Legless lizard

I think it would be enlightening, amusing, even frightening to see what I am walking passed each day and simply not seeing. I am painfully aware of a few things that are missing from my journal:

Mammals - so far an otter, two rats and a bunch of kittens, hardly representative of Indonesia's bountiful cornucopia of wildlife. Mr Attenborough would be ashamed of me. Every now and then I get a hint of a mammal, especially when I am moving very slowly and pausing a lot (I do vary the pace, a subject for another discussion I think). I have seen a flash of tail running up a tree a few times, something big disappearing into the undergrowth out of the corner of my eye.

Only yesterday I caught a glimpse of some kind of large vole type critter and found a fairly large, cat sized feces on the path which only left me to wonder, a true naturalist would have at least had a poke around with a stick! Apart from the otter, which nearly ran me over, I have hardly touched my camera before the tantalizing offering was gone. Often I would sit down and wait but I guess once I have been spotted by the critter, it is all over.

Birds - one caged bird, that's it! I do have a heavily cropped image of a sparrow and a blurry streak of something colorful, but birds are a huge void in my journal. Hats off to all you ornithological blippers who regularly dazzle me with dashing avians, you have my respect.

I kid myself sometimes that the birds have all been captured for sale. It is partially true, but the avian entrepreneurs did not get them all, almost daily I get a glimpse or hear a call, but again, hardly had time to raise my camera to my eye. I saw a kingfisher type bird once, but never seen again, despite a daily vigil as I approach the location. I have thought about setting up a table or a feeder, but with the population of feral cats here, it would be selfish of me.

Insects - there are some notable insects that Indonesia is famous for that I have not even seen yet, particularly stick insects. Some insects have to be seen for the first time before they become visible, for example spiders and mantids. It was a year before I spotted my first golden orb weaver spider, after that first sighting they were everywhere. It was four years before I found my first mantis, despite looking, as I knew Indonesia was famous for mantids. Only one millipede sighting, I should have blipped it, huge mistake.

Reptiles - I am getting better at reptiles, more skilled at approaching skinks, I am starting to see the snakes more with four five sightings in the last two months, none before that. Colorful tree frogs and tree snakes have totally eluded me so far. A couple of toad blips and a couple of frog images collected, but where are all those dazzling blue and orange frogs that Indonesia is famous for.

Observation is a skill that has to be learned with experience, unless you get a chance to spend a few days on safari with a proper naturalist. A year in and I am getting better, finding new critters, not daily, but often enough to keep it interesting. I am on the edge of the second biggest city in Indonesia, if I want to find more diversity then I need to get out into the wilds more, something that I have been thinking a lot about recently. So far the furthest I have travelled is ten miles and I have only done that a couple of times, judging it to be too far for no significant extra return. The truth is that it is just simply not far enough. Plans are starting to form in my head!

Dammit, another monologue! Well, I guess only the faithful are still reading this far, so onto today's blip. As you can probably gather, an exciting safari with the same type of brown snake blipped only a few weeks ago when Esta joined me on a safari. I was a bit more cautious today, as I still have not established for certain whether this is actually an eastern brown, the second most venomous land based snake known to man.

I collected a couple of rare images of a swallowtail butterfly and then spotted a large skink. I wouldn't normally bother with the skink as I could actually blip one every day if I wanted. But this one was trailing a white psyche butterfly and it would make a terrific blip to get the skink in hunting action, so I set the camera up for speed and followed.

Then to the shock of my life to my mild surprise, a four foot broom handle shot across the path and attacked the skink. Such was the shock, that I never fired a single shot, but was more concerned about whether I was next!

The skink escaped and things calmed down. I trailed the snake along the path and saw it unsuccessfully lunge at another lizard. Obviously not a superstar of hunters, as there were no visible bumps of recent meals to be seen along its length.

The snake was aware of me and as I approached, it would raise up and wriggle the first six inches of throat in kind of a threatening display and that is what I have attempted to show you today.

When it was all over, one of the farmers wives came walking up the path. I stopped her and showed the preview and pointed ahead and told her, "Hati hati", which basically means take care my dear!

I continued to work the path, shot a HUGE golden orb weaver spider that had just shed its skin and then pow! The same snake was in front of me again and I was able to fire off a few more shots. As I tried to get closer, it literally flew over the edge and down the slope towards the stream and was gone. The speed at which these reptiles can move is quite phenomenal. Out running one of these legless lizards is not going to happen, I would be better off standing my ground and trying to beat it to death with a Sigma 105 macro!

Sorry for the lengthy write-up, I actually left a lot out as well. Hope you like the snake, not the classic of a few weeks ago, but that was probably the snake blip of a lifetime and cannot be competed with.

Dave