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Exploring the riverbanks

Friday, January 13, 2012 | 0 comments

Read the first part of this blog entry in Down the grassy slope to the river

While Esme stayed with the children I walked downstream to the location where I had nearly a year ago found two different scorpion species. I crossed the river twice, once to get to the left bank and a little later back to the right bank, since there was where I wanted to look for scorpions. Soon I arrived at the spot I wanted to explore, in the shadow underneath large trees. I turned over rocks, hoping to find either a Megacormus species or, a much larger scorpion species, Diplocentrus melici.

A large orange brown toad.
A large orange brown toad.

The cloud cover made it quite dark underneath the dense foliage and hence harder to spot Megacormus since this species blends in perfectly with the soil found underneath the stones I was rolling over. For close to an hour I kept looking for scorpions underneath stones, underneath logs, underneath bark peeled of rotting logs, and even in small rotten logs by breaking them in smaller pieces. The latter method was how I found my first two Megacormus species in this area, over a year ago.

While I was exploring the riverbank I followed a track higher up and after a while I arrived at a paved track, the one we had followed during our first visit to this location. To the side of the path was the spot where I made my discovery the first time, so I gave that area a thorough search. But alas, no "megas" and no "diplos". So I returned back to the paved path and followed it back to the river and back to my family.

A small tree frog resting on a moss covered stone.
A small tree frog resting on a moss covered stone. (large)

When Esme saw me she called out that she had a surpise; she had captured tree small tree frogs and put them together with some water in a Ziploc bag. She released the first of the small frogs per my suggestion near to a moss covered stone while I held my camera ready. After I had taken several photos she released the next one, and I took more photos.

A happy tree frog.
A happy tree frog.

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