fauna

Non-scary snake

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As you may know, snakes have a certain effect on me that I have not yet overcome. However this one, found under a log by a visitor, I can cope with.

In fact I can say I almost find it cute.

It’s a Common Eastern Blind Snake — sometimes called Worm Snakes for obvious reasons. They aren’t actually blind, since that dot gives them ‘nominal eyesight’ according to my book.

They are the only Australian snakes known to feed on insects — like ants and termites.

Not much is known about the 30 or so species thought to exist in Australia, and some scientists apparently place them somewhere in between snakes and lizards.

But here’s the part they do know that appeals to me: ‘They are unable to bite humans and lack venom glands’.

Lemon tree life

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On one common lemon tree in my yard — and I have raised many, never wanting to be short of lemons — I have discovered  a busy metropolis of green creatures.

This bejewelled and banded, spotted and spiked emerald caterpillar is one of about a similar six that I could easily see — the inquisitive bristling head of another is just visible to the lower left of the beauty on full display.

Plenty of evidence of leaf munching, and plenty more leaves to munch. Other caterpillars looked less relaxed, and a couple were arching, perhaps getting ready to change from the butterfly larva it really is, to the next stage, the pupa.

A few years ago I had photographed a similar knobbly green pupa or cocoon on another ‘proper’ lemon tree in my orchard and my web visitors had identified it for me as that of the Orchard Butterfly.  But I never saw it hatch, or the Butterfly.

You can see the fine ‘silk’ attaching it to the stem — and what great camouflage!

Coincidentally, while circling this tree looking for more butterfly life cycle evidence, I found my tiny New Year frog again. This lemon is right next to the hydrangea where I saw him then, so it could be the same Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog.

And then, on the same damp day, but on a different and very non-citrus tree, I was lucky enough to spot the Orchard Butterfly herself — big and boldly patterned and very still, perhaps drying those gorgeous wings.

It’s interesting that all the three stages of the life cycle are present at once. Is this usual?

All creatures…

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On the first day of the new year, 2011, I choose to feature one of my smallest fellow residents, found lazing in a hydrangea flower.

And I think how lucky he is to live in a protected habitat where only his natural enemies can affect his life.

Yet even in a gazetted Refuge and with a conservation contract on my deeds in perpetuity, were there coal under us, nothing would protect him or me from mining. Coal does not follow the same laws as the rest of our land users.

And that has to change.

Coal needs to be deposed as King in this country.

My New Year resolution is to keep working to make that happen.

Skink family?

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Two of the skinks who adorn my verandah and surrounds were enjoying a steamy break between rain storms. There is a smaller one too but it’s very lively and rarely ‘basks’. You know what kids are like.

Given that I’d only photographed and posted on them a few weeks ago (‘My special skinks’), I thought they looked different. More rounded, fatter, especially the one on the left.

Comparing those two sets of photographs, she definitely is. Now does this mean she is pregnant or have they both just shared a large meal and she got most of it?

And will you just look at those amazing toes?!

My special skinks

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I have a family of skinks who frequently dive under a flap of the dampcourse of my cabin footings, thence probably into a chink in those footings; a small pointy nose is sometimes to be seen poking out of the underfloor vent grille.
 But most of the time they pose like statues and await slow-witted insects to pass by. 

I think they are Southern Water Skinks of the Warm Temperate Form (Eulamprus tympanum WTF, more recently renamed Eulamprus heatwolei). They are fat and fearless, about 250mm long, and seem to operate in distinct mini-territories.

This one stays on the verandah front rails and steps and comes much closer to me and my doings. She is quite inquisitive, far less inclined to dart away — or to dart at all — and doesn’t mind a bit of shade as she often hunts amongst the greenery.

I have absolutely no idea why I think this one is a ‘she’, as I have no idea how to sex lizards.  When she feels like a bit of sun, she chooses the rocks on the front side of the steps, and shows her gorgeous metallic colours.

I can sit and admire her for ages; just look at the intricacy of her patterning, the ebony and lacework side trims and the woven bronze of her back. That pink nose, that elegantly lidded eye, that perfect earhole!

The other skink, who occupies the rear side of the steps and darts off when I pass, happened to be sunning himself there at the very same time as his greenie friend was out the front, so I was able to take photos of them both, in the same light, to compare. 

Is it my imagination or does the one below have a more pinkish coppery tone to his back? And is the nose a less distinctly differentiated pink?

