Cape York Peninsula – 2011

Winter is a depressing time for the hardcore herper. Some seek to pass the time away by searching for reptiles in their winter retreats; others make futile attempts to cruise the roads, hoping to find interesting snakes taking advantage of a sunny day. If you’re really desperate, you might even rake through soil for two days searching for small, brown, limb-reduced skinks. Whatever you might do, none of it offers the same thrill of a warm summer night; one full of snakes, a lack of sleep, and the lovely feeling of being drenched in sweat and covered in mosquitoes.

My previous series of 5 posts dealt with the many ways that I attempted to stay busy during the austral winter-dry season; however, I did omit one particular trip. In Australia, if you really want to escape the woes of winter, you have to head north. Far north. To a land with high nighttime temperatures, even in winter, and a selection of quality reptiles. And so, in late June, myself and 3 others, along with our cameras and mi goreng instant noodles, jumped into a car and drove up Cape York Peninsula, to Iron Range National Park.

We spent the first night of the trip in the highland rainforests of the Atherton Tableland, west of Cairns. It was a bit cold at night, but there were still a few things active. Here are a few of the animals I bothered to photograph.

A metamorph green-eyed treefrog (Litoria serrata).

South-central Queensland – Winter Herping 2011 (part 6)

Back in September, I spent 2 weeks in south-central Queensland near the town of Roma volunteering on a dingo survey. The area lies within the Brigalow Belt bioregion, which, as you can see here, can be extremely productive. However, during our time there it was quite cold, frequently approaching and even dropping below freezing. Despite being from temperate North America, I’m not a fan of the cold, having spent the past 3.5 years in the tropics. Nevertheless, we turned up several herps, including 6 new reptiles and 1 new frog for me.

The area we were in consisted primarily of cleared pasture land with remnant patches of brigalow and cypress woodland on sandy soils. There were also a few sandstone mesas dotted around the place, the sides of which look like this.

The Wet Tropics – Winter Herping 2011 (Part 5)

After our previous trip out west, Stewdawg and I came to the conclusion that wasting a lot of fuel to see practically nothing just wasn’t as much fun as we thought it would be. Who knew? For our next trip we decided to stay a bit closer to home and head north to the rainforests of the Wet Tropics bioregion. Having spent considerable time in the area over the last few years, there weren’t too many reptile species left for me to see; however, two fossorial skinks, Glaphyromorphus fuscicaudis and G. mjobergi, remained elusive.

That Friday afternoon we began the drive north to the Atherton Tableland. Our first stop was an area near the town of Ravenshoe where, after going the wrong direction for about 30 minutes because a road worker decided to place the turnoff sign on the ground some 20m from the road, we arrived at around 9pm. We quickly set to work, finding several species of possum, small skink and microhylid frog, as well as a number of leaf-tailed geckos. Having seen most of these species several times before, I neglected to take many photos. I did, however, photograph a very attractive young barred-frog.

Northern barred-frog (Mixophyes schevilli).

Mitchell Grass Downs – Winter Herping 2011 (Part 4)

After our previous adventures close to home, Stewdawg, Matchoo and I decided that our next trip would be best spent seeing practically nothing and using up as much fuel as possible. But where could we go to accomplish this? We decided to head out west to the flat, featureless plains that are the Mitchell Grass Downs. Now, there are some pretty interesting reptiles out there, hiding amongst the labyrinthine soil cracks, that could potentially ruin our plans to see nothing of interest; however, with low nighttime temps we were confident that we’d see nothing new, especially no pretty red snakes sunning themselves in the morning.

We arrived at the town of Hughenden Friday evening and continued a bit south to set up camp. We had a bit of a wander and found a few reptiles that are common even back in Townsville. The plan to see nothing new was going well so far.

Eastern spiny-tailed gecko (Strophurus williamsi)

Townsville Area – Winter Herping 2011 (part 3)

Having not had our fill of brown fossorial skinks after our last, slow-paced trip out west, Stewdawg and I joined up with two friends (let’s call them Gustopher and Sweden) for a long hike to find the highly restricted Mt. Elliot mulch-skink (Glaphyromorphus clandestinus). These skinks have only been recorded from areas of exposed granite around 425m asl on Mt. Elliot, just south of Townsville. A southern outlier of the Wet Tropics, the mountain is also home to an endemic leaf-tailed gecko (Phyllurus amnicola) and microhylid frog (Cophixalus mcdonaldi). Having already seen the leaf-tail on two previous trips, my eyes were set upon the shiny, brown skink. The frog would have to wait.

After a steep ascent, we arrived at the site in the late morning. It wasn’t long before Sweden made the whole hike worth it, finding two of the beasts.

Mt. Elliot mulch-skink (Glaphyromorphus clandestinus). Tick!

Torrens Creek – Winter Herping 2011 (Part 2)

Back in July, a friend and I (let’s call him Stewdawg) decided to head west from Townsville into the heart of the Desert Uplands for a bit of little-brown-skinking. We arrived at our destination fairly late and so decided to spend the night in Moorinya National Park. With night-time temps dropping as low as 2°C, we held little hope of finding nocturnal reptiles; however, a few interesting birds and mammals showed their faces.

Australian owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles cristatus)

Chillagoe and surrounds – Winter Herping 2011 (part 1)

It’s currently winter here in Australia, so reptile activity has become pretty low; nevertheless, plenty of things are still to be found, although most of them are small and skinky. So be warned, this series of winter herping posts could just as well be titled ‘Looking for skinks and other small things’. Anyway, the good thing about living in the coastal tropics is that it never quite gets cold enough to make herping completely unfeasible. So here we go…

Among other places, I have made a few trips to the savannas west of Cairns over the past few months. The first of the two trips was to Chillagoe, a well-known town of about 200 people, for a weekend of caving and herping. I received my new Canon 7D the day we left and so the trip gave me a chance to test run it before my upcoming trip up Cape York Peninsula. Chillagoe is one of my favourite places in north-east Queensland, and I have visited it many times for both caving and herping. The area is characterized by limestone karst formations featuring extensive cave systems. The limestone towers support patches of vine-thicket (a.k.a. thorn-scrub, dry-rainforest; take your pick) in what is otherwise an area dominated by open eucalypt woodlands. I did take a few scenery shots, none of which are particularly representative of the habitats described above.

Limestone karst near the entrance of one of the caves we were exploring.