the nest at the base of a tree on the right hand side of the picture.

The gorge area in the early morning.

A lot of trees in the local area had the scars from aborigines making shields. Some were recent ones made with metal axes, such as this one, and some were very old. This poor tree had 3 taken from it, resulting in it's death from ring-barking.

Collecting stygofauna from bore-holes was also the aim of this visit. There were 10 bores to sample with most being 80 metres deep and at most of them you need 8 samples (for small bore-holes - 14 samples). That's a lot of rope to be dropped and pulled up by hand. That's at least about six and half kilometres of rope to be pulled!

The stygofauna is caught in fine mesh funnels with a collection tube at the bottom.

If you want to know about the interesting animals called stygofauna, see this site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stygofauna

Some of the wonderful patterns in the clay.

Shame it's just a holding pond for waste from the Chromite milling plant.

Even here at the holding pond life finds a way to live, with a beautiful Solanum species growing on the edge.

Camballin Fauna Survey Part 3

Night spot-light surveys can be very exciting or very boring, depending on how many animals you see. Hour after hour can be spent travelling down dusty tracks with no animals in sight. How many are out may depend on many factors. Season, temperature, moon, wind or sometimes no known reason.

It's a good night. We came across this Bush Stone-curlew on a lonely track.

A species of spider that we haven't seen before, living on big termite mounds.

Beautiful patterns on these spiders.

A female Red Kangaroo and joey were feeding near one of our trap sites.

A fantastic frog of arid areas, a Desert Spadefoot (Notaden nichollsi).

They come up when it rains, but when it drys they burrow vertically down with their large shovel-like feet.

A beautiful glossy Moon Snake (Furina ornata) that has just killed a skink for his dinner. I always get a buzz from catching this lovely snake.

Next morning it's off to check the trap sites again.

One of our trap sites in a woodland with termite mounds. An interesting observation was that many of the termite mounds had been taken over by armies of small black ants. Is this a natural event or some type of man-made environmental change? Old big termite mounds are extremely important homes to many of the local animals, so their loss could be devastating.

An early morning catch, a Northern Spiny-tailed Gecko.

Another lovely Glaphyromorphus (Eremiascincus) isolepis.

A huge Spiny-tailed Monitor (Varanus acanthurus). One of the largest we have ever seen. Fantastic tail!

Some animals come out in great numbers of certain days and often we don't know why. This day was a Mulga Snake (Pseudechis australis) day, with a number caught at our trap sites, including this one in the grass I almost stepped on. At another trap site, one of our zoologists was bitten and had to be rushed to Derby hospital. He was ok luckily. Snakes can control how much venom is injected and often just bite you to tell you to go away. Venom is an expensive substance for a snake to make, so they don't want to waste it!

He's a great animal! About 2.5 metres long.

Another predator on the hunt, a big Yellow-spotted Monitor (Varanus panoptes).

A nice big fellow, growing up to 1.5 metres.

So ended a great fauna survey at a very interesting site. A mix of Kimberley and Pilbara animal species.

Camballin Fauna Survey Part 2

Just back from my survey this week in the east Pilbara at Coobina. Here are some more pictures of the last Camballin survey.

Fauna surveys are not just about trapping animals, but also involve bird and habitat suveys. At the Camballin site there were still a few billabongs that had water in them from the wet season. These Australian White Ibis were feeding on the easy pickings in the drying waterhole.

One of the bigger billabongs used by the local cattle, which was also a area for Whiskered Tern, Royal Spoonbill, Glossy Ibis and Brolgas. 

A survey of the local creek, which flows inland from the Fitzroy River barriage dam. Small noisy colonies of Black Flying Foxes and Rufous Night-herons were found along here.

Looking like something from Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a big fig tree pushes through the sandstone rocks of the creek.

The creek narrows, but still flows inland towards a failed agricultural project from the 1960's on the Camballin floodplain.

At one of our trap sites we found six of these weird small mounds about 3 metres in diameter with a small pile of sticks in the centre. We still don't know what made them. Birds? Crocodiles? Humans?

Night spot-lighting surveys are also an important element of fauna surveys, as most Australian animals are nocturnal. We usually have our dinner outdoors near our survey site on these nights, such as this old dam that had about 400 Plumed Whistling-Ducks.

The whistling-ducks weren't too happy about us being at their dam, but didn't mind the local cattle coming in for their evening drink.

 

We often get a beautiful sunset to enjoy with our dinner!

 

At sunset the whistling-ducks formed small flocks and moved off to new wetlands and feeding areas for the night.

 

A beautiful sight to end the day!

Camballin Fauna Survey Part 1

So busy lately with fauna surveys. I just got back from two weeks at Cambillin in the Kimberleys and today I’m off to the east Pilbara for the week, then that area again next week, then possibly the west Pilbara in the following weeks. A week’s holiday in Borneo is planned for early June. It’s the nature of being a consultant Zoologist in WA, it’s often a flood or a drought in regards to work!

Here are some picture of the Camballin post-wet season survey, which again was hard work, but great fun.

Most of our 120 pit traps had survived the wet season, especially the trap sites on the red sand dunes. It was a lot harder to open the ones on the plains, as the mud had set over them like concrete.

Even after 3 days of hard work opening traps, Kirstin can still smile!

One of the great geckos we caught, Northern Spiny-tailed Gecko.

Great camo and a wonderful eye.

A tricky dragon to id, Diporiphora lalliae. It comes in many colour variations and there are lots of different dragon species in the area. Best way to id it, was to look for the folds on the throat area.

One of the other dragons of the site, Diporiphora pindan. This species has no throat fold. Dragons were hard work as you always had to count and look for certain folds. Check this site if you want to see the different dragons. http://www.canetoads.com.au/dragons.htm

Skinks were hard work too, as there are at least two in the area that look very similar. This one is Ctenotus inornatus.

A nice little face, but sometimes they loved to bite you.

A young Ctenotus saxatilis that will look very similar to the inornatus when he grows up.

A very big Glaphyromorphus (Eremiascincus) isolepis.

A very big fat tail that something has tried to bite off.

A beautiful legless lizard, Delma borea.

An easy dragon to id, a young Bearded Dragon.

Another difficult reptile to id, a gecko Gehyra punctata. Another gecko which looked very similar, Gehyra pilbara is also found at the survey area. Both species were caught and not in the habitats they are suppose to live in, making id harder. This guy caught on sand dunes is suppose the live in rocky gorges!

The survey site was a zone where many species meet. This Lerista bipes has many Lerista species that look like it, so you had to get the hand lens and count the upper lip scales, bipes has five. Always fun with a animal that can disappear in a teaspoon of sand and wriggles like crazy when caught! Even more fun with the babies as they are only an inch long.

After the wet, many little hatchlings were around. They are sometime harder to id than adults. This is a very young Diporiphora pindan.

Cute cheeky little fellow is suppose to follow the fence and fall into the bucket, not just climb over it!