Singapore: here be dragons!

A morning spent wandering around the mangroves woodlands and lagoons of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, on the north coast of Singapore, a great little reserve and amazingly easy to 'do' by public transport, for a change.

For me, the stand out highlights were, for a change, some fish! Two species of fish, in fact, which I have long wanted to see, thanks, no doubt, to a childhood book of wildlie.

And there they were! As the tide rushed in, the Mudskippers began to, well, skip across the mud, seeking out tree roots to climb up. And beneath the mangroves, an Archer Fish appeared, had a quick spit and then slipped away again. You'll have to take my word for it, but it was brilliant!

After that, anything else would be a bonus.

Well, it turned out there were a few bonuses to be had... chief amongst them, a Great-billed Heron on the river, and some nice lizards.

The rather boringly named Oriental Garden Lizard, definitely looks like it should be called Crested Tree Dragon or somesuch...

 but the real dragons were the Water Monitors: massive creatures, one or two of them well over 2 metres long, swimming through the lagoons, crashing through the mangroves and sunning themselves on the paths.

 It's no wonder the waders roost in the trees!

Meanwhile, in Cyprus...

The orchid season in the Mediterranean is already underway, with our local guide and orchid expert extraordinaire, Dr Yiannis Christofides making the most of the spring conditions for photography...

From top to bottom: Anacamptis collina the Fan-lipped Orchid, Ophrys morio and Ophrys flavomarginata, plus the man himself, hard at work...

We still have places on our March trip, to catch up with these and around 25 more species of orchid, as well as the full range of spring flowers.

 

Queensland, Jan 2013

A quick side-trip up to Cairns for me coincided with the arrival on the coast of the tail end of Cyclone Oswald: cue four days of torrential rain. Not the best conditions for seeking out any of the higher altitude endemics, but never mind. Rainforest is supposed to be rainy, right?

My last morning was dry, a gave a hint at what could have been... three entirely new families* of bird for me, before breakfast! Not that I'm complaining... how could I, with wonderful things like Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher or Southern Cassowary appearing in front of me, plus birds high up on my personal wish-list such as Comb-crested Jacana, Magpie Goose and Green Pygmy-Goose (completing the set), and some great new mammals too.

 

 A female Victoria's Riflebird at breakfast on the last morning: my first Bird of Paradise, a definite highlight.

a slightly (!!) soggy Black Butcherbird

Musky Rat-Kangaroo: the Queensland equivalent of Agoutis

 Mareeba Rock Wallaby: a Queensland endemic with a very limited range, but amazingly simple to see. 

 Little Red Flying Fox. They're little and they're red. And they hang out in their thousands around the Centennial Lakes in Mareeba (plus smaller numbers in the Flying Fox camp in Cairns)

Spectacled Flying Fox, Cairns

( *those three new families being Paradisaeidae, Machaerirhynchidae and Orthonychidae, for the taxonomy geeks out there...)

Tasmania 2013: trip report

The report from our Tasmania trip is now downloadable from our website. Enjoy.

Tasmania 2013: photo gallery

Tasmania 2013, a set on Flickr.

Tasmania #5: orchids

Now I know it's not very high-brow-botanist of me, but there is definitely something about orchids, that little spark of glamour and inspiration.

High summer isn't the best time of year for orchids in Tasmania by any means, but the flowering season was late this year, and as a result we managed to find some late spring things that we perhaps wouldn't have expected.

 The Green Bird Orchid Chiloglottis cornutus at Lake St Clair

 and nearby, the closely related endemic Chiloglottis gunni, the Purple Bird Orchid. These two have bizarre shiny globule-things (very technical terms here!), almost jewel like, in their 'throats'.

 The most flamboyant orchid we found, the Pink Hyacinth Orchid, Dipodium roseum in flower at Douglas Aspley NP on the east coast. A saproxylic or parasitic species that appears out of the forest floor, no leaves, just a flowering stem about 50 cm tall.

 And my favourite, at Cape Bruny, the Duck-billed Orchid Cryptostylis subulata

 

 Slightly more 'subtle', one of the plethora of Green-hood Orchids, a Pterostylis sp. 

 

And another saproxylic woodland species, the glamorously-named Potato Orchid Gastrodium sesamoides in the woods around Lake St Clair

Tasmania #4: skinks

Catching up on a backlog of photos from the past couple of weeks...

When it comes to reptiles, Tasmania is a pretty uniform place... with the exception of one small thorny 'dragon' (which we didn't find), the choices are either skinks or poisonous snakes. And we didn't do too badly, with good looks at two of the three snakes and a handful of skinks.

Lowland Copperhead, a big, gentle but very poisonous snake

Tiger Snake

Metallic Skink: by far the commonest reptile, often found sunbathing on boardwalked paths, and quite happily staying put as walkers passed by.

White's Skink, a larger and beautifully patterned animal, quite common at Freycinet National Park but not seen anywhere else.

And then a trio of Tasmanian endemics: the Spotted (also confusingly known as the Ocellated Skink, seen in several spots around Bicheno.

Tasmanian Tree Skink, at Freycinet NP

and the large Northern Snow Skink, up high on Ben Lomond.

We also saw a couple of the large, chunky Blotched Blue-tongued Skinks dead on the road, and some of the group found one in the Botanic Garden at Hobart.