Once the warmth of Spring hits eastern Australia, our research team races out to survey our long term monitoring sites for birds and reptiles. Spring is one of the best times to detect many species as they respond to warmer weather conditions. This September included surveys of the Murray Study sites as far west as Moulamein in New South Wales, sites in the heart of the South West Slopes in NSW, and sites as far north as Texas in Queensland for the Stewardship Study.
Highlight finds this season included recording Carpentaria Snake on a Stewardship Study site in northern NSW, creating a range extension for the species. The team also detected good numbers of the federally vulnerable Pink-tailed Worm-lizard in the South West Slopes of NSW.
One of the wettest September's on record drove many reptiles above ground, such as this Eastern Hooded Scaly-foot, a harmless legless lizard. They usually reside in spider burrows and soil cracks and are rarely recorded during daytime surveys. Photo: Sachiko Okada
We are pretty busy with surveys each day, but occasionally we get a chance to stop and take some photos. Take five minutes to check out a few snaps below from the team featuring the many amazing frogs, geckos, skinks, lizards, and birds that were recorded. Click through below:
The research team also often live tweets the species they find. If you would like to follow the findings of our research team live on social media, follow @LTecology on Twitter. Here are a few recent posts from our team while out at our monitoring sites recently. Make sure you watch Mason's video with sound!
Our team is still out and about right now surveying across eastern Australia, the continuation of this long term monitoring is critical to the understanding of our woodland ecosystems.