Another snake

Snake in the grass

Much excitement up at my in-laws' place in the Blue Mountains at the weekend when Emily stumbled across a beautiful Red-bellied Black Snake in the garden. Although venomous they tend to be pretty placid and so I was quite comfortable getting a nice close look. There's no way I'd be getting as friendly with a Brown Snake or a Tiger.

Up close and personal

This individual was about 1.2m long and very active as it was hunting frogs around the pond which was great to watch.

But the moral of the story is to always charge your camera battery the minute that it runs out! Sadly mine was flat and so I had to rely on a camera phone to get any pictures at all. I'd have done really well if I had my camera as the snake wasn't fussed at all by my presence and stayed in the same area for ages. That doesn't happen very often with snakes in my limited experience.

Oh well, lesson learned and the camera will be fully charged for my trek across the Nullarbor in a couple of weeks time. My parents fly in tomorrow and looking at Flight Radar I see that they've just entered Kazakhstan air-space so things appear to be on track. Still a long way to go though! Let's hope my friendly snake sticks around for a few weeks and we can get some better pictures.

Red belly