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Basil is a kind and attentive host, particularly when evening scraps are his due. He might be ugly, scarred and with a bad case of bung-eye (I forgot to get some Golden Eye ointment for his conjunctivitis from the local clinic) that hopefully should be cleared up in a few days. He isn’t riddled with ticks and is obviously reasonably healthy – in mind and body. In all he is just a normal dog – except that he is (technically) homeless.

Earlier this week I drove out to the west coast of the NT’s Gulf of Carpentaria for work. On the first morning out bush I was lucky enough to be up before dawn and wandered down to the foreshore to see what might wander past and into my camera. I’d seen a pair of adult [...]

Dingoes play an important role in Australia’s ecosystems; they are apex predators and the continent’s largest terrestrial predator. Because of their attacks on livestock, dingoes and other wild dogs are seen as pests by the sheep industry and the resultant control methods normally run counter to dingo conservation efforts.

Female Superb Fairy-wrens Malurus cyaneus initiate extragroup fertilizations by forays to the territory of preferred males, just before sunrise, 2–4 days before egg laying. Over a prolonged breeding season, males advertise their availability to foraying females by singing during the dawn chorus.

After a minute or two they would retreat back into their refuge under the loose bark. there was a lot of other wildlife about that night, including a cute little Sandy Inland Mouse, Pseudomys hermannsbergensis and the anthropological double team of the Centralian Tree Frog, Litoria gilleni and a lot of the immeasurably ugly – but cute as hell with it – Spencer’s Burrowing Frog, Opisthodon spenceri.

If, in the Crowd, there’s one who’s not forgot me,
If there’s one, perhaps who asks how I am,
Say I’m alive, but deny that I am well: That I’m even alive is a gift from a God.
(Ovid, thanks to Paul Kelly via Chips Mackinolty)