Week 4 of Arid Recovery

Okay, so last week I said this week would be difficult to top, but this week did have its highlights! The major one being I got to see and hold a gorgeous western quoll! Quolls are solitary, nocturnal, carnivorous marsupials that are native to Australia. They have brown coats with white spots and their underside is white. They also have a long brown tail. The western quoll (Dasyurus geoffroii), which is the species introduced on Arid Recovery is listed as near-threatened and can weigh up to 2kg. Like all quoll species, of which there are four (western quoll, northern quoll, eastern quoll and spotted tail quoll), the females are slightly smaller than males.

My liking for quolls started a couple of years ago when I watched David Attenborough’s Ark. A show where Sir David picked 10 of his top endangered species- one of which was the quoll (the northern quoll to be exact). Their reduction can be blamed on my factors including habitat destruction, bushfires, disease and introduced feral predators such as cats and foxes. The cane toad (Rhinella marina) (an introduced species which is spreading rapidly across northern Australia) is also a major threatand was the main focus in Attenborough’s ark programme,. Unfortunately for the Northern quolls cane toads are not at all tasty and actually are highly poisonous to quolls.

At Arid Recovery there are two Western quolls in the reserve which were introduced into the Northern expansion to act as the quoll predator expansion. Sepia and Koombana are both female quolls but, as previously discussed, Koombana acts more like a male (and actually at first Bec thought that she might have been sexed incorrectly). Her home range is huge and she rarely is found is the same location -typical behaviour of a male…well a quoll male anyway! 

One of AR's western quolls (Dasyurus geoffroii) named Sepia. Photo credit: Liz Frorance.

Previously my interaction with quolls was looking for their poo to analyse what they have been eating in the reserve (we hope that they are eating some baby bettongs as bettongs are in over-abundance on the reserve). Collecting their poo has proved to be rather difficult as they have provided us with only 2 samples and despite our best efforts attempting to make a fake latrine next to their burrow with the hope they would use it too, it has so far failed. However, this time it wasn’t to do with poo it was to locate and fit a GPS collar to the quoll (although we were hoping that we might find a poo in the trap). The GPS collar has the added feature of giving 3 GPS fixtures a night so you can see exactly where the animal has been (the standard VHF collar which was fitted in introduction into AR only allows you to track the animal). As we only had one collar we thought we’d start with Sepia first, the easy quoll to find!  

Locating Sepia wasn’t a challenge, in fact it was easier than expected – in a burrow only about 100 metres from where we parked the car! Unfortunately the burrow wasn’t exactly a textbook burrow for setting burrow traps in. From the picture below you can see the two burrows were snuggled under a dead tree and at an awkward angle which meant a bit of digging (you’d think we like digging with the amount we’ve had to do recently) followed by a bit of stick wedging to ensure the burrow trap sat tight. Quolls are not stupid animals and will squeeze themselves out of any available gap. 

To entice a quoll into a trap requires a very tasty quoll treat. Peanut butter and oats sounds appealing to most small mammals (and myself- for those that know me I am a massive peanut butter fan), but not to quolls. As quolls are carnivorous, meat is much more enticing…but not just any meat… 3 day old chicken necks to be exact (a recommended method which works perfectly for the quolls in the Flinders Ranges). Dr Katherine Mosby (Project co-ordinator for the flinders quolls) suggested to Bec to wait until the chicken necks were nice and green – yum! It was no surprise that for the rest of the day our hands were rather smelly (even after washing several times). 

Bec baiting the burrow trap with the delicious 3 day old chicken necks.

The next morning was an early rise to check if Sepia had been trapped. I was optimistic despite Bec’s pessimism (in her experience quolls have taken upto 3 days to trap). And Bec was right, unfortunately there was no Sepia in the trap. However she had managed to pinch a chicken neck from the trap which must have rolled down the trap slightly, allowing Sepia to reach the ‘tasty treat’ without standing on the treadle plate (which would have closed the trap door) - I told you they weren’t stupid! After that we made some modifications and tied the chicken necks to the back of the trap with wire. Which meant another day of smelly hands- in fact even more stinky as we had a 2 day build up! But it paid off- the next morning there was a spotty bundle of fur at the back of the trap. I don’t think I have been that excited since I saw glass frogs in Honduras (and those that know me know how excited I was to see those!)

Meet Sepia- isn't she gorgeous. In the top photo you can see her beautiful spotty coat!

