Dingo & Dragon

In the car on the way out this morning I notice a dingo hunkered down in the long grass alongside the drive and stopped further along to see if I could get a photo. However that was enough to spook it and it stood up causing a mass flight of the kangaroos that were on the other side of the drive. It then proceeded to trot up the drive and disappear over the rise. I decided to follow and see if it was staying around and as I reached the top of the rise and looked around I thought I was out of luck. Then noticed off to my left, on the edge of the treeline the dingo was moving along looking for prey. Amongst the grass and the scrub I couldn't get a clear line of sight but eventually got one photo as it disappeared into the trees.

This is the second dingo I have seen in the past 2 weeks although the other on was a  very starved looking young pup on the side of the road about 20k from here. Today's animal although a bit thin looks in reasonable condition. We have heard them howling at night so knew they were around our area. The Dingo Canis lupus dingo probably arrived in Australia some 5 to 10 thousand years ago, a  native dog, accompaning travellers from Asia. From those beginings the dingo developed distinctly different characteristics and dingos of  the present day are not found outside of Austalia.

As well as dingos we are also fortunate to have dragons, not your fire breathing variety but one of the smallest of the dragons found in Australia that belong to the family Agamidae. The Jacky Lizard or Tree Dragon Amphibolurus muricatus  are fairly common down the east coast through to SA. We often see quite a few around our garden area but last year hardly saw any, so I was pleased today to see two young ones in the vegie garden.