26 Apr 2012

Summer - hot and active!


Woma Gaillee with a food bulge

14 April 2012: What an exciting (and busy!) couple of months it has been!  The womas have been very active since the floods, regularly moving over 1km in 55hrs!  Did you know that these womas have one of the largest home ranges of any radiotracked snake?!  As active hunters, they don’t quite fit the usual sit-and-wait python lifestyle. 

Woma Humphrey with a BIG
food bulge!

With winter not too far away, there has been a lot of feeding action.  Womas Humphrey and Gaillee have both been sighted with very large, mysterious bulges in their bellies.  In fact Gaillee’s bulge was so fresh that it gave a reflexive ‘kick’ from her stomach when I found her! 

Woma food - sleeping
bearded dragon

Bearded dragons seemed to be the preferred food over summer.  And on any given warm night there was always a good chance of spotting a woma hunting a sleeping dragon.  In the last 2 months Maxi, Romeo and Katie have all been found hunting sleeping bearded dragons, bringing the total up to 7 sleeping bearded dragon hunting observations over the last 18 months!

Woma Romeo 10m high, eating a
bearded dragon

One particularly warm night both Katie and Romeo were out hunting bearded dragons at the same time!  Katie had her work cut out for her with the beardie sleeping 4m out on a very flimsy branch.  But Romeo’s hunting prowess was most impressive!  When I found him just before midnight, he was 10m high in a thin tree with the head of a bearded dragon in his mouth!  After watching several womas fall whilst eating bearded dragons, I was quite concerned for him – it was a big drop!  But he was strong enough to hold on for the whole meal.  Richie and Jen from the zoo (who were out that night) watched him finish his tucker and slowly descend the tree using typical python ‘concertina’ movements.  I am constantly amazed at just how capable the womas are in trees!

Woma Gaillee digging/enlargening
a burrow

Two other exciting woma events have happened in the last 2 months.  Firstly, woma Gaillee was found digging out a burrow!  This is only the second time a wild woma has been seen doing this so it’s very exciting!  Whilst she didn’t dig anywhere near as much dirt as Humphrey (see earlier blog), Gaillee did show us something very unusual indeed.  As she was digging (with her head in the burrow), the last third of her body was jerking around in what I can only describe as ‘excitement’.  I have seen this only once before, as woma James attacked a sand goanna in a hollow log.  It is very different to the slow, deliberate movements of ‘caudal luring’ used by death adders and reported in captive woma pythons.  Was she hunting prey in a burrow that was just a little too small for her?  Is that why she was digging it out?

Woma Maxi - invisible under a
carpet of leaf litter.  He takes up
this whole image.

The second exciting event was when I found big woma Maxi curled up under a mat of leaf litter on a cool autumn day.  This is exciting because in over 1 600 tracking locations during the last 20 months, I have yet to find a woma hidden under leaf litter.  In fact, he had me so confused and was so well hidden that I spent about 5 minutes trying to pinpoint where he was!  Why did he decide to use leaf litter as a hiding place, I wonder?

A very young curl snake (Suta
suta) eating a box-patterned gecko

The things you find when you are radiotracking can be really interesting!  Whilst tracking DC just before dawn one morning, I heard a series of squeaks just 2m from where he was in a burrow.  When I investigated, I found a very young curl snake had just ambushed a box-patterned gecko from its tiny burrow and was starting to eat it.  What a lucky find!  This turned out to be quite a big meal for the tiny (10cm long) snake.  Amazing!

Woma Maxi eating a
bearded dragon - 5m high

Unlike last year, none of the womas have paired up yet and I haven’t found any other womas sharing burrows with the radiotracked womas.  In fact the shortest distance between any of the ten womas still being tracked is over 300m.  Most of them are still over 1km apart.  Will they come back together over winter?  It’s getting cool fast, but time will tell....
















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