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This Halloween, you could add crawly to your creepy, and meet some real creatures of the night at the Cairns Botanic Gardens.
Cairns wildlife photographer, Bridgette Gower, will be leading two of her popular Let’s Go Buggin’ night walks through the Gardens on Saturday October 29.
“This is the third Halloween that I've done,” Bridgette told Tropic.
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“It’s all the critters that you would consider part of Halloween, the frogs and spiders and crickets and cockroaches and all of the creepy crawlies.”
Bridgette started Aussie Macro Photos, spending much of her time taking pictures of the insects, frogs, and birds in the Botanic Gardens.
Three years ago, she launched Lets Go Buggin, day and night guided walks that show you the wildlife and help you learn how to photograph it.
“My passion is sharing.
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“That to me is the biggest buzz and why I love doing what I do.
“Some of the reactions that I hear from the people who come on the tours just gives me all the feels, you know, the warm and fuzzies.”
The walks are a chance to see some of the world’s smallest creatures close up, including caterpillars, cocoons, moths and butterflies, leaf, tree and planthoppers, praying mantis, jumping spiders, dragonflies, and a variety of frogs.
Other animals that can be seen on a night walk include micro-bats, Papuan frogmouth birds, striped possums, flying foxes, bandicoots, and echidnas.
Bridgette says she gets to know and has given names to some of the creatures she sees regularly.
“Especially the orb weaver spiders, because once they set up their web, they'll stay there, and sometimes they'll be there for months.
“I'll be walking where I take people around and I'll say this is Samantha, she’s a tropical St Andrews cross spider, she's been here for a few weeks.
“I had Gertie just recently, a really large golden orb spider and she was there about four months, she was as big as my hand.
“There was Henrietta the huntsman who was on a tree for about nine months that we would see regularly.”
Bridgette says the tours help people learn about wildlife and overcome fear of creepy crawlies.
“We’ve all had that experience of the huntsman spider in the house, in the car, and they’re frantically running from one side to the other.
“We see lots of hunstmen on the night walks. You get right up close to them, and with the macro lens, you can get very close, just two or three centimetres.
“They stay completely still. It really changed my mind about huntsmen being this, freaky, scary fighter that just wants to jump and land on you.
“That only happens when they're in the house. When they're out in nature, they're completely placid. They barely even move.”
Main points
- Meet local wildlife creatures of the night this Halloween
- Lets Go Buggin has two guided night walks on October 29
- See insects, birds, frogs and more at the Cairns Botanic Gardens
