Biodiversity Field Trip

So this was the weekend of the long awaited biodiversity field trip.

Day1:  We left at 5p on Friday afternoon and drove an hour and a half to Yungaburra where we stayed at a back-pack lodge called “On the Wallaby”.  They made us an amazing BBQ dinner of steak and sausage and mashed potatoes and two types of salad.  It was a huge meal and when Jen and I went back for an extra little scoop of salad we ended up with half of another steak as well.  After dinner we drove out to Mt Hypipamee National Park to go spotlighting for possums.  The possums here are not like ours at home, they look more like lemurs are when you see one there is a high likelihood that you will want to take one home with you.  We wandered along the trail or two hours with a headlamp as our only source of lighting.  We ended up seeing two green ring-tail possums, 4 common brush possums, a Herbert River Possum with a huge pouch full of babies and a coppery brush possum that allowed us to get within a couple feet of it for pictures.  We tumbled into bed at 12:30 and set our alarms for 6a to go hunting for platypuses.

Day2: We wandered out of the lodge down to the creek early in the morning with high hopes.  Jen and I wandered along the creek for quite a while, and although we kept seeing bubbles and trails in the water we had yet to see a platypus.  Finally we decided to give up and just enjoy our walk along the creek, about 2 minutes later, as it usually happens, we saw a line of ripples and ran down to the bank.  A platypus emerged from behind a tree less than a meter from where we were standing! It saw us and quickly dove into the water only to surface a in the middle of the lake and just cruised around while we watched it.  I think we said nothing but “Oh, my God it’s a platypus” for roughly 10 minutes.  The total animal count for our morning hike was 5 platypuses, including a pair together, a wallaby, a pair of laughing kookaburras (which, if you haven’t heard their call before, you need to look up right now) and a couple other birds we have yet to identify.  We then jogged, literally, back to the lodge for a quick breakfast, to buy a t-shirt and leave for the next adventure.

We next made a stop at the curtain fig tree, yes, I have been here before on another trip, you have been paying very close attention.  Our professor gave a talk on wasp-fig mutualism; and trust me, if I explained it to you, you may never eat a fig-Newton again.  The highlight of the trip was that Jen and I spotted and identified the only bird in the area, which just so happened to making a very loud piercing call, as a chowchilla.  We jumped back in the vans to drive to forty-mile scrub (yes, I also think it’s odd that they use metrics but the names of things use miles).  We had lunch and did a transect of the forest and then started turning over rocks in search of reptiles and insects.  We found several large huntsman spiders, heaps of gorgeous butterflies and lots of other bugs.  Again we were on our way in the vans; off to Undara.

Along the way we made another quick stop to look at the forest type and to hunt for reptiles but only managed to find one millipede.  We finally made it to Undara.  We went on another hike, which was mildly more successful with the spotting of a couple skinks, Jen and I found a dragon that we thought was a skink and a few weird bugs.  We watched the sunset and were just relaxing when our professor informed us that part of our assessment was that we would have to form groups and present what we learned that day in a creative manner.  So we walked back down to the camp and made our cup of noodles and began brainstorming.  Eventually we gave up and went to just sit around the fire and wait for this dreaded presentation to begin. We were visited by a bettong, which looks a lot like a kangaroo but is about 18 inches tall when it stands up, in other words, it is ridiculously cute.  Eventually our professors showed up and each group presented, One group had some one read a poem he had written describing the whole day while the rest of the acted it out in the background.  We did a jeopardy show with 2 commercial breaks, one for improved veggie mite and another that was a pretty cool rap about the ecosystems we saw.  And the last groups acted out each ecosystem.  And our mildly inebriated teachers voted our group the winner! We all were in bed at about 10:30, tired and thankful that we were going to be able to have more than 6 hours of sleep.

Day3:  We had a lazy morning and slowly meandered onto a hike to look for mammals and marsupials.  This was way more successful than other hikes.  We saw a dragon, which I got to hold, along with two mobs of gray kangaroos, a pair of pretty-faced wallabies, pale-cheeked rosellas, rainbow lorikeets, pygmy ducks, lots of bugs and various water birds.  After recording our whole day and packing up we piled in the vans for the long drive home.  We made a pit stop for lunch and at a place called the coffee-works, which is an artsy coffee and chocolate store which was pretty nice.  We arrived home a bit before dinner time dirty, smelly, with more bug bites than we started with, but overall: very pleased.

