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My account of the field and the threatened glider that bit me (corvus)

Posted : 2/27/2008 4:34:02 PM

I've been swanning around in the field for the last 10 days, enjoying some away-from-city time and just wanted to share how nice it was with everyone. Smile

The bird/frog summer fauna monitoring trip down south was pleasant enough. There's been so much rain in the catchment lately that the roads were worse than ever and one of our creek monitoring sites was so flooded we couldn't get through to the 3rd bird point. It looks like a monsoonal rainforest. The leeches were so bad you couldn't stand still for more than a few minutes before you had several crawling up your legs. Miraculously, I didn't get bitten, although one fell off some vegetation and managed to give my belly a lick. I've recently developed somewhat of an allergy to one species of leech, so I was very glad I managed to avoid any bites.

8i creek once again swept me away with how gorgeous it can be. I tried to take photos of the sunrise touching the tops of the trees while mist rose from the water, but unfortunately my camera is my phone atm, and it couldn't cope with the changes in lighting. The birding was a bit ordinary on this trip, but I did get a nice look at a pretty male lyrebird. They're such extravagant turkeys. It jumped into a tree, fluffed its tail, and said "woobada-woobada!". Apparently that's all he had to say. Never heard one say that before!

Then it was off to the Hunter Valley wine country. There was a Rod Stewart concert happening at one of the wineries, so everything was booked out, which kinda sucked, as the boyfriend wanted wagyu beef but couldn't get any because all the nice places to eat were booked out. We could hear the Rod Stewart concert from our owl call playback point, which was absurdly funny. We ticked off "Rod Stewart" on our species list.

The higlight of the trip (apart from a lot of amazingly posh food and wonderfully relaxing views) was catching a Squirrel Glider. They're a threatened species and I'd never seen one before. They look like Sugar Gliders, but are bigger, have darker markings, a fluffier tail, and a cuter, pointier nose. The one we caught was undersized, so for a while there we weren't sure what we had, but we got a positive ID from a friend working on the species. Our Squirrel Glider was a fiesty little girl and the little bugger bit me! We didn't have any gloves on us when we were checking the traps, so we had to get her out without them. Of course, she went for the innocent bystander that was simply holding the bag open, but then I got to wave my bleeding finger around and say "Oh yes, a Squirrel Glider chomped on me. You know how they are."

We also caught a cat (that was discreetly released), a bush rat, and 2 1/2 brushtail possums. One of them had a teensy baby clinging to her. It was thoroughly adorable and we got some photos of it peeking out at us. The photo of me wrestling the Squirrel Glider is so going on my Facebook profile! Ringers grip indeed. Don't know how you're meant to get them in a ringers grip without loosing a finger.

I love my job!

Cita

Posted : 2/27/2008 5:36:40 PM

That sounds amazing! Did you get any pictures to share with us? :) :) (hint hint, nudge nudge)

FourIsCompany

Posted : 2/27/2008 5:44:32 PM

That sounds like such an adventure! Leaches and all! LOL Yes, do you have any pictures?

corvus
8i creek

What's that? Eight I Creek?

calliecritturs

Posted : 2/27/2008 7:32:14 PM

Oh wow ... I've ALWAYS been in love with Oz ... and what you're describing is just awesome to me. Imagine .. HEARING a real life lyrebird!!! Whoa!!! What awesome experiences!!! THANKS for sharing!! I'm going to live vicariously thru your memories a bit, ok???

corvus

Posted : 2/27/2008 10:41:13 PM

I'll get hold of some photos next week. I'm taking a 4 day weekend to recuperate, and all the photos are on the work camera, so it'll have to wait until Monday. I will post them, though! I really need to get my own happy snapper.

8i Creek is one of our monitoring sites, and about my favourite one. I don't know why it's called 8i (Eight I). The first time I went there was during an autumn frog survey. I spent 15 minutes slogging through dense, prickly shrubs in gumboots, in the dark, tripping over and copping branches in my face. And then suddenly I emerged into this moonlit clearing with a beautiful big pool and a small waterfall with the moon reflected off the pool and I went "That was worth it!". The only problem with 8i is that the veg is so dense it's really easy to get lost and the gps never works in there. That and all the running water, while gorgeous, makes listening for birds and frogs really hard. But it's very pretty.

We hear a lot of lyrebirds, but I guess we don't see them much. I've been building up a lyrebird tail feather collection with the grand ambition of having myself a full lyrebird tail. I've only got as far as 2 of the filamentous ones, though. I've been looking everywhere for the double feathers from the side of the tail, but the lyrebirds haven't been so co operative about that one. They're totally outrageous birds and they often trick me by mimicking other birds when I'm doing surveys. We call them chooks, because they really are just extravagant chickens. Wink I forgot to mention all the neat snakes we saw out in the catchment! Two of the 4 I saw were even only mildly venomous as opposed to deadly. Hooray! I missed out on seeing the threatened snake, though. I did pick up a huge, intact, recently shedded snake skin for my collection of dead things, though.

I also forgot to mention the teensy bat we caught in the Hunter. It weighed all of 4 grams. It was the smallest species in the country, and it cracked me up watching it trying to bite me, but being way too small to get anywhere. Just the weight of my thumb on his back was enough to pin him down. I should post some videos of little bats. People don't realise how horribly cute they are. I like tiny animals with loads of spunk. Bats get so cranky, but their anger just intensifies as they realise how ineffectual it all is.

calliecritturs

Posted : 2/27/2008 11:02:01 PM

Wow -- Lyrebirds fascinate me. I don't know if you folks have seen this video -- it IS for *real* ...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3433507052114896375

This is the kind of sounds she's talking about -- KEWEL much!!!

corvus

Posted : 2/27/2008 11:34:34 PM

The one from that footage is, I think, particuarly good at mimicry. You can usually tell if a bird call is the real thing or just a lyrebird playing silly buggers. I think you'd have to be a bit of a specialist, though. Bird calls are hard enough without lyrebirds flinging out really good mimics. Thankfully, they usually intersperse the mimicry with their own calls, so you can at least make an educated guess. And they don't often go off like that. It's pretty spectacular when they do, though!

A few years ago that footage was used in an awareness campaign over here about logging and habitat destruction. It was very compelling, going from the great bird mimicry, to the funny cameras and car alarms to the more sinister chainsaws. The lyrebirds I hear just stick to bird mimicry, thankfully. Smile If you ever make it over here, Callie, I promise we'll go find a lyrebird. Wink There are some places where it's pretty easy to see one if you're out early in the morning. They're often on the roads around dawn, it seems. It's much eaiser to hear them, too. They're not super picky about habitat, and early in the morning they're normally calling if they're around.