Herping the Alice

I've been working as a tour guide out of Alice Springs - taking backpackers out to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and King's Canyon. The country is looking so beautifully green at the moment - due to the amazing amount of rain that's fallen this year. Alice Springs has had about 620 mm so far - compare this with the annual average of 250 mm or the 65 mm that had fallen by this time last year. Lots of plants are flowering or producing masses of seed. Birds are singing from all the trees. The waterholes are all looking fantastic and are home to plump tadpoles.

The arrival of the warm weather has seen me heading out from Alice on a couple of little night road-cruising trips. It's been quite productive so far!

A few geckos are out and about - masses of fat-tailed geckos (Diplodactylus conspicillatus, below), and the odd spiny-tailed gecko (Strophrurus ciliaris).

I also came across an old favourite, the smooth knob-tailed gecko (Nephrurus laevis)

The only elapids I've been seeing are a few Curl snakes (Suta suta).

This legless lizard, the Western Hooded Scaly-foot (Pygopus nigriceps) was a nice surprise.

But by far, the highlight was this impressive 150 cm Centralian carpet python, Morelia bredli, found crossing the road next to a tree-lined watercourse.

A few frogs have been active and calling on wet nights too - so far only Desert Treefrogs (Litoria rubella), Spencer's Burrowing frog (Platyplectrum spenceri), and a couple of Trilling frogs (Neobatrachus centralis, below).

Some interesting herps have been showing up on the tours I run - I'm going to start taking my camera along more often so I can get photos of them to share.

Walking the Larapinta - I

It's late afternoon and I sit by Birthday waterhole with my binoculars at the ready. I've been keeping an eye on the resident birds - there are three Australian hobbies hanging around. Surely the budgerigars are nervous nesting in adjacent trees. Every now and then there is a chattering from the hobbies and if I'm quick I'll spot one chasing something - the favourite quarry seems to be bronzewings though the latter are certainly swift enough to give the hobbies a breathtaking run and I didn't spot any being taken.

Only a couple of trees down the creekline is a pair of Brown goshawks nesting too. And a squeaking that I originally attributed to branches sliding over one another in the breeze turned out to be a pair of Major Mitchell Cockatoos feeding quietly in the same tree. A wallaroo casually hops over the rocky ridge behind the waterhole.

The River red-gums (Eucalyptus camalduensis) dominate this sandy riverbed like so many others. Immense and valuable trees, contorted and buffeted by flooding river flows, they form plenty of hollows.

After dark I go walking, first around the waterhole where a solitary Spencer's burrowing frog (Platyplectrum spenceri) sits at the chilly water's edge. Then up the ridge. The eyes of flat-rock spiders shine out from impossibly thin cracks in the quartzite. One slightly larger crack houses a handsome marbled velvet gecko (Oedura marmorata) tucked well away. The rocks are littered with rock wallaby scats though none made an appearance.

Descending again, I follow the gravelly riverbed upstream. It's a cold evening and these nocturnal walks haven't been yielding much but they're a good way to warm up before bed and there's sometimes something of note. On a separate rocky outcrop I come across the beautiful Centralian treefrog (Litoria gilleni), only the second one I've seen and a real stunner to top off the all-round great day.

Dawn had found me drinking tea and watching the sunrise atop Brinkley's Bluff, a towering peak of the Chewings Range in the West McDonnell Ranges. It was day seven of an eighteen day walk. The Larapinta trail. Starting at Alice Springs, the trail stretches 223 km through the West MacDonnell ranges to finish at the peak of Mt Sonder near Redbank Gorge. The trail passes or penetrates the numerous gaps, gorges and chasms cut through the Chewings and Heavitree tranges; it climbs to peaks and bluffs with panoramic views; it encounters riverbeds of the oldest rivers in the world. It crosses the exposed strata of ancient mountains past, it crosses the plains left by aeons of deposition.