# Herping Trip # 3 - Back to the Mallee



## jordo (Feb 7, 2008)

Still no field herping section so it'll soon be lost...
Just got back from the mallee in SW NSW, we were trapping at a couple of sheep stations near Pooncarie :lol:
At the homestead we stayed at there were plenty of frogs out at night (we were right on the Darling River)





This tree overhanging a dam was thick with peron's tree frogs





Can't remember what this species was, we got two similar species but this one was fairly large, the other I think was _L. tasmaniensis_ it was a bit smaller with a light vertebral stripe.





Plenty of _Gehyra variegata_ at the homestead picking off all the moths and other insects.





During the day the garden was crawling with _Cyptoblepharus carnabyi_





Also found a nice grasshopper in what we called the beer garden.

Now onto the trapping...





Most of what we caught were juveniles, including this little mallee dragon _Ctenophorus fordi_





We got plenty of cute little _Ningaui yvonneae_





My first ever burton's was this stunner! 





_Strophurus intermedius_





A nicely patterned young painted dragon, _Ctenophorus pictus_





We constantly coped these orb weaver webs and sometimes even the owners in the face, not a very pleasent experience at 6am in the morning :lol:





Caught heaps of these large scorpians in the pitfall buckets, very impressive critters.





Our most commonly caught reptile and still one of the highlights of the trip for me were these desert skinks, _Egernia inornata_





We were lucky to get a narrow banded sand swimmer, _Eremiascincus fasciolatus_





Got a couple of these blind snakes during the week, _Ramphotyphlops bituberculatus_





Another burton's, more plain than the first.





Towards the end of the week we we're getting plenty of young sand goannas, _Varanus gouldii_





Common dunnart, _Sminthopsis murina _





One of the smaller skinks you'll see, _Menetia greyii_





A young yellow-faced whip snake, _Demansia psammophis_, very fiesty little snake, this one was only about 15cm long.





Another sand goanna.





And a very impressive juv _Ctenotus atlas_ to finish things off. We also got regius and brachyonyx but I posted them after my first mallee field trip if you want to see them.

Hope you like them


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## Daniel_Penrith (Feb 7, 2008)

nice, i like the dunnart!! traps?? what traps do you use??


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## python blue (Feb 7, 2008)

Great pics sound like u had a great time love those sandies and the desert skinks


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## pugsly (Feb 7, 2008)

Wow impressive! Some nice finds there indeed.

The second Burton's looks blue? Its gorgeous.

Nice photo's thanks for sharing, few of those Lizards look a little underweight, still bad drought I guess.


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## jordo (Feb 7, 2008)

Daniel we used pitfall traps, basically a row of buckets dug under a small fence, the animal goes along the fence until it falls into a bucket. This was done under a permit for scientific research.


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## bredli84 (Feb 7, 2008)

great pics jordo. i love the malley, such a beautiful place.


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## Daniel_Penrith (Feb 7, 2008)

Oh ok kool, did you use any other methods?


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## scam7278 (Feb 7, 2008)

cool pics jordo


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## ryanharvey1993 (Feb 7, 2008)

wow awsome pics you found alot. that whip snake is a beauty. love the desert skinks and the burtons aswell


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## levis04 (Feb 7, 2008)

well done. love the inornata!!!!!


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## MoreliaMatt (Feb 7, 2008)

too bad when the burtons and the small skinks and geckos fall in the same trap! 
or the sandies and the dunnarts etc 

great finds and great pics!


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## cockney red (Feb 7, 2008)

*Great pics mate looks like you had a great time.*


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## GraftonChic (Feb 7, 2008)

very nice


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## Kurto (Feb 7, 2008)

Awesome photos, lovin the pic of the spiny tail.


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## mysnakesau (Feb 7, 2008)

What a lovely collection of photos. That first pic of the mousie thing is familiar - someone brought one of them into the park, nobody knew what it was. Then I never asked what they did with it


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## Rocket (Feb 7, 2008)

Great looking animals indeed. Love the Burtons and the geckos.

Wish herping trips similar to this were carried out in SA more often.


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## jordo (Feb 8, 2008)

pugsly said:


> The second Burton's looks blue? Its gorgeous.
> 
> Nice photo's thanks for sharing, few of those Lizards look a little underweight, still bad drought I guess.


That burtons basically appears how it looked, very nice indeed.
Most of the lizards were in top condition with nice fat tails etc, the only animal in bad nick was a Tree Dtella riddled with red mites and very skinny with not much fat in the tail, this gecko was found in a hollow log so it serves it right for not living in its natural habitat (in or on a house) :lol:



Daniel_Penrith said:


> Oh ok kool, did you use any other methods?


We only used pitfalls this trip, but last trip I went on with the same crew we used Elliot traps as well which are small metal traps baited to try and catch marsupials. Other commonly used trapping methods for reptiles include funnel traps which are like those opera nets used for yabbies, these are pinned so they're flush along a small drift fence, similar to pitfalls but they aren't dug in so are often used in very fragile habitats to avoid disturbance, however pitfalls are more effective and generally the preferred method.



Rocket said:


> Wish herping trips similar to this were carried out in SA more often.


I'm sure many are, you just need to keep an ear out for them.


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## hornet (Feb 8, 2008)

very nice jordo, get any more pics of the scorps?


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## jordo (Feb 8, 2008)

Hornet, I was going to get you some scorps but wasn't really prepared with containers sorry. We encountered 3 species: huge, medium and small (looked like marbled scorp?) didn't get any pics of the other two because they weren't as common but these pics are of the huge ones.
Also here's another frog we got. I think the first pic I posted is _L. fletcheri_ and this guy is _L. tasmaniensis_ (occured in a pond in the garden and was smaller than the other species)but I'll need to confirm this.


