Lake Broadwater

For the last couple of days I've been out at Lake Broadwater looking for Pale-headed snakes. That was the main species that Stewart wanted to see so I thought I'd tag along and see what I could see. It's quite fun going out there and finding things that most people will never get the chance to see. We went out there with Lee who is also interested in reptiles. After getting out there and then setting up camp we headed out to the northern part of the lake to see what we could find doing a bit of spotlighting. We were looking for pale-headed snakes which go out hunting on trees around the area at night. After 3 hours of spotlighting we'd only managed to find geckos and frogs. There wasn't a snake in sight. After a walking for what seemed an age Lee and I got bored with out findings and convinced Stewart (quite easily) to go out for a drive and see what we can find. I've found that that is the best way to find reptiles. We were on the road for about 5 minutes when we came upon our first snake. It was crossing the road and heading towards the lake. Stewart was pretty excited when he jumped out and found that it was a pale-headed snake. Unfortunatly though that was to be our only snake of the night. Around 11 o'clock we headed back to camp happy with our find. The next day consisted of an early morning due to the many cockatoos that were flying around the camp site. Their screeching lasted from just before dawn which is around 5 o'clock until around 8 o'clock. By that time it was pretty warm and they all left the camp site to look for a shady spot and probably rest their voices for the afternoon performance and the next morning.

On the second day we found a lace monitor, bearded dragon, a couple more geckos, skinks and frogs and killed about 10 000 mosquitos that seemed to be drawn towards us when ever we stepped into a shady area. That night we went out for a drive but because it got quite cool at night there was nothing other than a few frogs out. Even so it was a good trip out there as we found the pale-headed snake that we wanted to see although only managed to see a dead grey snake that had been killed on the road. Unfortunalty the one that was hit was gravid and so had about 8 little babies scattered around and coming out of her. It was not a pretty sight. The next day we drove straight home as I had to be back in the afternoon.