One more Blue Tongue pic

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Here’s a clearer shot. The white marks on the head are from crawling through what looks like an old bag of cement that must have been dumped in the garden. You can handle them if you need to move them out of harms way or relocate them, but they can have salmonella so you’d need to wash your hands afterwards. Also, if handled roughly they can drop their tails so exercise caution.

Thought I saw a snake…

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One of the things I love about Sydney is being only 20 minutes from the city centre but having plenty of wildlife on your doorstep (sometimes literally).
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Saw this disappearing into the undergrowth in the garden on Friday and assumed it was a snake. Didn’t have my camera at the time so spent the next few days trying to get a snap. Unfortunately, it was always basking in a place where it saw me before I spotted it…
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…here’s its head visible in the undergrowth. A herpetologist would be able to tell from this that it’s not actually a snake… 

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…eventually caught a better glimpse of it and realised that it was a bit shorter than I’d assumed…and it had legs…

 

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…so a perfectly harmless Eastern Blue Tongue lizard (the black stripe behind the eye was the giveaway)…

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…this actually quite a large one, getting on for 50 cm I reckon…

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…these bricks are 25cm each and it’s about the length of two so that would mean it’s at least two years old.  

Early morning walk to Middle Head

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Ferry heading towards North, South and Middle Head all visible (Photo taken from Middle Head)

 

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Looking towards Manly from inside the fortifications

 

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Out towards North Head and the Tasman from inside one of the old fortifications

 

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Looking towards The Spit, Grotto Point Lighthouse visible on the right

 

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One of the old gun emplacements at Inner Middle Head Forts

 

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Part of the fortifications leading to one of the old gun emplacements

 

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Looking into one of the old emplacements