Why does the exquisite Rosenberg's monitor (a goanna species) in one of today's column's pictures have a "trance-like" expression on its face? What can entrance a goanna?
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Today's column, that rare thing in today's Canberra Times a guaranteed Kyrgios-free zone, will explain all in a moment with some exciting breaking news from wildlife-rich Mount Ainslie.
First, though, we hop to explain the other (slightly troubling) image sported by today's column. Frog-like, it fits sweetly with today's herpetological theme.
Meltem Isik, a Turkish artist, has made a series she calls Suspicious Affinities. It consists of surreal portraits of folk and of creatures made from cut-out and rearranged fleshy pictures of parts of the human body. Not everything in the series is suitable for a family column but the one we bring you today, Suspicious Affinities #7, is, just. A gallery of her Suspicious Affinities series is on display, as we write, in designboom, designboom.com/art/meltem-isik-suspicious-affinities-body-art-01-18-2016/ the splendid online digital magazine.
But now, leaving the surreal (a 'frog' of human flesh!) we put on sturdy boots and wide-brimmed hats and go out on to the slopes of Mount Ainslie. Bone-dry leaves and twigs crackle beneath our feet.
As previously reported in our unforgettable 5 January column canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-life/ganggang-rosenbergs-monitors-in-courtship-mode-in-jungle-of-mt-ainslie-20160104-glz053 the beautiful but not well-understood Rosenberg's monitor, a vulnerable species of goanna, (it is Varanus goldbergi) is receiving some rapt research attention.
They are beautifully patterned but of subtle colouring. They can grow to 1.5 metres in length. There is probably only a light sprinkling of them on Mount Ainslie and it's that sprinkling that Matthew Higgins and ACT government ecologist Dr Don Fletcher are studying. Their tools have included remote automatic wildlife cameras.
They enthuse, and all of sensitive Canberra will agree that even though most of will never see a 'Rosie' it is thrilling to know that we have them among us in this bush capital.
The species has surely been sprinkled in our region for aeons. But most that is known about the species, that for example at this very time of year the female digs a chamber in a termite mound, lays her eggs in that chamber and then backfills so as to seal the eggs away, is the result of research done by Peggy Rismiller and others on South Australia's Kangaroo Island. That research done in the 1990s has given clues of what to watch for on Mount Ainslie. Now that vigilance is paying off.
"On Monday evening," Higgins has rejoiced to us, "the project that Don Fletcher and I have been running finally revealed gold."
"We observed a female Rosenberg's monitor laying eggs in her excavation chamber in a termite mound. This particular mound is one that I have been watching for over a year, and we have evidence that it is at least the third season that it has been used. There has been no observable activity at this particular mound for nearly 12 months, until [Monday] when the excavation suddenly appeared, and on Monday evening when we visited and Rosie was in there. Peggy Rismiller's research on these goannas from Kangaroo Island talks of females going into a 'trance-like' state during egg-laying, and this was certainly observable, as you can see in the photo.
"So Monday was a great day for the continuation of a species which is 'vulnerable' in NSW and not often seen in the ACT. Any sighting of a Rosenberg's is special, and sighting of breeding behaviour is especially so."
One of the reasons why sprinklings of the species appear to be so thin is that so few of the hatchlings survive. Up to 14 eggs may be laid but Rismiller thought only one in a dozen hatchlings live for a year.
It is a jungle (in Mount Ainslie's case a dry sclerophyll woodland) out there. Other Rosenbergs will eat Rosenbergs' eggs, and the hatchlings may meet grisly fates thanks to among other menaces, kookaburras, currawongs, cars, foxes and cats. Echidnas (and Higgins and Fetcher are monitoring and capturing on camera an Ainslie echidna they call 'Edna') can trample and pierce to death hatchlings that get in the way when the Ednas burrow frenziedly into termite mounds to get at toothsome termites.
Rismiller reported seeing terrible combat between rival adult Rosenbergs when a female defended her eggs.
"Both attacker and defender sustained injuries, including dislocated or broken limbs; broken ribs; spinal injuries; and severe bites to head, throat, and abdomen."
Higgins, who has yet to see one of these rumbles in the jungle (in the woodland, really) fancies that it would be quite "a spectacle" in the setting of Ainslie's quiet and serene-seeming slopes.
He says that overall "This work relies a fair bit on chance – the chance of seeing the goannas in the first place."
"But it also relies on an informed methodology, and that is why we've been checking the mounds religiously and watching for all the likely signs of activity. It involves repeated checking, often walking considerable distances off-track and in the heat of a fairly torrid summer this year.
"This egg-laying is extremely gratifying as it represents a new generation of a beautiful and ancient species having a chance in the wonderful treasure trove that is the Australian bush."