Cape Tribulation:Bug Hunting

Today we took a trip to Cape Tribulation for entomology class to collect insects.  We left the school at 8am for the two-hour drive.  The drive up was along the coast past Port Douglas all the way north on a road that requires four wheel drive.  Once we arrived we had a safety briefing and were then given a tour around the area of the canopy crane.  While waiting we were set loose to dig around in the dirt and collect invertebrates.  My lab partner, Ella and I found a few crickets and other things that I doubt anyone but an entomologist student would find exciting until we happened upon our first huntsman spider (if you don’t know what that is Google it and you will probably agree with me that it’s something that you are more likely to be running away from than running towards).  We chased the medium spider until it ran under a leaf and picked up the leaf and scooped it up.  At this point we noticed that this spider we captured was much bigger than the one we were chasing, we then realized that when the small spider ran under the leaf it was captured by a larger huntsman and we now had two spiders for our collection.   We also witnessed out professor find what could be a new species of amblypygi.

We had a lunch break and then it was Ella and my turn to go up in the canopy crane.  It was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had here.  There are two ways a human usually sees the rainforest: from below or from above, but it was an amazing experience to move through all the layers of the canopy.  The only thing I can equate the movement to is swimming, because of the three-dimensional movement that was possible.  We didn’t catch any special canopy insects but it was so enjoyable we couldn’t really be bothered.  After they brought us down we went and sat by the stream while everyone searched for aquatic insects.  We all made our way back to the van and I finally caught a grasshopper that small enough that I don’t have to remove its guts.

We then drove up farther north to a boardwalk along the beach to find peppermint stick insects.  These are arthropods that hide in the grooves of a pandanus plant and spray a peppermint smelling substance.  It was seriously cool to see these insects that had been raved about in both of my biology classes.  We stopped back along the drive home to see if we could find any of these insects that weren’t in a national park so that we could collect them, but instead we found crickets that mimic them and I found a walking stick bug.  On the drive home we took one more quick break so that our professor could be phoned into a radio show, because he has a show he’s featured on every Sunday, a national radio station I might mention.  We made good time coming home and got home at 8:30 instead of 10 so that I was able to enjoy the kabobs, spring rolls and damper bread that my housemates had made.  It was a pretty wonderful, if exhausting day.

 The view from the canopy crane.

 A full grown female peppermint stick insect.

Scuba Snorkel and Spa on the Great Barrier Reef

Yesterday we finally made it out to the Great Barrier Reef!  We took the boat out to Michaelmas Cay.  It was almost a 2-hour boat ride but it was totally worth it.  Unfortunately I was not allowed to do an intro dive because I have asthma but I was still able to do some amazing snorkeling.  The cool thing about Michaelmas Cay is that there is a small island that a boat can take you to so, although you are in the middle of an ocean, you still get to snorkel right off the beach.

As soon as we got on the boat we picked up our free glass of tea and cookies and got settled on the front deck waiting for out lovely boat ride out to the reef.  The only problem is that it gets rather windy on the front deck and the waves come up through the grate in the floor and you get pretty soaked so after a bit we moved inside where is was better, as long as you ignored the air conditioning.  When we got to the reef there was a little fish feeding so we got to see the giant fish that live here before we even got in the water which was pretty cool.  I got to wait around and have about 4 runs to the super delicious complimentary lunch buffet while I waited for my friends to finish scuba diving.  12 pieces of watermelon, a kiwi, loads of bread and cheese, teriyaki chicken, fried fish and a couple pieces of pineapple later we grabbed our masks and fins and took the little boat to the island.  It was so awesome!!!

There were schools of parrotfish and Jennifer followed a Maori wrasse and there were giant clams and butterfly fish and Christmas tree worms! We did have to fight the waves because of the high winds but it was so awesome.  There were tiny colorful fish and so many types of parrotfish, I will have to look some up so I can give you their official names but they were all so beautiful.  We just kept going in circles around the reef for an hour so see all the fish!  We dragged our selves out of the water to take the last ferry back to our boat and get ready to set off.  We had another complimentary cup of tea, with milk, and a slice of cake. 

The trip was only slightly marred by the fact that the fact that the trip back to Cairns was extremely rough.  I no longer feel any need to go on a roller coaster in the next year, and especially not one that lasts over an hour.  However, our friend Sam, who came to visit us from Townsville, and I had a marvelous time listing off the spa treatments we had that day: a sea salt scrub, courtesy of the mist and waves, a fruit acid skin peal, thanks to the water melon that I managed to get all over my face, a herbal infused steam, from our free cups of tea and lastly a sand exfoliation process from the glorious sharp bits of sand that were hurled into us while we got ready to get in the water.  Although the ride back was, shall we say les than perfect, none of us joined the masses on the rear deck “taking care of business” and we all arrived safely back home on solid ground and got the chance to look through our pictures of such a great day.