Auswildlife.com

Image rights grab by UK based Great British Life

To read more, follow this link!

Great British Life

A cluster of islands in the Pacific, well worth a visit. Originally named the New Hebrides by Captian Cook, the country was ruled by a joint British and French admistration until 1980. But comical it was, as both admistrations had separate offices and duplicated departments! The French drove on the right-hand side of the road while the British drove on the left. What a joke! Very few things were ever achieved because the two administrations couldn’t agree on anything.  It’s a wonder that the locals put up with this rediculous nonsense for so long! But no longer – they have their independence now.

Flying foxes are trapped or shot and used as food since most areas are subsistence farming. Luckily two of the three species in the area appear to be reasonably secure and not at threat of extinction. The one below is Pteropus anetianus, the Vanuatu Flying Fox. The lower pic is a Coconut Crab.

Coconut crabs are also an endangered species but are now harvested for food through a conservation management program that monitors numbers and allocates a quota for consumption.  There is also a special crab sanctuary on Vanua Lava, one of the most northerly islands. Also on the island, resides a very rare and poorly known flying fox, Pteropus fundatus or Banks Flying Fox.  I think this island might be a good destination for a future visit!

We certainly have some interesting spiders in Australia, like this little creature – called the ‘Salticid Ant Eater’ or Zenodorus orbicularis. In the hills behind Brisbane, they are commonly seen on eucalypt trees where, as their name implies, they hunt ants.  At only about 4-5mm long, they are very easily overlooked, so you need to spend quite some time looking at each tree to find them. They are a species of jumping spider, as you more observant spider enthusiats would have already worked out. I had to use a rather special lens to get sufficent magnification to make him a worthwhile subject (“him” because of the size and shape of the abdomen).

The only problem that I had was that, being a jumping spider, he wanted to jump and so as I moved in, I noticed him looking up…. and then he was gone! It took me a while to work out that he had jumped onto the top of the lens! Hmmm!

Ooops…he’s going up!!  It’s ok, I won’t bore you with the next picture – one of bare white bark….

There are more spiders in the Photo Library – orange link at the top right of this page.

In managing the website, I keep an eye on the various search terms that people use when visiting, and one of the most popular is ‘kangaroo’.  It’s not unexpected, but what I did think was interesting, was that many people seem to think there is just one species of kangaroo! In fact we have many. So here is a very brief wildlife photographic journey through just a few of the species that we have. Sorry, I don’t have photos of them all…yet.

Firstly, apart from the species that we normally associate with the name, there are a few smaller marsupials that use the same bipedal hopping gait and belong to the same ‘Superfamily’ (Macropodoidea).  Here is an example of one, the Northern Bettong (Bettongia tropica).  There are ten species of Bettongs and Potoroos, two of which are now extinct and most others are highly threatened. The species photographed is listed as Endangered under our Federal legislation.

Having got them out of the way, we can now move on to the animals that look more like real kangaroos.  Mind you, there are a few groups that I am glossing over here. For example the Tree Kangaroos, that don’t really act like real kangaroos, and the Hare-Wallabies because I don’t have any pictures of them.  So if we move on from those liitle omissions (!!) we get to the true kangaroos and wallabies.

Some examples of wallabies – which are just small kangaroos (Most of them in the same Genus, Macropus)

Agile Wallabies (Macropus agilis) as featured in the article about Cape Hillsborough, Queensland. A wallaby of the northern tropical savannahs.

Red-necked Wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus). Locally common in parts of south eastern Australia.

Northern Nailtail Wallaby (Onychogalea unguifera).  A wallaby of the northern tropical woodlands. It has two other close relatives that once occurred in more southerly locales. One of these is now extinct and the other is exceedlingly rare.  All have a curious little nail-like projection at the tip of the tail which gives them their common name.

The Rock Wallabies are another separate genus (Petrogale) and there are quite a few species recognised, many of which look almost exactly the same! The Mareeba Rock Wallaby is a good example.

Lets have a closer look at a joey…..

The Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) of south-eastern Australia.

There are also a couple of species of Pademelons (Thylogale) which are denizens of wet forests and dense undergrowth. This is a Red-legged Pademelon (Thylogale stigmatica) (below)

The Swamp Wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) has a genus all to itself.  A very common animal along the east Australian coast and also venturing inland into semi-arid areas. I have put two images of this wallaby in here.

