SA (Monarto Zoo and Yorke Peninsula)

[Nephrurus]

G'day All,

I've been away for the past week, and seeing as i caught a reptile, my trip could be put in the exotics/other reptiles forum.

First stop was my friends place of work, Monarto Zoo. I didn't see much, but i got to see a bit behind the scenes.
Heres a few critters i got to meet.

Mala!

Giraffe

Devils (note the lack of facial tumour)

Black Flanked Rock Wallaby

ring tailed lemur

Baby spotted hyena

Purple gaped honeyeater (i've never seen one before)


After visiting Monarto, we headed out to the Yorke Peninsula to actually do some real work (the purpose of my trip)

All soldier settlements, not much bushland left.... lots of barley though.

We were carrying out a survey for sarcoptic mange in the southern hairy nosed wombat population. To do this, we had to catch 'em!

First capture!

They have to be sedated for handling... they become very easy to handle.

RELEASE!

Off he goes. Note the small patch of hair missing on the shoulder... that was where we'd taken a small skin scraping to search for mange mites.

These guys spend a fair bit of time outside during the day. Apparently their burrow needs aerating from time to time (too much CO2 builds up) so they sit at the top of the burrow while that happens. They also seem to like to bask when the suns out.

Although the land i was on was fairly denuded, i still managed to find a nice thick tail gecko Underwoodisaurus milli. He was much paler than the ones i'm used to (Sydney type).

All the best,

-H

 

[cris]

Awesome, thanks for sharing Nice to see some cute fluffy animals for a change.

 

[krusty]

love the pic of the hyena they are so coll and the devil i would love to have one of them as a pet.

 

[eladidare]

giraffes are incredible animals!

 

[Snake Catcher Victoria]

How cute is the hyena pup?
looks like a buzz.
My brother worked there a few years ago and he loved it .

 

[PhilK]

Hyena pup is gorgeous and it's so nice to see a Devil without a face full of tumour..

 

[xander]

What was the skin scraping results of the wombats?Did you see many of them?

 

[Nephrurus]

We caught about 35 wombats.... mainly males. Mange was only picked up on a few individuals...
We saw some animals that had severe mange. It is definetly present in the population.


-H

 

[Hickson]

Great photos Henry. But I think that honeyeater is a Singing Honeyeater - the belly plumage and the white tuft are not characteristic of the Purple-gaped.



HIx

 

[Nephrurus]

Ha! Quite right Mr Hix!

I missed photos of the purple gaped it seemed..... Only to get the singing honeyeater.

To make up for it, heres a photo of a mallee fowl chick

-H

 

[MoreliaMatt]

Nice photos H!

did u find that milii in the daylight?

 

[Magpie]

Good stuff Henry.
With the mange affecting the wombats and facial tumors affecting the devils we may be one of the last generations to be able to enjoy decent numbers of these great aussie icons.
I'm truly jealous of you this time; Wombats are my favourite fuzzie, closely followed by devils.
Do you know if any progress has been made with DFTD?

 

[Nephrurus]

Not to my knowledge, I didn't go to the last Australian Mammal Society conference, but there was a talk on devils and their liklihood of devil populations surviving DFTD. From what i hear, it's not that great. ANimals in captivity without facial tumour are worth more than their weight in gold.

-H

 

[PhilK]

Spreads like wild fire that stuff, doesn;t it? If only they didn't bite eachother so much!!