Dragon time

Now the warm weather has arrived, the Boyd’s forest dragons (Hypsilurus boydii) have livened up. Livening up for a forest dragon involves sidling around to the other side of a tree when they notice you and occasionally wandering down to ground level. They rely on camouflage — with bursts of frantic running — to keep them out of trouble. I rely on them relying on camouflage to allow me to get close enough to take a photo. I don’t care much for frantic running.

The species is named after John Archibald Boyd, an Englishman who ran sugar plantations in Fiji (1865 – 1882) and North Queensland (1882 – 1926). He was an enthusiastic collector, shipping great amounts of zoological and ethnographic material to naturalist William Macleay in Sydney.

In 1884, he gathered an assortment of animals from the lowland rainforest around Ingham and sent them south. On examining them, Macleay wrote:

I received a few days ago from Mr. Archibald Boyd of Ripple Creek, Herbert River, an earthenware jar containing specimens in spirits of several species of bats, muridæ, antechini, lizards and snakes. A very cursory glance at the contents of the jar satisfied me that Mr. Boyd had hit upon a new and untried and also a very prolific field for the Zoologist.

He named six new species of reptiles from the Ripple Creek collection — Tiaris boydii (the forest dragon) and five snakes. (Unfortunately, four of the snakes belonged to widespread and variable species that had all been described before.) The Ripple Creek dragon specimens were first lodged in the Macleay Museum, Sydney University, and are now in the type collection of the Australian Museum.

Although they are common on the Atherton Tablelands, forest dragons can be difficult to spot. In the two and a half years that I’ve been living here, I’ve only seen them a handful of times. They really are very well camouflaged. (And excellentat sidling.)

References
Macleay, W. (1884) Notes on some Reptiles from the Herbert River, Queensland. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 8: 432 – 436.

Macleay, W. (1884) Census of Australian snakes with descriptions of two new species. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 9: 548 – 568.

Normal service resumed!

Many, many apologies for my absence. Once you get out of the habit of blogging, it's easy to let things slide.

So what's been going on here? There was some really hot weather. And then some really wet weather. And now we're back into the hot weather. Council have started work on a bridge to replace the causeway that TC Tasha washed away on Christmas Day. Someone's cattle wandered onto the road. And Bob Katter visited the bakery. Yeah...that's about it. Small towns, eh?

Cyclone season starts on Tuesday, as does NaNoWriMo. I will be stocking the pantry in anticipation of both those events. Alcohol might be involved at some stage. Most stages, probably.

Plenty of wildlife around at the moment, although most of it seems to be brush turkeys. (Seven of them in the garden last week.) Blue quandong, Millaa Millaa vine and other plants are in fruit at the moment, so the canopy is bustling with wompoo pigeons, brown cuckoo-doves and tooth-billed bowerbirds. And Crinkle Cut, one of the red-legged pademelons, has another joey.