Either one is a jewelled beauty, as well as cute; who needs garden gnomes, bronze statuary or even trendy rusty iron sculptures when I can have these?

Flirting with domesticity

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Lately I have noticed that a wallaby mother and her joey have taken to sitting under my verandah. In fact she sits right up against the mud wall, under where my front door opens, so I walk over the top of her often. My verandah decking is pretty bouncy and noisy– as am I — and the screen door unavoidably scrapes out and back across the uneven boards, in order to exclude the slimmest snake when the door is shut.

Nothing fazes her, and I have become used to the glimpses of fur between the boards and beneath my feet. There is perhaps a metre clearance there.

So the other day, as I crossed the verandah and headed down the steps,  I was surprised to hear a deep snort/cough from behind and below me, and a heavy, panicky thud or two. I peered between the step treads and there was a very large wallaroo, now silhouetted near the sub-verandah opening. He saw me, gave another loud cough — almost a bark — and leapt away.

Of course I leapt for the camera, hoping he had paused. As he had, only a few metres uphill, and still inside the yard.

In the six months or so since the yard has been open, the few wallaroos about have rarely come inside. I love it when they do, as there is something about their long fur and their powerful build that is more ‘wild’  than even a big male kangaroo. To have one choose to come so close to the house is unprecedented, but to have him choose to go in under the verandah is astonishing!

It is bare dirt under there, raked clean of dead leaves only weeks ago, in readiness for the summer fire season. There is nothing to eat. I wonder — is he sussing it out for a shady spot for summer, or is he thinking of compromising his wildness, of flirting with domesticity?

Blokes and blossoms

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While the wallaby females ferry and feed the joeys, the males do blokey stuff — like fighting. 

I had seen very young males practice-fighting in my yard but these two were old enough and big enough for the real thing.

Given that they chose the grass right next to my shaded glasshouse for their wrestling and kickboxing, I kept imagining a lurch, a crash of breaking glass, as they danced about on their hind legs or balanced on their tails.

But after a while they simply tired of it and went back to eating grass. They vary this with checking for any new shoots on the reachable branches of my mighty Banksia Rose, which they keep stripped bare of blossoms and leaves and looking like a strange fringe to the lush flowering above. They stand on their hind legs to do this too.

Wallaby takeover

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As you can see, Eastern Red-necked wallabies rule here. They know it; males, females, joeys — they do as they please in my yard. I simply add more wire netting guards to protect what pleases me. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not have flowers unless they are specific inedible bulbs, or above wallaby reach.

So I have placed a large pot on my verandah and planted seeds of what I hope will be a deep red nasturtium — pretty and tasty. The seedlings have just emerged.

The very day they did, I happened to hear an odd thump on the verandah steps. I looked up and there was a youngish wallaby looking at me from the top step. My first thought was ‘cute’, my second was ‘not a good idea’ — thinking of the nasturtiums to come. So I went out and shooed it back down the steps.

I had assumed it was a more inquisitive wallaby than the others. But it came back several times in the next few days — definitely the same young female — and I reprimanded her and sent her back down the steps.

I finally realised the appeal when I caught her eating the new shoots of the ornamental grape vine. At ground level they have already done so; I’ve been meaning to get around to putting netting across them or I won’t get enough summer shade.

Now I might have to put a gate across the verandah, or I’ll get neither shade nor nasturtiums. Quolls, possums, pythons, black snakes, lizards, bush rats, antechinus and the odd nesting bird have all taken advantage of my verandah. It’s bit much if the wallabies want to make a takeover bid too.

Spiky business

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Through one window I’d been watching the smaller echidna poking about on fairly bare dirt, trying to get a photo of its rear feet, with the long extended claws. I didn’t manage to.

It headed downhill into grassed areas, so I gave up.
 
A little later, looking up from my computer and through another window, I saw it again, down by the fence. Only it looked different, lighter. Naturally, I had to go out and see.

It looked different because it was a different echidna. My earlier one was out the front too, also heading west, but closer to the house.

I recognised this bigger and beefier echidna as the one I’d called Blondie in another season when I also had two sharing the yard. The blonde and the brunette, I’d described them as then. I wasn’t sure if the smaller one was the same brunette, however. I really do need to get to know my echidna fellow residents better.

