A natural history bucket list
I had been aware of the term "bucket list" but have not, until now - when the term has some relevance - needed to understand what it meant. Wiktionary has helped me out with that: its a metaphor of the form of "1,000 things to do before you die".
However, that isn't how I am using the term at all. What I am on about is what I found in a big red bucket yesterday morning.
The bucket in question usually lives under the overflow spout from our rainwater catch-tank. This becomes important when heavy rain is being delivered to the catch-tank faster than the pump can shove it up to the main tank. However heavy rain hasn't been an issue recently so the bucket was almost empty of water. It did however have a couple of frogs and a couple of skinks.
As evident from my last effort at taking snaps in the bucket it is rather difficult to do, because of the strange light. However this image does show the relative sizes of the two frogs.
That is all you are going to see of the little frog since as soon as I removed it from the bucket it dived on to the lawn and disappeared from view. I suspect it was the same species as the bigger frog, shown below after being removed from the bucket.
I am pretty confident this is a Pobblebonk, or Eastern Banjo Frog Limnodynastes dumerilii. They are very common in our dam, about 30m from the bucket location. I really can't work out the Banjo business as they don't sound at all like a Banjo to me!
The skinks were particularly interesting in behaviour as they seemed to be ascending the sides of the bucket: most skinks I find there deserve the prefix "former" as they are displaying their belly from about 2cm below the surface. As I can't pick out a vertebra; stripe on this I call it a Delicate Skink Lampropholis delicata.
However, that isn't how I am using the term at all. What I am on about is what I found in a big red bucket yesterday morning.
The bucket in question usually lives under the overflow spout from our rainwater catch-tank. This becomes important when heavy rain is being delivered to the catch-tank faster than the pump can shove it up to the main tank. However heavy rain hasn't been an issue recently so the bucket was almost empty of water. It did however have a couple of frogs and a couple of skinks.
As evident from my last effort at taking snaps in the bucket it is rather difficult to do, because of the strange light. However this image does show the relative sizes of the two frogs.
The skinks were particularly interesting in behaviour as they seemed to be ascending the sides of the bucket: most skinks I find there deserve the prefix "former" as they are displaying their belly from about 2cm below the surface. As I can't pick out a vertebra; stripe on this I call it a Delicate Skink Lampropholis delicata.
Comments
I once heard a musician (Roy Bailey) talk about banjo players. He asked "You are driving and a banjo player and a Morris dancer run out in front of you. You are going to hit one: which do you choose?" The answer was "The banjo player. Business before pleasure."