Monitor lizards in the glass house mountains

We went for a hike around mount Tibrogargan on Monday and we saw 5 or 6 different monitor lizards (they call'em Goannas here). Some were shy and scurried off to climb trees as soon as they spotted us. Others didn't really care, as long as we stayed a couple of meters away. Here's a BIG one (~1.5m) foraging for food around the staging area.

Lizards of the new year !

Well, it's been  a while since I posted something new, and what better way to start the year than the critter that started it all, the gecko !

I got these pictures of an Asian house gecko that hunts outside our office window at night. 

Check out those sticky feet !

As well as some video of hunting for little bugs ... pretty cool !



I spotted this baby skink outside the other day. I guess it's that time of year where the babies are left to fend for themselves. This little guy was small, 4 cm at most with tail.

Later that day I also saw this grasshopper, look at the loooong pointy head.

Flood Critters

With all the storms and rain we've been getting, the wildlife has changed around here: 

Most of the trees behind our house are gone, so there are less birds. Also, the flood way next to the house has been full of water for a week now, so we're starting to see ducks down there! Yesterday I spotted this little guy clinging to the patio door. Right out of a Telus ad!

Now here's something that had me worried today: I spotted these ants moving their eggs and larvae into our house. I don't care about a few ants in my walls, you can't avoid that here. But the last time I saw ants moving their eggs to higher ground was last saturday, and the next day we got hit with hurricane winds, torrential rain and huge hail. They're preparing for something ... I hope they're over-reacting this time.

Macro fun

After yesterday's events, I just spent a quiet Saturday at home. Macro photography really relaxes me, so I got out my camera and sat in the grass and had a close look at what I could find. 

I'm getting better with manual focus and at controlling the very shallow depth of field this lens produces. Here's some of the cool stuff I found.

This spikey beetle was a great subject, very slow moving and VERY cool looking.

Maybe this young praying mantis is the same one I shot a while back when it was a baby ?

Some vegetation. This is a close-up a bottlebrush flower bud

My rainbow chilies, lookin' fine !

Noosa Critters

Here's some pics of critters we saw while camping last weekend in Noosa.

This big guy greeted us on the first morning. He's a Gould's Monitor (aka Sand Goanna) and was about 1m long.

Gorgeous tongue!

This Green Tree Frog was pretty annoyed at us taking picture after picture, lots of flashes for those senstitve eyes.

This is a Garden Orb Weaver. It was fairly small (~2 cm) and had cool spikey legs.

Here's a different kind of monitor lizard, this one's a Lace Monitor, they climb trees with ease.

Skink. There were LOTS of these.

Another Skink.

Baby Mantis

These last couple of days, I noticed these weird ant-like bugs crawling around the outside of the house. They're black and about the size of a large ant (~1cm). But when you look closely, you'll notice the front legs are more like a mantis and their fat abdomen is actually a long skinny abdomen that's curled up ... So I did a quick search, and sure enough, these are mantis nymphs, it's pretty cool how they disguise themselves as black ants like that, it must help them survive...

Cool Insects

Just a few shots of some cool bugs I found while out on a macro photography run around the house. I'll spare you the spiders this time, instead I have this cool grasshopper. He was tiny but I caught him resting on a basil leaf and got this shot.

Tiny but colorful little fella.

Later, as I was showing Clo some weird fungus spores under a leaf, we both jumped as this guy started moving. We didn't see him at all, yet he was huge, about 15-20cm long !

Stick-insect (Mantid)

Can you spot him ?