A 24 hour photographic adventure in some of the most beautiful countryside in Northern NSW, otherwise known as The Promised Land, brought lots of surprises - in amphibian and reptile forms! Thirty minutes west of Coffs Harbour, my brother and I found ourselves an unofficial campsite beside the Never Never river where we set up camp for an overnight stay. As the sun went down we headed into the wet sclerophyll forest, on the cusp of a forestry plantation, with our spotlights looking to see what we could discover. Within moments of setting out we spotted the Great Barred frog, one of our local endangered species and a rare and exciting find! Due to recent rain there were quite a few large still water bodies about and the chorus of calling frogs made it easy to find lots of lovely specimens, like the Stoney Creek frog, the Red-eyed Tree frog and the Green Tree frog, as you can see below. In addition to the beautiful frogs we also stumbled upon a Red Bellied Black snake lying in the middle of our path. He seemed to be a bit slow and sleepy and not at all concerned by us which allowed me to get a couple of shots of him (below). Another amazing find was a muddy pool of water containing dozens of mating frogs and their large communal bubble nest full of eggs! Click on the image below left and you can see closer the hundreds of tiny black eggs amongst the bubbles! One of the best ways to spot all these critters at night is with a headlight/spotlight which can pick up the reflected light in their eyes. When we first set out my brother pointed out all of these pairs of tiny bright blue dots of light, which were all over the ground wherever I looked, and which I assumed to be dew. In fact they belonged to this guy below - the Wolf spider! There were hundreds and hundreds! And once I was aware of them I couldn't unsee them! The following morning I was up and out with the camera nice and early to see what I could find. Below are a few birds I managed to capture on film. Last, but definitely NOT least is this guy - a Lace Monitor (or Lace Goanna)- who I surprised on my way back to pack up camp. He was huge - close to 2 meters in length from tip to tail! These guys are Australia's second largest Goanna and are found on the east coast only. Word is that when they are frightened the Lace Monitor will race for the nearest tree .....and they have been known to climb a human thinking they are a tree! The latest research on these beasties has suggested that they are actually venomous (where they previously were understood not to be), so best not to get between a Goanna and it's nearest tree!
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AuthorOwl Eyes AKA Nikki Archives
January 2020
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