Then we can move to the larger macropods – the Euro (Macropus robustus), found over much of the Australian mainland. Along the Great Dividing Range on the east coast, Euros take on a very different appearance. The males are large, powerfully built and stooped, while the females are small, pale grey with white markings and look like an entirely different species. These east coast animals are usually called Wallaroos.  The picture below is of an arid zone Euro in Western Australia.

The Eastern Grey Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) is, as it’s name suggests, quite large. Males can weigh up to 85kg, but this the exception rather than the rule.  This species is widespread in eastern Australia and the changes that white settlement has bought about, have greatly advantaged this species, so that numbers are now well in excess of that which originally occurred. Over the past 200 years or more, we have a) cleared forests and created more grasslands, b) created more water points and c) managed to kill off the kangaroo’s main predator, the Dingo. It’s no wonder that their population has exploded.  Although sometimes portrayed as a threatened species and in need of conservation, the reality is that there are many other Australian species that are in far more serious predicaments than these animals.  Nevertheless, they still make nice photographic subjects….

And then we can move to the Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus).  Only the males tend to be red. Females are usually a blue-grey colour (although not always).  Males can weigh up to 92kg although once again, this is more an exception rather than the rule.  It is an animal of the open arid plains.  I have included a picture of a male and also a two females.

…and that concludes the auswildlife kangaroo odyssey. Cheers, Bruce

Photographing insects, birds, bats and other animals in motion is a specialist application that some wildlife photographers devote a considerable amount of time and effort to. This pdf is from a friend of mine, Graham Anderson, who has been working on the development of such a system for digital SLR cameras.

Download the pdf:

photographing things that fly .pdf

Graham is eventually going to develop this into a saleable item, so if you want to contact him, you can use his email address, grahamgilda at gmail dot com, with appropriate modification. 

On a number of occasions I have undertaken small wildlife and nature photographic workshops in my closest city, Brisbane. The usual preludes applied; advertisements in the local press and word of mouth through the local wildlife groups, and I usually had a reasonable group but with a very wide range of expertise, experience and camera gear! Where to start? On most occasions I went through some basic camera principles – aperture and shutter speeds etc. Then we would have a little session out in the ‘field’. It was always at this stage that I got to see exactly what the problem areas were! It was always the same: lack of understanding of how their cameras actually worked…what all the knobs and dials did…and what it all meant. Nothing to do with apertures or shutter speeds, or processing RAWs. The vast majority of people had no idea how to set their aperture or shutter speed in the first place!  I had one person (I hope doesn’t read this!) who explained that he was having trouble setting the ISO value. When I looked to see what he was doing, he was fiddling with the exposure compensation setting! So number one suggestion - if you want to take better photographs,  learn all there is to learn about your own camera. Take it and its manual and sit in a comfortable chair, then read and play with all the settings! Go through all the menus! Learn what patterns apply when you select different exposure and focus settings.  I often imagine a particular picture-taking scenario and then think about what might be best for that situation and then experiment to see what works. With larger SLR’s it’s relatively straight forward in terms of conceptualising the best settings for a particular scenario, but with small digi cameras, sometimes its far less obvious. You must experiment and test different options.

You need to do all this and become completely familiar with all the settings and how they work before you progress any further.  If you need to use manual exposure, you need to be able to go to it in an instant and know how to change aperture and shutter, how to change autofocus etc.  You need to achieve technical mastery over that box of electrical parts!

Tried and True

Once you have made that hurdle, you are ready for the next step! I would suggest that you start off by developing a number of standard techniques that you can use in certain situations. For example, I know that if I want to photograph a frog with my small Canon digi camera, I set the camera to Av (Aperture priority) and f8, ISO to 200, focus to AF flexizone, macro setting and then I open up the zoom to full wide angle and then progressively zoom until I see the distance indicator sitting on 10cm. That’s it! I know I am ready to go! I have used this setting over and over. I know what the results look like and what to do in terms of composition etc.  I know what angle the flash covers, how far away I need to be etc etc. I don’t have to think about it. Sure, once I have all that set, I might think about varying things a little just to see what happens! Bear in mind however that success is bred by consistency and, in turn is aided and abetted by repitition and familiarity. You most probably have a particular type of natural history subject that you want to specialise in. Work out a standard technique for that subject and use it consistently. Make any adjustments that you need until you have it mastered, and then commit it to memory.  You now have standard technique #1 in the bag!

You can Never Get Too Much Technical Info!