 Sepia was fitted with her new necklace (the GPS collar) and released- which I had the privilege of doing. I wish you could see my grinning face in the photo below! In a couple of weeks we’ll retrap Sepia (let’s hope she will co-operate and walk into the traps nicely) to get the collar back (and put her old VHF back on) to put on Koombana. Something tells me that week is going to bring its challenges! (and will no doubt require a lot of walking to find Koombana). 

(Kim the Scientific and Edicuation Officer for AR has written an article on the quolls on the AR website if you’d like to know more information about them http://www.aridrecovery.org.au/arid-recovery-news/Spot_our_newest_members. Also on there is a blog I wrote on catching and fitting transmitters to the bilby tails. I thought I was so witty naming it Bilby Tails.) 

Sepia fitted with her new collar (above) and having her PES (foot length) taken (below).

Releasing Sepia into the burrow we caught her in. (No surprise that she had decided to relocate the next day.) Underneath the hat is a massive grin!

So far I have been working the most with the stick nest rats (SNR) in AR; doing the weekly tracking for all 20 collared animals and trapping on 2 occasions to check the collars fit okay and fit a new collar to a new female rat (remember Nessie last week, given a Scottish name in honour of my Scottish roots). This week it was to begin an exciting new experiment to monitor vigilance behaviour (how much an animal watches out for danger from predation), like we were doing with the bettongs last week. Unlike the bettongs, for the SNR we cannot simply dig bowls into the ground and fill them with oats outside the SNR nests because all you will find on the cameras are bettongs (they are bullies). So how do you target only the stick nest rats? Here’s where Bec got innovative… ratstaurants… Essentially a large top hat like structure made out of chicken wire which has an opening at the top to enable you to put carrots into the middle of the fenced structure (it might be easier to understand if you look at the picture below). This structure excludes any animal larger than the holes in the chicken wire (bettongs) enabling smaller animals (stick nest rats) to enter and eat the carrots. Can you see why Bec had to come up with a short and snappy name?! Bec trailed this a few months ago and it worked well. But this week was all about making sure the collared rats (or rats in general) are still using the ratstaurants; if not we will have to move them to a new nest. This is all in preparation for the experiment where we are going to attach predator scented towels to the ratstaurants and compare the vigilance behaviour of the SNR across the various treatments. (We are currently waiting to get these towels back from dingo, rabbit and cat owners). 

Bec setting up the camera and Liz adding the tray of carrots to the ratstaurants (above). Below is a clearer view of the chicken wire top hat structure.

On Wednesday AR was a little busier than usual. At 11.30am 3 large coaches arrived at the reserve filled with sixty fourteen to fifteen year old students from a local school. I had previously offered to help with the land formations workshop by leading a group of 6 students, however on seeing them piling out the coach I was having second thoughts about my decision. Despite the kids obsession with touching the electric fence and the moans about the heat, in the end I really enjoyed the experience (and I think overall the pupils did too). I especially enjoyed sharing my recently acquired knowledge of the plants you find on the swales and dunes, even though at times they struggled to understand my funny Scottish accent…Their impressions were terrible! One boy actually thought at first I was from America! 

Assisting with the AR outreach education did not end when the last school coach departed. On Friday evening two families had arranged to come onto the reserve to see some of the nocturnal creatures. The 5 children choose the location for their two traps (after giving them clues on possible good spots for example where there was lots of tracks or burrow). For some this task took some time (it’s funny how you can notice indecisive nature at such a young age). After baiting the traps with peanut butter and oats (it was difficult, but I did resist eating one) we waited for darkness to fall. One of the young boys was wearing a spider man jumper so thought I’d help occupy the boys by showing them spiders (whose eyes sparkle when you shine a head torch across the sand). For the rest of the night one of the boys wanted to show me every spider he found, which there are no shortage of! 

Beautiful sunset on the AR reserve taken whist waiting for bettongs to enter our traps.

Since the start of my internship I’ve been dying to see a Mulga snake (hopefully that won’t be the outcome when I do!). By Friday night I had given up hope however on Saturday morning when taking a trip out to Andamooka (a quirky town famous for opal mining) I spotted a snake on the road. It turned out to be an western brown snake (Pseudonaja nuchalis), not a mulga (or King brown as they are also referred to), but it is the second most venomous terrestrial snake and is responsible for the most deaths from snakes in Australia. Unfortunately for this poor snake it had clearly been run over so couldn’t do us much damage. But don’t worry..next week I have arranged to do a first aid course that has an element of outback first aid, so if I do come across a more responsive snake I’ll know exactly what to do if myself or the person I’m with gets bitten!

Slightly run over western brown (Pseudonaja nuchalis).