Most common are probably Little Corellas – tall as my forearm, pure white, with a crazy crest and even crazier facial expressions. We’ve also got Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (huge, white parrots with a full-on screech), Red-winged Parrots (like the photo), Varied Lorikeets (little flocks of green cruise missiles), Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos (huge, black parrots with cool tail feathers), Northern Rosellas (relatively quiet and understated), Galahs (entirely neon pink), Rainbow Lorikeets (loud and colorful), and Budgerigars (like a pet shop). Once in a while someone sees a Cockatiel fly over (also like a pet shop) but I haven’t seen one yet. Lots of parrots!

At least, until today. My left knee has swollen to twice its normal size! I showed it to Steve, who told me a story of a lady who needed a skin graft after getting bit by some virulent beetle around here. That wasn’t too encouraging, so I typed “australian black beetle with orange antennae” into Google Images. Amazing what you can find out these days – turned out to be something called a Spider Wasp, which attacks spiders larger than itself (but not, apparently, a bug that kills people). Just a regular old wasp bite. Anyway, it’s itchy!

We found some fairy-wrens, but particularly exciting were two Black-headed Pythons, one in the morning and one in the evening, at different places along the dirt road. Both snakes were about two meters long – longer than me – bigger than any I’ve seen yet in Australia.

Black-headed Pythons are non-venomous, but still have fangs, and might bite, and, who knows, might strangle you, so we were pretty careful. But it’s hard to resist the urge to pick up anything slithery (especially for Joey), so voila: photo op. This particular python had a lot of scratches on its skin, and a large number of ticks (who knew snakes get ticks?), so maybe it’s due for a shed. In any case, an awesome piece of wildlife.

Which is good because Michelle, Joey and I are headed out for a 3-day survey of a distant section of the Adcock River this weekend, and we’re planning on sleeping out (no tents). Should be excellent.

Even though it’s winter, a few Purple-crowned Fairy-Wrens are nesting, and we’ve found several nests in the last couple weeks. They probably got into gear after the extended rainy weather in late May, which really greened up the landscape. Nice to see green spinifex against red termite mounds – perfect contrast.