One of my local areas of bush is Kensington Bushland – a remnant area of Banksia woodland. I have blogged about it before when I put a camera trap out to watch a Rainbow bee-eater nest. I had shown an interest in doing some more trapping and the council & friends group had arranged for a terrestrial fauna survey to be completed.
A research associate from the WA Museum had laid out a series of trap lines – with pit traps (buckets dug into the ground) with a shade mesh fence and a few funnel traps for larger animals.
This trapping went for about 2 weeks – with the traps being checked each morning.
I went the first day and we setup the funnel traps, draped them with hessian to provide some cover and also removed the lids from the trapping run about a month before.
The previous trapping didn’t catch much as it was quite cold and rainy which prevents many of the reptiles moving about too much.
Our first catch was a Bobtail in one of the funnel traps – as it was still early and quite cold it was pretty sluggish.
We also caught a few of the introduced pest Portuguese millipedes and this cool looking centipede.
That was all we caught on my second day helping.
The third day I came down I heard the day before they had caught a dugite in one of the funnel traps. On the second trap line in one of the pit traps, we caught a Buchanan’s Snake-eyed Skink – this is the common one you often find on the fence in your garden.
In the next trap line in a pit trap we caught a new species for me – Common dwarf skink (Menetia greyii).
Throughout the bushland there were lots of lovely wildflowers.
I really enjoyed the trapping and it should run again in December when it will be much warmer and catch more critters!
Wildlife Watching in Australia 
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