1. Sydney Leaf-Tailed Gecko
A word of warning up front, if you startle one of these small lizards (about 15cm in length), be prepared for them to squeal. Or for some extra drama, prepare for them to drop their tail and watch as it flip flops, like a fish, at your feet! Luckily, they can grow their tails back, an impressive feat. You can tell pretty easily just by looking at it. If it’s the original tail, it will look like the rest of the animal, speckled with brown and beige tubercules. If it’s regenerated, it will be smooth.
Leaf-tailed Geckos are nocturnal and you’ll find them around the sandstone outcrops of the Sydney Basin or, if you’re like me, on the brickwork of your house, in rock walls and around garden beds, looking for insects and spiders to eat.
2. Sugar Glider
You’re more likely to hear these fluffy little marsupials than you are to see them. Their yap, yap, yapping call carries in the night, but the animals themselves spend a fair amount of time up in the tree canopy eating nectar and sap from gums and acacia, insects, reptiles and even some small birds and their eggs! Now for my favourite factoid: female sugar gliders have two vaginas and uteri while the males have a forked penis. You’re welcome.
You’ll find them along the coastal forests of the east coast of Australia, including in the Royal National Park, around Thirroul, Barren Grounds and Blackbutt Forest Reserves.
3. Undescribed species of Blue-faced Spider
Okay, okay, this is a little cheeky of me, but I’m adding this one in for science. I discovered this new-to-science species of Jumping Spider, the puppy dogs of the spider world, back in 2020. It’s still in the process of being described, which means being dissected, written about and officially named by an expert. So at this point we know next to nothing about it. We are really smack in the middle of the learning stage. And here is where you come in.
Have you seen this little spider around your garden in the Illawarra? I live in Northern Illawarra and it seems quite partial to a man-made surface as I first found one on my outdoor umbrella, and then one on my deck, and on my bin and inside on a painting and one inside the car! I’ve also found one amongst the leaf litter, which is the kind of environment you might find some other species of jumping spiders.
We do know the boys have a bright blue face and pedipalps (the little leg-like appendages near the head) and the blue seems really dependent on UV light. The more light, the more blue they appear. They’re also seriously tiny, a grain of rice in length. And… that’s pretty much it. So if you find one, take a photo, note down where you saw it, any unusual behaviours and get in touch. You could be adding to the scientific record in real time!
