Bush Stone-curlews, a few owls and an army of frogs - that makes great numbers for any night spotting adventure. However, there were still a few goodies to be caught by those spotlights. The little bentwing bat above was a fantastic spot, hanging onto the tiniest crack in one of the bathroom doors at the deserted (and flooded) campsite it looked so peaceful just hanging there sleeping that I only reluctantly decided to use the flash. I stopped the flash output down 2 stops and the photo is taken from a fair distance. It is actually possible to identify the closed eye, the snout and some seriously good sized ears if you examine the photo closely.
The stopping down of the flash was very appropriate for the bat, probably because of the distance. However, always remember to reset your camera after fooling around with settings - in particular after using the timer function!! ;-) - While shooting the bat I got onto the wolf spider below .. the lighting seems to be more appropriate for a bit of boudoir action .. it nearly makes it look cuddly :-D
Gehyra Dubia above had me fooled for a while. I saw its cousin, the Northern Dtellas Gehyra australis when I was in Kakadu and did not notice much of a difference, but a quick look in the reptile book revealed that they each roam in their own parts of Australia .. in particular they like the safety of human constructions - based on my sightings 100% of them run around up-side-down on the ceiling inside toilet blocks.
I think, I wrongfully claimed that the bird sighting had finished for the night(?) Making it back to the establishment, we saw a few Macleay's Honeyeaters curled up for the night - what a sight! They had assumed the disguise of fur balls .. and if it was not because we were told I guess identification would have been troublesome :-D
Fantastic stuff! Nearly 2 hours of spot lighting and we had seen an amazing selection of what moves during night in the far north end of Queensland. We decided to just quietly sit and enjoy the evening and see, what would be attracted by the feeders installed around Kingfisher Park. Before we had to give up and go to bed, we had seen Bush Rats, Fawn-footed Melomys, Northern Brown Bandicoots and a glimpse or two of the clearly distinguishable White-tailed Rat.
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