This morning, Twitter informed of a recent post on the Early Career Ecologists blog (which you can find here) about the value of photography for ecological research. It’s a great post, and it got me thinking about the plethora of pics I’ve taken over the years during research projects. Some have specific purposes, others are simply to document the process or the beautiful creatures and landscapes I’ve had the fortune to study. It got me thinking: “I should be doing more with this pictorial resource!”.
So here goes folks, the first of a series of blogs sharing these pics with you. Where better to start than with a research project on the endangered (and magnificent!) Inland Carpet Python in Victoria, which I was lucky enough to take part in during 2001…..

No. 4, who I tracked for 6 months, had a penchant for the Homestead garden. Here he is resting up after a big meal.

No. 4 liked to hunt rabbits in the summer. Here’s a burrow he spent sometime down. Part of my work was to investigate the timing of rabbit burrow ripping to minimise effects on python populations. The answer: don’t do it in summer!