Week 5 of Arid Recovery

Finally at week 5 I saw what I’ve been waiting for 4 and a half weeks to see… a mulga snake. And what a spectacular view I got! Compared to previous weeks this week was hot (it’s as if someone had cranked up the oven a couple of notches) and although it made me much more sluggish, the opposite can be said for the reptiles on the reserve. On approach, the mulga snake slithered rather quickly from the road into a nearby burrow before I could get photographic evidence. But yes finally I’ve seen a mulga!!! 

Wildlife sightings often take you by surprise, when you aren’t looking for or are not expecting to see the animal. On mulga day, just as I drove over the crest of a dune, I had the delight of seeing three emu’s a metre away from me having a nosey (or should I say beaky) into the reserve from the other side of the fence. Both the mulga snake and the emu’s I saw whilst on the razor (the single seater all-terrain vehicle) and also on the razor I successfully tracked sepia to another burrow. The razor has the benefit of being able to be driven on the dunes, unlike the four by four vehicles which are restricted to the roads.  I’m starting to think maybe the razor is my lucky charm! Sepia is the quoll we fitted the GPS transmitter to last week. We’ve been tracking her a bit more than usual just to make sure she hadn’t been freaked out by the experience of fitting the collar and scarpered to the other side of the Northern expansion. Thankfully she has stayed within her home range, so getting the collar back next week shouldn’t be too difficult – I feel I may have jinxed myself now! 

The three Emu's that wished they could get into the reserve! Unfortunately they kept running away when I got close.

 On a calm morning during the end of the month Bec walks a track transect over the dunes, counting the number of tracks to give an idea of activity within the expansion (she does this for the Red Lake cat expansion, the main predator free expansion and the northern quoll expansion) looking out for quoll tracks and cat tracks in the relevant expansions. Unfortunately counting tracks doesn’t give you estimations on population density but it sure does make you realise that suddenly what seems like a ghost town in the day is a full on party town at night! 

Animals can be identified by the tracks they make in the sand, whether it be their paw print, their gait (stride length) or whether there is a tail drag. Some animals are obvious, for example bettongs which have a rather messy track due to their large tail which drags along behind them. They are also the biggest introduced species on the reserve and have long, large paw prints.  Hopping mice are also rather easy, they are bipedal most of the time so their tracks are most often two tiny feet prints side by side which are oval in shape with a horizontal line through them. The difficulty lies in determining plains rats from stick nest rats. Both have paw prints that are shaped like flowers, the central paw being the flower centre and the toes the petals. The main difference in their size: stick nest rats are slightly bigger than plains mice prints. Other tracks you see are snake tracks (an S shaped line with no foot prints), a sand goanna tracks (similar to a snake because of the tail drag but also has characteristic claw drag marks) and a sleepy lizard track (which are really cool and look like a french plat). After this week I feel much more confident identifying the tracks for the animals on the reserve. 

Animal tracks 

Burrowing bettong (Bettongia lesueur)

Spinifex hopping mouse (Notomys alexis)

Greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) track

Greater stick nest rat (Leporillus conditor) 

Sand goanna (Varanus gouldii) 

Sleepy lizard (Tiliqua rugosa)

 Asides from field work I also spent some time watching videos. Analysis of the ratstaurants videos (after baiting them with carrots last week) to be exact, although I bet when I first said I was watching videos you didn’t think that it was for work related purposes! This was the first time I have had the experience of watching videos from camera traps that I personally set up so had fun seeing exactly what activities they capture. The majority of the videos showed pesky bettongs trying to invade the restaurant to get the carrot, and in one case rather dodgy looking bettong activity (video is below). But for most ratstaurants (of which there was 20 in total) there were rats seen eating the carrot in the restaurant – bingo! I don’t like to anthropormorphize (says the person who, along with Bec has created a voice for every animal on the reserve) but what rat wouldn’t come and eat at our ratstaurants when given the opportunity to have free yummy food and getting to eat it in peace! 

 

Some rather dodgy looking activity by bettongs!

 Scabbers the stick nest rat with her collar feeding at the ratstaurant!

Unfortunately for Lisa (a University of South Wales PhD student doing her project on the bilby’s on the reserve) this week was not a good week for her. Due to the hot weather the tail transmitters from her bilby’s had started to fall off and she ended up having to dig three transmitters out of burrows. The tail transmitter battery life is predicted to be 83 days but on average the transmitters only stay attached for 60 days (sand gets in the tape or the bilbies chew the tape off!). As Lisa hasn’t collected all the necessary bilby behavioural data from the model experiments (placing cat and rabbit models, and to act as the control a bucket, outside the bilby borrow with a camera to catch the response) guess what this meant for us…more late night bilby catching to fit some more transmitters! This time we were catching in the main expansion (which unlike Red Lake has a higher density of bilbies) so I was hoping that I’d be able to actually do some bilby chasing, preventing me from falling asleep in the back of the car like last time…and maybe the time before. And when it came to it I couldn’t have been more opposite from a sleeping baby. After a persistent chase and excellent team work we managed to catch in total 4 bilbies, 3 of which were large enough to fit transmitters to. For one particularly speedy bilby I suggested the name Bullet of which the others firmly agreed and he very much lived up to his name on release! 

 

 Bilby being released. This wasn't bullet -he would have been too quick to catch on video! Video credit: Toby West

Hopefully next week we’ll get the towels back from the dingo, rabbit and cat owners (they had the towels in with the animals for 2 weeks so the smell would transfer). Bec has asked if I would like to take on this project, which of course I said yes to. So hopefully (if we get the towels back) I can start adding the towels to the ratstaurants to see the stick nest rats vigilance response when they think a predator is near! Also on the cards next week is catching Sepia to remove the GPS collar. Let’s see how easy that will be.. 

 Photos from a night-time walk on Roxby Dunes

 

Scorpion and hitchhiker green fly!

Beaded gecko (Lucasium damaeum). We saw 6 of these in one night.

A ringed brown snake (Pseudonaja modesta). Yes this is venemous!