{"id":213,"date":"2012-11-30T12:30:36","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T02:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/?p=213"},"modified":"2012-12-24T12:34:07","modified_gmt":"2012-12-24T02:34:07","slug":"stony-creeks-snakes-cicadas-and-tadpoles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/stony-creeks-snakes-cicadas-and-tadpoles\/","title":{"rendered":"Stony-creeks, snakes, cicadas and tadpoles"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a busy week as I\u2019ve began two work-placements with two organisations; one in the Maroochy River Catchment and the other in the Mary River catchment. I\u2019m completing both as part of my bachelor degree at uni, and I\u2019m having a great time and learning so much! I\u2019ve also come across some interesting creatures during both placements.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, I went frog monitoring with Eva Ford from Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee (MRCCC). Despite travelling to four sites, all we found were Litoria wilcoxii<\/i> (Stony-creek frogs). As I\u2019ve blogged earlier, this season appears to be the most abundant of this species for a while, according to Eva.<\/p>\n

\"Litoria
Litoria wilcoxii<\/i> (Stony-creek frog) (male).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Litoria
Litoria wilcoxii<\/i> (Stony-creek frog) (female).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Litoria
Litoria wilcoxii<\/i> (Stony-creek frog) (female).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite not finding any other frogs, we heard Adelotus brevis<\/i> (Tusked frogs), L. gracilenta<\/i> (Graceful treefrogs), L. nasuta<\/i> (Striped rocket frogs), a Mixophyes fasciolatus<\/i> (Great Barred frog) and more Stony-creek frogs calling throughout the night whilst monitoring. Eva also came across this cool spectacle\u2026<\/p>\n

Cicada emerging from shell. They live in the ground before \u2018hatching\u2019 from and transforming into their \u2018new\u2019 bodies.<\/p>\n

A cicada coming out of it\u2019s \u2018shell\u2019. It\u2019s beautiful colours might be why I\u2019m finding it difficult to track down what species it is since the colours may only be so bright because it has just emerged from the shell (I don\u2019t know).<\/p>\n

\"Cicada\"
Cicada<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Cicada\"
Cicada emerged from shell (rear view).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Cicada\"
Cicada emerged from shell (side view)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later on that night I came across a Morelia spilota mcdowelli<\/i> (AKA Carpet Python). It was rather long, probably about 2 metres in length and certainly a beautiful find.
\nCarpet python
\n

\"Morelia

Morelia spilota mcdowelli<\/i> (AKA Carpet Python)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n
\"Morelia
Morelia spilota mcdowelli<\/i> (AKA Carpet Python)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next day I was out netting macro invertebrates with Maroochy Waterwatch. At our second sampling site in West Woombye, I\u2019d collected several decent sized tadpoles in my net, which I found rather exciting! Considering their size and colour and the apparent quality of water flowing by (since we found mayflies which are very sensitive to water quality), I thought they may have been Mixophyes iteratus<\/i> (Giant Barred frog) tadpoles\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Litoria
Litoria wilcoxii<\/i> (Stony-creek tadpole)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Litoria
Litoria wilcoxii<\/i> (Stony-creek tadpole)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However after asking frog expert Ed Meyer, he reckons they\u2019re L. wilcoxii<\/i> (Stony-creek tadpoles)\u2026which was a bit disappointing \ud83d\ude1b Still good to know there are frogs breeding in the area though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a busy week as I\u2019ve began two work-placements with two organisations; one in the Maroochy River Catchment and[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}