Reptiles and Amphibians of South East Queensland

 

Reptiles and Amphibians of South East Queensland

Carpentaria Snake

 G'day,

My name is Mike Donovan, welcome to my blog. I hope that you enjoy your visit and please feel free to comment on any of the content and add your own tales relating to our very special SEQ wildlife particularely reptiles of amphibians.

 

Very quickly to introduce myself to those of you that don't already know me, I was born in 1959 and my interest in reptiles was sparked at the very early age of around five or six. Our local milkman had intentionally run over a large Eastern Brown Snake right outside our house and my brother convinced me to pick it up by the tail and drag it into the front yard for closer inspection. My mother unaware of the drama came out the front door just as the snake reared its head and forebody in a last ditch effort to rid itself of its tormentors and screamed at me to drop it. She never did like snakes very much but for me it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession.

Eastern Brown Snake

I was lucky that my father had taught me to respect all creatures no matter how small or seemingly insignificant as an integral part of the workings of nature. Without his guidance I could easily have misunderstood these magnificent creatures, or worse still allowed the fears and predjudices of others to distort my own outlook on the natural world. I can only hope that some of  "the only good snake is a dead snake" people out there can overcome their fear long enough to just look at and appreciate the magnificence and sheer beauty of our reptiles and amphibians. In the mean time I'll be blogging for those of you who do appreciate these critters, and keeping you up to date on my projects.

 

 

 Pink-tongued Skink
 

 I am currently writing a book entitled suprisingly enough Reptiles and Amphibians of South East Queensland. It will be a photographic guide more so than a scientific one with multiple photographs of each species represented covering some of the wide variety of colour and pattern variations that may be observed within our region.

 

By my reckoning there are 167 different species of reptiles and amphibians that may be found within our region. This number unfortunately does not include the marine reptiles which I have ommitted at this stage as limited photographic opportunities exist for me, and a distinct lack of experience with, and knowledge of these animals limit my ability to provide any worthwhile information regarding them.

 

Each of the 167 species or in some cases genera will be represented by a text relating to identification, behavior, preferred habitat and range within the region, conservation status and some personal obseravtions. Following the text an image depicting a "normal", standard or common colour variation of the species will be included followed by as many different colour or pattern variations that I have been fortunate enough to photograph within the region.

Stoney Creek Frog

It's been a long time in the making, nearly twenty years now and I still have twenty five critters to photograph before I can finish it. As well as the animals that I haven't managed to find yet there are another twenty four or five that I need better photos of to replace ones that I either destroyed by compressing back in the mid 2000's (not my finest acheivment) or they just wern't that crash hot to begin with.


Eastern Bearded Dragon

Anyway I don't want to bore you with my first blog post, there's plenty of time for that, so I'll sign off now. One quick question though, I have chosen a black background for the blog mainly to highlight the photographs, but I'm not sure if it makes the text too difficult to read. Let me know if it's a problem and I'll see if i can work out how to change it.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mike Donovan.