Mostly photography, wildlife, birds, Chinese and all things Taiwan (and occasionally trying to make all of those come together at once). #taiwan#fedi22
A reasonably successful camera-trap shot of a brown antechinus (Antechinus stuartii).
The camera-trap has been in this location targeting antechinus for about five weeks, and this is the best photo so far.
Antechinus are somewhat famous in popular culture because they “bonk themselves to death”. No male is older than about 11 months, because they go into such a sexual frenzy in breeding season that all males drop dead from stress & organ failure after breeding.
@futurebird Interesting - I found an alate in our kitchen, so captured it in a tube in the hope that it was a queen, using cotton-wool to separate it from a reservoir of water.
When I came back a few days later I was initially surprised and dismayed to see that fungus had already formed - but then realised it was actually just cotton-wool. The ant had separated bits of cotton-wool from the main clump to surround itself. I like my chances of this being a fertilised queen.
I’m currently scouting for brown antechinus (Antechinus stuartii) in Ku Ring Gai Chase National Park, in preparation for targeting them with a camera-trap.
I pulled three trail-cameras this morning and, sure enough, I have some consistent glimpses of antechinus on two of the three.
It will be challenging to capture such a small, fast-moving animal on a camera-trap, but I’m feeling a buzz of excitement at the challenge.
@lauren I wonder if it would work to print it, then return the whole document to the print-tray to print over it in exactly the same order.
That wouldn't work if there was a lot of fine detail or lots of colour images, but if it's mostly monochrome text then it might do the trick. You could try it with a page or two first to see if it was going to work before you ran the whole document back through...
Just another day on the northern fringes of Sydney - a 1.5+m lace monitor (Varanus varius) strolling up a neighbour's driveway just now.
I don't believe they are venomous, but because they are carrion-feeders their mouth and teeth are covered in bacteria that make for a very nasty bite if you get in their way.
Taken on the mobile phone through the car windscreen.
Would appreciate any help in identifying this Chinese Pathe 78rpm recording from the late 1930s. Catalogue number is 3500 and it is not listed on Discogs. ☹️
I FINALLY succeeded in landing a camera-trap image of a bushrat (Rattus fuscipes), FINALLY dispelling the doubt I had in my mind as to whether the rodents I was seeing were native Australian bushrats, or introduced black rats (Rattus rattus) - because we all know it would be insane to devote this much time to getting photographs of miserable black rats that I could probably find in any alley or park in Sydney.
Are they selling them? Or are they starting their own colony and wanting to know if we have a spare queen we can give them? Or are they just looking for someone who wants to talk about ants?
A scanned negative from around 1990, showing Roosevelt Road, Section 1 in Taipei.
@skinnylatte - this is an example. What was a bit of a “nothing” image at the time is actually now much more special for me, feeling like it captures a world that is now lost.
After a week working in New Zealand, I’ve arrived back in Sydney just in time to savour a 43-degree heatwave. Back home, I’ve been out on the verandah trying to catch a breeze, and a pair of rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus) have been walking right up to me and trying to tell me something. For someone who works so hard to catch birds with a DSLR and long telephoto lens, it’s a bit disheartening to catch a bird this close on an iPad camera.
My wife used to feed the lorikeets fruit, but they always seemed to be able to distinguish between us, and seemed to know there was no point in asking me for a feed. I put out a bowl of water (on the basis that everyone is a bit dehydrated today), and then a saucer of orange juice (they are nectar-eaters), but whatever they wanted, I clearly wasn’t getting the message.
Maybe Little Johnny has fallen down the well, and I am going to feel so dumb for not following the lorikeets.