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## hornet (Feb 8, 2008)

no worries, always a next time. I really need to get out to the mallee myself sometime, its amazing


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## Southside Morelia (Feb 8, 2008)

Awesome pics jordo, what camera do you use?

That grasshopper.....Is that a "foreskin hopper" poking his head out? :shock:

lol...it just reminds me of something!


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## Cheesecake (Feb 8, 2008)

G'day Jordo,

Finally decided to join the forum! Great pics - wish I had been there. The first one is of _Limnodynastes fletcheri_ (Barking Marsh Frog). Can distinguish from _L. tasmaniensis _by light purple-brown patches behind the eyes.

Dave.


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## chrisso81 (Feb 8, 2008)

Great pics, love the Burtons.


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## jordo (Feb 8, 2008)

Cheesecake said:


> G'day Jordo,
> 
> Finally decided to join the forum! Great pics - wish I had been there. The first one is of _Limnodynastes fletcheri_ (Barking Marsh Frog). Can distinguish from _L. tasmaniensis _by light purple-brown patches behind the eyes.
> 
> Dave.



Welcome Cheesecake, I'm glad you're finally coming to terms with your name :lol:


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## jordo (Feb 8, 2008)

scm1 said:


> Awesome pics jordo, what camera do you use?
> 
> That grasshopper.....Is that a "foreskin hopper" poking his head out? :shock:
> 
> lol...it just reminds me of something!



:lol:
I've got a Panasonic DMC-TZ2.


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## Cj3cooper (Feb 12, 2008)

very nice jordo, but alas no jewelled geckos for you  but nice whip snake!! we didnt get much in murray-sunset except for a cool little bandy-bandy, billiatt was pretty quiet as well, had quite a few juvie sand goannas which was cool. i went up to gluepot to jelp lisa after we finished at billiatt, ended up with a ringed brown snake on the last day, wicked cool!

coops


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## jordo (Feb 12, 2008)

Cj3cooper said:


> very nice jordo, but alas no jewelled geckos for you  but nice whip snake!! we didnt get much in murray-sunset except for a cool little bandy-bandy, billiatt was pretty quiet as well, had quite a few juvie sand goannas which was cool. i went up to gluepot to jelp lisa after we finished at billiatt, ended up with a ringed brown snake on the last day, wicked cool!
> 
> coops



We didn't get many gex at all, an intermedius, a few beadeds but nothing like at sunset last time, my theory is all the massive scorps had been eating them :lol:
Yeah Shannon just told me that earlier, we only got 4 snakes for the whole week, 2 whips and 2 blind snakes


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## moloch05 (Feb 12, 2008)

Very nice, Jordo.

Looks like you had great success. I particularly like seeing some of the obscure species of skinks. Finding Desert Skinks would be great! Did you see any active at the site or were they only found in the traps? That Narrow-banded Sandswimmer was also a beauty.

Regards,
David


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## jordo (Feb 12, 2008)

moloch05 said:


> Very nice, Jordo.
> 
> Looks like you had great success. I particularly like seeing some of the obscure species of skinks. Finding Desert Skinks would be great! Did you see any active at the site or were they only found in the traps? That Narrow-banded Sandswimmer was also a beauty.
> 
> ...



Yeah we did well for skinks, all the desert skinks were in traps, I was stoked with the sandswimmer, it was one of the last traps for the day after not catching anything different for a while.
Whip snake was also good like that, we'd had a big night the night before and luckily enough the next day we only got about 8 animals so we could get back early and rest, but we still managed to get a new species


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## Cj3cooper (Feb 14, 2008)

the sandswimmer looked great, ill post some pics from western murray-sunset and from billiatt and maybe some more from gluepot. we had a fairly slow last week. didnt catch a single gecko in the final week at gluepot, but then again it was cold a raining on some of the days :lol:

coops


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## Viridae (Feb 14, 2008)

3rd year zoo jordo?

Great pics! You going to VHS expo?


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## Cheesecake (Feb 14, 2008)

Hopefully you have more luck at Nanya next week! If you get a chance, go spotlighting at night and see what you can pick up. Are you staying on the station or elsewhere?

Dave.


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## TANN-MANN (Feb 14, 2008)

any chance of seeing the Drift fence/Pitfall array set up, i'm currently undertaking a field survey through the university of new England, and am up to the trapping stage now that all the rain has buggered off:?, just curious as to how you have done it...not that it will make much difference with mine considering its all ready to go.

i'll be sure to post pics of what i get later on after i finish the report

cheers
Andrew


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## Cheesecake (Feb 14, 2008)

Hi Andrew,

Here's a diagram of a pit line for the Mallee project looking at it from above. Each line consists of 10 20L round plastic buckets spaced at 4.5m intervals, 40-50 galvanised pegs (5mm gauge) and a 30cm high x 50m long flyscreen drift fence buried at the bottom.

The photo shows a section of trap line with a corner in the fence between buckets. This enables you to tension the fence every few metres by turning the pegs.

David.

A note before anyone tries this at home: animal ethics and scientific permit approval is needed from your state Parks and Wildlife, environment department or EPA before trapping, even if doing it on your own property.


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## TANN-MANN (Feb 14, 2008)

Cheesecake said:


> Hi Andrew,
> 
> 
> 
> A note before anyone tries this at home: animal ethics and scientific permit approval is needed from your state Parks and Wildlife, environment department or EPA before trapping, even if doing it on your own property.


 and the NPWS Scientific research permits are buggers to get...took me 4 months, I rang them and they said, oops its been sitting here someone must have over looked it during processing lol. ethics on the other hand, well being affiliated with the uni swings it your way a bit.

cheers
for the photos, mine is on a much smaller scale considering i'm sitting them in between rocky outcrops, i'm not digging that many


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