The more you understand about how your camera works, the more you can manipulate it and bend it to your will! You can never learn too much! Some months ago I was sitting in a bird hide and had just spent a vexing five minutes trying to focus on some fast moving birds as they came in to drink at a small waterhole. I was not happy! Why can no one build an autofocus system to deal with these situations? Then I started thinking about what might be an ideal system. After another 30 seconds, it dawned on me that in fact, my camera could be set to do exactly what I needed. A few menus and some custom functions and other tweaks and I was there. Technical knowledge! I almost didn’t remember enough to set the camera there in the hide…. but I just scraped in. Maybe it would be a good idea to carry the manual around! Camera settings are not of much use if you don’t use them!

Eastern Spinebill. Tried and True Technique #32, 300mm lens and aperture priority @ f8 and fill flash!!!

Here are some portraits of one of our north Queensland leaf-nosed bat species, Hipposideros cervinus. Yes, they are two different individuals and no, I didn’t mess with the colours in PhotoShop! These are the actual colours.

Bats that live in cave and mine roost sites with a high ammonia content in the atmosphere, often have their fur bleached a beautiful orange, as in this first bat. The ammonia is produced by the anerobic breakdown of the bat guano and so it’s not uncommon in roost sites with poor air flow which tends to trap the ammonia. Bats seem to be able to survive in this high ammonia atmosphere because they go into torpor (a slowing of the metabolism and ouward appearance of being asleep) and this causes a buildup of CO2 in the blood which buffers the effects of the ammonia. When they become active and fly out, the ammonia is expelled with the CO2.

I should also mention that photographs like these are not possible unless the bats are caught and this is illegal unless you have a permit from the relevant State’s Parks and Wildlife Service. These animals are my particular research speciality and so I have permits etc.

One of the best places to see these amazing animals is at Tarzali Lakes Aquaculture Centre on the Atherton Tablelands in north Queensland. Although they are a relatively widespread animal, sightings are less guaranteed at other sites or alternatively, they occur in the dim light of late afternoon or early morning. The Tazarli platypus are active however, in broad daylight, which makes photographing them a lot easier! Vist the Aquaculture Centre’s website for more information about the locality and this is where it is on Google Maps. Happy snapping!

Here are the residents:

If you are travelling along the central Queensland coast, then Cape Hillsborough is certainly worth a visit. There are some great opportunities for some beach landscape photos and there is also some interesting wildlife. The wallabies in these photos are Agile Wallabies, a very common species in the savannah grasslands across the semi-arid Australian tropics. Interestingly, there are not that many places where you can easily see them in the wild (yes, well they are not really wild but they are free to range – so wild in that sense!) .  This is one place to see them and another that I can think of, is the East Point Reserve, not far from the Darwin CBD in the Northern Territory.  I’m sure there must be other places  but Cape Hillsborough may well be the only place where they come out onto a beach. This all seemed a bit odd - why would they come out onto an exposed beach where they might risk predation etc?  I was told that they were usually on the beach between about 5 and 7am, so I decided to go and see for myself. Running a bit late as usual, I got there at about 7am and there they were! Then I discovered that they were eating bits of vegetation that had been washed up, including the seeds of some of the local mangroves. So there it was – they were feeding! In this area, predators such as dingoes are long gone and being in a national park, there are no other pets (dogs) allowed, so they probably feel quite safe.

Cape Hillsborough offers quite a few other attractions as well. There are a number of walking tracks that lead through the coastal forests and along the shoreline. As mentioned, most of the area is national park and there are some really nice camp sites near the beaches. Do beware of the sandflies!  Most (all?) of the campsites are run by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, and so you must pay a camping fee. Here is some information from the QPWS people.

If you want to go more up-market, there is a Cape Hillborough Nature Resort (with much better pics on their website than I managed to get!) .  The Resort has camping sites as well as cabins and some are right beside the beach (where the wallabies are to be seen).  This is where Cape Hillsborough is on Google Maps (just north of Mackay).

Out of the murky gloom came this pair of sharks and then the lead animal turned and headed straight towards me.  Determined to get a few photos, I kept my eye to the viewfinder and put all other thoughts out of my mind as they came in… racking the zoom to full wide-angle to try to get them in the picture – it was slightly unnerving. Then  just at the last moment, the leading shark swerved away. Well, I mean, it had too unless it wanted to crash into the perspex! Yes… did you really think I would be in the water with a pair of bull sharks?  This was at SeaWorld on the Queensland Gold Coast, Australia.