Wednesday I had quite a dilemma on my hands…I’d been invited to go frog monitoring with three different people and all to good sites too! In the end I decided to return with Eva and Matt to the Maleny Precinct frog monitoring sites where the news broke late last year of the first Mixophyes iteratus (Giant Barred Frog) finds on record. I was fortunate to follow this up with the find of the first juvenile GBF recorded there. Maleny had received about 700mm of rain in the days preceding our visit so it would be nice to see the four sites in tip-top condition and full of water.
Whilst frog activity wasn’t quite what we expected, we were kept busy trying to find and identify a species of frog that was rather numerous at one particular site. Matt eventually found it, the recording of which I have here. Eva identified it to Uperoleia laevigata (Eastern Gungan) [UPDATE: Harry Hines has since identified this species to Uperoleia fusca (Sandy Gungan)] and this sure wasn’t an easy task since there are two other Gungans of very similar appearance and call. At any rate, it is still another new species for me which brings my total to a somewhat insignificant tally of 24 frogs and 1 toad species. I say insignificant because in the south-east region there are around 50 frog species, which make up about a quarter of all frog species in Australia! That’s pretty impressive for a rather small area. Still, I’m almost half-way.
We also found another two adult M. iteratus (Giant Barred Frogs); a male and a female.
And amongst the numerous more common species, I thought I’d include just one photo of a Litoria fallax (Eastern Sedgefrog) seeings as it must be at least a month since I last posted a photo of this species 😛 .
