A few of us went on the FATS (Frog and Tadpole Study group) field trip to Smiths Lake on the weekend.
It's right by Seal Rocks, so we went for a bit of a swim before the serious business of herping went on. Heres a pic of the beach.
It was a great night on the Friday, a hot day and a still night. I think it would have been at least 25degrees. It had been fairly dry recently so there wasn't much frog activity, but a few other critters were moving about.
The most common species sighted was the small eyed snake
Rhinoplocephalus nigriscens. We must have seen 6 (probably more) or so over the 2 nights herping and road driving. They were so common that I didn't really try to photograph them, so all I ended up with were a couple of very ordinary photos. Heres the best of some bad shots.
See? told you it was ordinary.
The other very common herp was the Leaf Tail Gecko
Salturarius swainii. I'd only ever seen young animals from this point, but they adults are much cooler. Unlike small eyed snakes I tried to get some photos, but i wasn't paying as much attention as i should have been. Here are a few of the better photos.
Not bad looking animals. A few had those cool orange gecko mites that are prevalent on leaf tails.
Swamp snakes
Hemiapsis signata were getting about the place as well. Great little elapids.
Another attractive elapid which is usually easy to photograph is the Golden Crown Snake
Cacophis squamulosa. They have a great threat display, but most of my photos weren't in focus. I should have been a bit more persistant.
Heres the only focused shot.
Some of the members were very excited to see some nice Bandy Bandys
Vermicella annulata as a few people had never seen them before.
It was very disapointing to see a DOR ROugh Scale Snake on the way.
The highlight of the trip was definetly the Stephens Banded Snake. Always a interesting critter, they have a great threat display and are easily the most spectacular species we found (some people like bandy bandys, but they are really just wannabe stephens bandeds).
Like I said at the start, not the best photos I've taken, but decent records of what we found.
A few frogs were found, but they remained unphotographed.
Geeze.. we need a separate forum for these threads.
-H
Field Trip to Smiths Lake, NSW 
thanks for sharing!
