Getting some Baseline data

One of the issues we have found in our looking at 'stuff' around the area is the difficulty of getting lists of what is already recorded.  It is OK for birds as eBird does what is needed there but for plants, insects or reptiles there is nothing.

Parks Victoria don't seem to have an office in the area - or at least not one that is open to the public and certainly don't have any species lists.  I have got some great help (about bats and a Swamp Rat) from a Ranger, but he is from Orbost and not based in Mallacoota.

I came across a mob called Naturemap (a derivative of Canberra Nature Map - with which I have some philosophical problems).  However they seem to have very little available unless one signs up to the operation.  One of my philosophies is not to give personal details until I know what the activity is on about.  Another is that they seem to be very strong on new-age hippy bullshit about respecting this that and the other.  I asked them a few questions and haven't got an answer after a week so I am ignoring them.

The Atlas of Living Australia appears to have come up with the goods in the form of 57,000 records for an area of 5km radius around our house.  It was a large file -~5mb download which unzipped to about 30Mb.  I have removed a number of fields of interest only to serious scientists and then uploaded it to an ACCESS database.  (About 2000 records didn't upload because people had put an 'X' in the individual count field but I don't think that will  be important so have just used the remaining ~55,000 records.)

The catalyst for this was seeing a pair of skinks interacting on the deck and wondering what they were.  By querying my file I find that there are 23 species of reptile recorded in the area, of which 7 are skinks. I shall take some snaps and try to ID them.

I am fairly confident this is Lampropholis guichenoti Pale-flecked Garden Sunskink.  A field guide also calls it the Common Garden Skink, which is appropriate as every one I looked at seemed to be this species.