Backyard Visitor

Well I'm supposed to be taking a break from blogging but I thought I'd post a photo of my latest backyard visitor; The Tiger snake - Notechis scutatus. We've been in this house for two years and two months and this is the first one I've spotted here. It was on the fence just a few metres from the back door.

I was in the veggie garden hilling up my tatties at the time when I heard a Fairy wren going nuts about something. Looked up and noticed two Fairywrens and a couple of House Sparrows having a go at the snake. The fence is nearly 7 foot high and I always considered it to be snake proof. What I overlooked was that the other side of the fence is covered in mesh enabling the snake to climb up. It was trying to get onto a wattle tree on my side. It soon gave up and went to ground in the neighbouring block but soon after made two more attempts to climb various points along the fence. Further up the back I don't have a fence so no doubt it eventually found it's way over to our side but I lost sight of it. Now everyone is refusing to feed the chooks and ducks or collect the eggs :-)

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

#1 - Tiger snake - Notechis scutatus

#2 - Tiger snake - Notechis scutatus (cropped from first shot)

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Time Away from Blogging.

.....but "I'll Be Back"

I've haven't posted as often lately as I've bee preoccupied with updates to my website on the "Lepidoptera of Tasmania". As I've stated elsewhere it has been in a bit of a mess since I mucked up the database. I'm slowly rebuilding it but it still needs a lot of work. It now has 273 Tasmanian species with photos or illustrations. It also has a check list of 1,472 species known to be found in Tasmania. I still have more photos to add and I have to get the notes written up for each moth as well. By the way, many of the moths on the site are also found on the mainland, particularly in the south-east so hopefully it will be of some use outside of Tassie.

So, I'll be missing for a little while as I need to spend less time on the blog until I get the job up to date. I'll still be checking in on everyone else's blog.

http://tasmoths.net/

Screen capture of the Home Page

Screen capture of Page 1 of the Geometridae thumbnails.

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