The Gully’s urban periphery – discovering a female Blotched Blue-tongue Lizard
Friday, February 28th, 2025Within just a minute’s walk from The Habitat Advocate base we happened upon some wonderful local wildlife.
It was a native Blotched Blue Tongue Lizard in this case (scientific species name Tiliqua nigrolutea). It was 10th February 2025 (summer) in the late hot afternoon around 6:30pm AEDT, so the sun was still up in the western sky; this given sunsets in late summer at this time of year are as late as 8 pm, some two hours hence. So, this happenstance timing made sense, but a rare sighting these days.
This particular lizard was not easy to then photograph due to it subsequently retreating from the footpath (after we went back for our camera) and retreating into the camouflage cover of the grassy verge behind for safety.
Upon our initial sighting, this lizard had been laying in the middle of the footpath sunning itself – being a cold-blooded lizard (‘ectothermically’ that is; not the human malice variety).
This one we think is female – telling from the comparatively small head size and its thicker tail root. It was not a native Shingleback Lizard (scientific species name Tiliqua rugosa) since such species has a stubbed tail land prefers the habitat plains inland from the Great Dividing Range, and are not found in the Blue Mountains region, whereas Blue Tongues are.
The location was on The Gully’s urban periphery, yet wholly environmentally within the broader Gully Water Subcatchment, where The Habitat Advocate is based. So nice to see wildlife in one’s neighbourhood – we share local wildlife’s neighbourhood.
We provide hyperlinks below to further information and clearer images about this lizard species.
Anyway, it was a pleasurably welcomed and encouraging sighting.
Such sightings however are increasingly rare around these parts these days due to Council’s habitat destruction – pretty much since Council has existed since its origins in Katoomba in 1890, then in 1947 re-branding itself Blue Mountains City Council from being a two adjacent regional municipality/shire councils. Then from November 2000 after the Blue Mountains region was declared an international World Heritage Area, this local Blue Mountains Council has bizarrely extolled its contradictory perceived virtues of being a city within a World Heritage Area – what espousing urban sprawl development and high-rises amongst Eucalyptus habitat?
We bought our house in 2000, which had there since the 1920’s. So, we did not build into bush, but rather it was long existing ‘in-town’, and so technically we just recycled and renovated it. It had had only lawn back and front, but since 2001 we have created an onsite forest and restored much local habitat on site, So, no more grass and we then gave away our lawn mower!
One also recalls that on 13th February back in 2017 around 5:30 pm during a 47o Celsius unseasonal heatwave weather event across New South Wales, observing a large native Eastern Brown Snake (scientific species Pseudonaja textilis) of almost 2 metres in length scurrying across the scorching road surface of our street into the cooler shade of our forested front garden. Well, we chose not to garden or water there for a week afterwards and warned our neighbours. However, we immediately reported this snake sighting to the volunteer-based Wildlife Rescue Service (WIRES) for safety guidance and we spoke to one of their trained snake catchers who gave us helpful and reassuring advice over the phone.
Also, when we first moved in where we are, one had to contend with a native Blue Mountains Funnel Web Spider (scientific name Hadronyche versuta) ground nest in our then unkempt backyard, also unfortunately the native Brown Broadfooted Marsupial Mouse (scientific name is Antechinus stuartii) family over the back fence that we observed, eventually sadly perished.
But it beats living in increasing sprawling concreted, treeless sterile Sydney human megalopolis.
