It's that time of year again, when the 'small' mystery hole-making monsters makes their appearance, so today I went for a quick drive (and walk) with my camera, just in case.

One of the mounds I checked out is very familiar to me (I really should give it a name - Monty the Mound?) and I have many photographs of it with and without assorted scars. I'm pretty sure there's even a photograph of it among the other, 'large' hole mounds in my earlier post. I do have photographs of a female heath monitor surprised while making the scars in this mound one year - but to avoid being seen as 'arrogant', varanusaurus, I'll assume that in all photographs in which a female heath monitor can't be seen the holes were made by something else. Someone on another forum suggested 'unicorns', which beat my suggestion of 'low flying miniature aircraft' hands down.

So, I present seasonal 'small' unicorn scars:

This mound had three holes - two visible in this shot.


All three holes visible in this shot.


On the drive home I stopped to photograph another termite mound. One day I'll get into trouble for craning my neck, while driving at high speeds, to look at a termite mound on the other side of the road.



Interesting scratches near the sides of the holes. Perhaps unicorns have poor aim (I can imagine a blind spot in the middle of one's forehead).



What's interesting is that all of these seem to be test unicorn holes, for it's still a week or two early for the main show. None went particularly far in. The second mound may even be dead, but I'll give it a week to see if it just has a small colony that is slow to make repairs.

I did mention that the 'small' unicorn holes are always found in areas in which heath monitors occur, so it's probably no great surprise that I found this animal (which appears to be a male) in the same 'general' area as one of the mounds. This has nothing to do with unicorns or holes in termite mounds, but as this is a monitor forum I figure I'd better add a couple of photographs that are on topic.



Note: This post has nothing to do with nest boxes or lace monitors and I have no desire to waste more time on that 'discussion' again. Seriously. It's merely a sampling of the photographs taken on this afternoon's outing, nothing more, just in case someone, somewhere is interested.

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