Thursday, April 12, 2007

Wet Season 2007 Nightwalk sightings

The sightings have been good during the last four months, our dry spell has ended but the wet season has not been particularly severe. The wildlife sightings have been generally excellent.Many snakes have been seen this year, including nights where multiple snakes have been encountered. Amethystine Pythons, Carpet Pythons and Spotted Pythons have all been seen. Other species including the Brown Tree Snake have also been seen. Mason’s Tours manager, Lawrence Mason has a very large Brown Tree Snake which lives in the ceiling of his house. Although the house was built with a fully sealed ceiling, the snake has found away in by going through a hole where LPG gas is piped in.
The snake does no harm, and keeps the rats away, so we have not worried about it, although the house can seem haunted as it moves around. Recently our local electrician was employed to run some wires for our backup power system and not knowing about the serpentine resident in the ceiling climbed up there to confronted by 3m of defensive snake! He will be more careful getting in there next time!Boyd’s Forest Dragon sightings have excellent, due to the rain. They are one of the most photogenic of all our rainforest creatures and are often seen on wet nightsEastern Water Dragons have also been active. At times like last year, we were seeing 4 a night. Mason’s have a large permanent stream central to their trails, and thus we see more Water Dragons than other operators. Male Water dragons are harem forming, and much larger than females. We have seen them up to 1.5m long. (Note reptile books measure lizards snout to anus and thus the tail length is left off)With the onset of the cooler weather, the lovely Striped Possums are again here. One of our guides, marina recently saw two of these in one night. They particularly like to feed in the Fan Palms, getting larvae from the Fan Palm Fabric at the base of the leaves.
Croc sightings have also been great too, with even passers by seeing the croc in Myall Creek. We have seen the eyes or in many cases the whole animal right through the wet season.
Native rats have not been seen much at all. Wet weather means less food and less locations for burrows. Native rats have population ‘tides’ and low tide is usually the wet weather. More will be seen as the population rises in winter.We have also been seeing a few Bandicoots , and there seems to still be a healthy population of Northern Brown Bandicoots in the valley. Long Nosed Bandicoots have also been seen a bit.Hope to see you on a Nightwalk in May, June July or August!!!

Ocean Hotels License Mason's Tours

Mason’s Tours are proud to announce that they have secured the license to operate 4WD Tours from the Ocean Hotels’ Cape Tribulation properties. Mason’s will offer quality Full and Half Day 4WD Touring from Coconut Beach Resort, Ferntree Lodge, and The Jungle Lodge. Mason’s Tours are Cape Tribulation’s original land tour operators and the manager, Lawrence Mason said today ‘ I look forward to working closely with Ocean Hotels to provide the best possible 4WD Touring experience to visitors to the Daintree’. For more information on Ocean Hotels and Mason’s Tours go to www.oceanhotels.com.au and www.masonstours.com.au