Things that go snap in the night

Last night we took Jo out to Fogg Dam and Anzac Parade to go lamping for crocs and owls.
We had another superb evening and had some amazing sights - including great views of the Milky Way - the only downside is the number of small bitey things, despite being liberally sprayed in Bushman Insect Repellant (other brands are available)
We had tea here before we left so we did not get there until after 7.45pm when it was nice and dark.
We turned the lamp on once we reached the wooded sections of Anzac Parade.. Our initial stop was by a couple of sleeping cows as Tish wanted to experiment with her camera to see if we could get any pictures, don't think the results were too bad..

Having finally sorted out that for the best results the ISO needs to be as high as possible (1600 in our case and a slightly higher 6000 in Jo's case - show off!!) we started searching for more interesting subjects.
Eagle eyes in the back (aka Xanthe) spotted the first set of eyes -and in fact they turned out to be the only mammal eyes we saw.
When our eyes adjusted it turned into a Common Brush-tailed Possum.

you can just make it out to the left of the main trunk about halfway up.
From there we moved onto the dam wall itself.
We knew the area would be drier than our previous attempt which would either concentrate things or foce everything out of range but which would it be?
We were greeted at the start of the wet area by a Nankeen Night Heron standing on the road, it did allow some nice shots before flying off into the dark...

On the way down we found this very obliging Southern Boobook, it was still there on the return leg when we Tish managed to get some great pictures...

it did eventually take off and Tish got this lovely shot of it

I just love the fluidity that this picture captures.

The main reason for going down Fogg Dam though is always to try and find crocs. Last time we had great views of one small Freshie and several sets of eyes! This time we had even better views of a couple of small ones, unfortunately they were rather camera shy and despite Tish's best efforts we did not get any images of them.
We were quite happy with what we had seen and as we were virtually back in the woods we stopped and got some shots of this luminescent spider

As we were at the end of the water and not expecting to see anything else Tish got back into her seat rather than carry on squatting in Cameron's car seat which was on the "water side" ofthe car. BIG mistake as no sooner had she got settled than I noticed this whopper of a Freshie just hanging in the water close to the road - showing flexibility a contortionist would have been proud of Tish grabbed this great picture before it slipped down to the bottom

A superb end to an enjoyable evening.

Jo's pictures will undoubtedly be clearer as she can use a higher ISO setting but I think Tish's are just great!