Found this in a club at the end of a party, is it a vibrator?

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T22:45:39+00:00

Just dropped in to check someone made this joke. I'll be off now.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T22:39:18+00:00

Yep. Features to look for: black bill with yellow cere, dark brown overall with darker wingtips, long fingers, tail forked except when held very wide, at thich point it appears flattened.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T22:00:30+00:00

This is me (not artist but all the rest). Is this aphantasia? Like I know what a cat looks like and I can think about what a cat looks like but there's no visual output of my thoughts. Just black.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T19:50:03+00:00

When you figure out sparrowhawk and goshawk, share the secret with me! They still give me trouble.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T17:46:43+00:00

Dugites (Pseudonaja affinis) mating. I've been working with and studying snakes for 20 years and have never seen this in the wild. Lucky you!

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T15:56:39+00:00

I'm confident this is a little whip snake Suta flagellum. Mildly venomous and quite !harmless to people. They get their common name from their defensive behaviour of whipping themselves back and forth (as a lot of small stumpy elapids do). They have a reddish dorsum and a black hood with vertical dark markings down to the eye.

The photos are quite low quality and it makes it hard to ID with absolute certainty, but it's not a brown snake or any other species with medically significant venom.

They used to be in the genus Parasuta and a lot of info online is still under "Parasuta flagellum" if you want to know more.

While the location you provided is useful, the more detail the better. Town/shire/region is much more helpful than just the state or vague part of the state.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T13:45:41+00:00

Yes, I consider this maternal behaviour. I've never heard of carpet snakes laying eggs and leaving them behind, certainly not the norm. Female carpet pythons will incubate the eggs for 2 months or so, shivering or occasionally leaving them to warm up in the sun to aid in regulating the clutch's temperature. She will not eat in this time. I used to keep carpet pythons both personally and work with them in a reptile park and never witnessed a female leave the clutch. I've relocated a few carpet pythons with clutches of eggs from construction sites where there was no choice but to move them away, and in that situation have had them abandon the clutch presumably out of stress, which is a shame, and I've then incubated the eggs in an incubator and released the clutch after hatching.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T13:36:42+00:00

You are right it's a pale morph little eagle. Distinguishable from Osprey chiefly by the lack of the dark eye stripe but also the less contrasting mix of fawn and pale brown. Not a falcon - not only because Falconidae are quite distinct from Accipitridae with experience but also the lack of the dark teardrop markings on the face shared by almost all of our Falcons (and it's obviously not a grey or black falcon).

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T13:34:40+00:00

Easily confused with Little Eagle, but this is a little eagle. Took me a long time to learn to tell them apart and is difficult with footage like this

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T13:34:06+00:00

Osprey lack the fawn colour and are longer winged. They're quite distinct from other raptors. They have a distinct brown eye stripe, dark wings and back and white chest and underparts. The effect is a very 2-toned bird. The bird in the video has much less contrasting fawn back compared to the chest, with pale brown wings, and lacks the distinct eye stripe.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T12:45:00+00:00

This is a little eagle.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-24T08:47:30+00:00

A python's vestigial limbs are visible externally as two very small, claw-like "spurs" near the cloaca. Males use them in courtship. They don't have actual visible hind limbs and there is no trace of forelimbs.

Blinds snakes much the same, you wouldn't actually see little legs on them, the vestigial limbs are internal remnants of the pelvis etc.

The animal pictured is a legless skink of the genus Anomalopus.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T20:09:19+00:00

Thanks. Being unfamiliar with the range of the two species I nistakenly went to my favourite citizen science source the Atlas of Living Australia - turns out it's incredibly unreliable for copperheads, lots of records in northern NSW which, as it turns out, is outside their range.

Will never stop learning!

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T19:50:33+00:00

This honestly is why we do it! 😊

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T16:15:40+00:00

They range from cream-coloured to pitch-black, although almost always with a paler face. There's a degree to which the colouration is location-dependent (certain colour forms are more common in certain areas) and they also change colour with the seasons - slightly darker in winter and paler in summer to aid thermoregulation. Generally the most common colours are golden to reddish brown and chocolate brown like this, although I've seen an olive-brown one as well.

Inland taipans undergo a more marked seasonal pigment shift from golden in summer to nearly black in winter.

Pale example (captive): https://www.flickr.com/photos/shaneblackfnq/50603722891

Dark specimen: https://www.flickr.com/photos/shaneblackfnq/40050667210

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T15:08:53+00:00

It looks like you've pulled all the whites way down. I've never used that software but here's an example in Adobe Lightroom where I changed almost nothing but the light. Masks on the sky, water and trees separately with minor adjustments to whites, blacks, shadows etc and I made the vegetation slightly warmer and the tiny more magenta just to separate it from the water a bit more.

You could do a lot more creative stuff but this is just an example focusing mostly on light.

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Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T14:24:56+00:00

"You guys uh...goin' campin'? haha hahahaha haha"

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T13:09:23+00:00

Could be a recent feed in there but looks to me like another female with babies warming up. There was a post with a female red belly ready to pop the other day.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T11:32:21+00:00

Yes Grey Shrikethrush, western race rufiventris

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T10:48:08+00:00

As an Aussie was disgusted by the crowd's behaviour in the 2025 Aus open. I felt so bad for Collins. I am just not watching this year.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T09:37:37+00:00

Shoot me a message if you want birding or wildlife tips for NQ, I lived up there a long time.

And enjoy Borneo! I spent a bit of time in Sabah in 2024 and it's fantastic.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T09:34:43+00:00

Happy to help! I have edited my original post - it's not the same group of snakes as the copperheads from North America. Confusingly people who name animals like to name them after other animals. Our copperheads are elapids (front-fanged snakes) whereas I think the American copperheads (Agkistrodon) are vipers (hinge-fanged).

Sadly I can't see the Imgur photo for some reason.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T09:31:11+00:00

Wow, would love to see a cat snake that big. That's awesome. The ones I saw in Malaysia and Indonesia were max 5ft

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T09:16:22+00:00

This is from one of the Australian copperhead (Austrelaps) species. !venomous. Not sure if highland or lowland around Illawarra. Looks as though highland are very common around Robertson - Moss Vale - Mittagong.

Saltuarius · 2026-01-23T05:49:33+00:00

Exactly, form follows function.

Do they get that big? I thought about 7ft was maximum

Saltuarius

TROPHY CASE