Snail's pace

I can't begin to explain how lovely it is to spend a day in the wet forest of the Otway Ranges. The tall dripping ferns, the fungi, the damp mulch, the sound of running water, moss, tall trees, birds calling, shrubs and herbs starting to flower, the solitude - all contribute to a wonderful environment. It's been raining this year for a change so the dampness is a true delight. I'm sure the flora and fauna are appreciating it as well.

We went down a walking track at Blanketleaf Picnic Ground north of Lorne and there was so much to see it took us more than an hour to go only about 200 metres in and back again. Interesting fungi was everywhere and that's what slowed us down the most. I'll post some photos of those later.

But Rosalind also found two snails, the rare Otway Snail that I've blogged about before here and one I hadn't seen before, a little Helicarion nigra.

It had a small glossy shell, too small to retract into. It is quite slug-like. Snail will know more than me but it seemed to me to be a primitive type of snail. We found it in moss on the ground on a damp south-facing slope in the forest and moved it to a piece of bark to get its portrait taken. The shell is horizontal and quite flat. I wonder if it's carnivorous like the Otway Snail.

A rare carnivore

OK, we saw a few other things at West Barwon Dam - we weren't entirely one-eyed (though we're good at that given that we live in Geelong, the home of the Cats).

We got quite distracted from the fungi at one stage when an Otway Snail was found crawling up a clay bank. (Do snails crawl?) It's a big snail, with a shiny black shell, and this one was fully stretched out. When we disturbed it it quickly tucked away its eyes so we had to wait a minute or two for a 'photo opportunity'. This snail, Victaphanta compacta, is rare and Endangered, is found only in this rainforest and is carnivorous (it eats worms and other snails). We were amazed at how big its foot was.