The animals that share my yard seem adept at minding their own business. It may be between different species, as with Blondie and a wallaby here — and notice how similar their colouring is. Or it may be within a species, as with my two echidnas.

They had kept their distance, each showing no sign of awareness or acknowledgement of the other. It crossed my mind that an encounter between them would be interesting — perhaps a very spiky business!

Spring cleaning

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A warm sunny morning, perfect for turning out the occupants of the house and giving it a good clean. This wallaby mum’s empty pink pouch lining caught my eye, as I’ve never seen that before. I’m sure that was a welcome airing as much as a break.

With her tongue, she cleaned her elbow, then her toes. She got no further before the joey bounced back from playtime.

Being a very helpful joey, it joined in the cleaning session, licking Mum’s ears for her before wriggling back inside, although I am still astonished at how the mothers cope and how they fit — and this wasn’t as big as other joeys I have seen perform the feat.


Even before the joey had properly organised itself in there, Mum had resumed her work, picking up her tail with both paws and bringing it to her mouth. I hadn’t seen that either, although I’ve seen them bending down to lick their tails when these are flat on the ground in front. But their tails are very long, so it make sense to bring the tip to the cleaner rather than attempt a yoga feat.

I am forever shaking my head in wonder at the new things I am shown here. A true open university.

A closer encounter

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I see echidnas in the yard often; not daily, like the wallabies, but weekly at least. Sometimes there are two poking about, snouts down and separately. This particular day I had seen the bigger one down by the fence, minding its own business, as the wallaby was, one aerating the lawn, the other mowing it.

Then, as I went to sit on the step with my morning coffee, I saw a smaller one working its way up the yard towards me. Of course I put the coffee down, grabbed the camera — and waited. It was a very cute one, that looked even cuter as it climbed the stone steps amongst the oregano.

I think this was so because I rarely saw one in a vertical position, as if it were walking upright, and its spines looked more punk than usual.

Reaching the top, it kept coming closer, pausing to push its nose into the kikuyu, which seemed to take some effort as it had to do a bit of a body wriggle each time.

It came so close I could see how the fur on its legs shone with health, how solid were the claws below, how the tip of its nose was damp and, most endearingly of all, how long its eyelashes looked. Perhaps they were its eyebrows?

They seem such solitary creatures. I’d like this one to come closer more often and perhaps become used to me the way the wallabies are. But the tiny click of the camera was enough to stop this one in its progress.

I’ll just have to forgo the photographs next time it honours me with such a close encounter.

Suspicious sublet

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My ‘guest accommodation’ is an ex-workshop tacked on to a shed. It is of corrugated iron, but lined, and comfortable; far enough from my cabin for privacy, close enough for convenience, and with pleasant orchard views and surrounds.

When I returned after my two months away this winter, I suspected a possum had moved into the roof of this section. Telltale tufts of insulation wool were sticking out from between the roof and the window awning, and a few floated about on the grass.

I checked inside and all seemed fine.

But as spring advanced, I noticed that the climbing roses were being allowed to put forth new leaves and even buds – at least from the height at which the wallabies can’t reach. I assumed the rose-loving possum must have moved on — or had been digested by the python.

Something had changed inside, too: over each bed the ceiling lining had clearly been under stress. The double bed had a huge stain that went right through the mattress, and the top rug on the double decker bunks was bedecked with what looked like bits of nesting material.

Possums do mighty pees, so I could blame it for the stain, but the rest…? And what about the roses? Did I have a ‘live-and-let-live’ possum at last?

When I finally had a visitor willing to climb ladders and prise away roofing trims to investigate, the nest was there; in fact there were two, and full of scats large and small. They were not of possum origin, but quoll. In a way they were related to possums, as quolls eat them.

I had known a quoll was back, or visiting nightly, from fresh scats in the shed and on the verandah. A parmesan cheese wrapper got the once-over on the verandah the other night. I had assumed it was living in the shed, in the horizontal pile of old doors where my earlier quoll tenant had raised many young ones.

Clearly, this year’s quoll wanted better accommodation, with views. So until I can be sure whether it is a ‘she’, with offspring, no more can be done. If that’s the case, until the end of summer when the kids have come of age, I’ll have to turn away visitors or tell them to bring a tent. The beds have been stripped, moved, and plastic laid.

I need one of those signs they have in caravan parks and camping areas: ‘All visitors must call at office before proceeding further’. 

But at least I might get some roses this summer.