13.July.2016 (Day 38)

Homecoming

It feels good to be back in the NT, as spoiled as I was in Cairns, the top end feels about as close to Arizona as it gets over here. 

Real salt-of-the-earth type folks around here.

I was even given an extra special welcome present.

The new normal

The scars of fire are everywhere in the NT, but for every charred ecosystem there are just as many re-grown landscapes that are the epitome of the area I’ve been working in all summer.

NT car park

Because tomorrow I’ve got heaps of work to do (with the water pythons I still have slowly dehydrating in the lab) I told myself I wouldn’t get too many snakes at night…

But I just can’t help myself. I had to go say hello to some old friends.

Dumpy tree frog (Litoria caerulea)

And find a few some new/familiar friends.

Children’s python (Antaresia childreni)

Because I have 15 dehydrated water pythons to bleed in the morning, my goal was to only grab a few. After finding 5 pretty big ones I decided to head back to the station and call it a night.

Not so fast…

Water python mating ball

I can’t find any evidence of this behavior in water pythons, but I’ve heard some stories from Dr. Shine that he’s seen it before. This is called a mating ball and is fairly common in garter snakes and water snakes. It’s hard to tell from the photo but there are five males and one giaaaant female in this little hole (and another male that slunkered into the back out of reach).

I don’t know enough about it in these species, but I assume all these males were lured to the site by the females pheromones, and rather than fight amongst each other they’re just trying to get a piece of the action (so to speak) and pass on their genetic material.

Now I have 26 water pythons to bleed in a day, and a whole mess of data entry to finish. Enough blogging, back to work!