Week 8 and 9 of Arid Recovery

This week began with another hunt for the trouble quoll Koombana. Despite my determination and vast search effort I failed miserably. It seems that Koombana is just far too good at hiding unlike Sepia, who I found no bother! If it was any other week finding Koombana would have been a priority (as we haven’t heard her signal now for 3 weeks, when she rather conveniently happened to be in the same burrow as Sepia) but this week we had a very important, time consuming job on our hands…beginning replacing the bettong collars (which are running out of battery) and collecting data on bettong personality during trapping. 

Last year, in order to examine individual bettong behaviour and to see whether certain behaviours ultimately make bettongs better at surviving when faced with introduced predators (a component of the ARC project “Tackling Prey Naivety”) 30 bettongs in the main expansion (predator free expansion) were fitted with VHF collars to track their location and monitor their survival and their personality scored (I’ll talk more about this in a bit). 20 of the 30 collared bettongs were then moved up to red lake to face feral cats, whilst the other 10 were moved to the First expansion which, like the main is also predator free. (It was essential to move the latter 10 from the main to the first to ensure all bettongs were moved but the difference was whether they were exposed to predators or not). It has now been a year since bettongs have been exposed to predators in Red Lake (cat expansion), and the collars are running out, so this week we refitted collars and collected some more personality data. 

This week we tackled refitting the collars of the controls (no-predators), and collected personality data from 50 other bettongs. This involved some very late nights, finishing at 3am, and an early morning of 3am. Quite a shock to the body clock! But that’s what you get for working with nocturnal species and the personality data is really fun to collect – in my time of doing fieldwork I’ve never come across scoring whether an animal makes a fart noise, or having to blow the back of an animal to see how long it takes for it to move from the trap into the bag! 

On the plus side we also caught some western barred bandicoots (Perameles bougainville) in the traps, which I hadn't had the pleasure of seeing up close yet and boy are they cute! The foot of the western barred bandicoot features on the logo of Arid Recovery. 

Western barred bandicoot.

 

Above the logo of Arid recory. Below measuring the foot length or PES of a western barred bandicoot.

Checking the pouch of the bandicoot for pouched young. As you can see this pouch is empty.

 Back to bettongs...The different bettong personality data (such a making a noise, how long it takes for the animal to move into the bag from the trap, how it moves away on release) is combined to give the animal a score of boldness. What I found really interesting was the clear difference between bettongs. For example at one warren all the bettongs acted really bold (or you could say feral)...They darted straight into the bag from the trap, struggled lots when processing and ran straight out of the bag making lots of fart noises on release. But in another warren I observed the polar opposite, some bettongs were very hesitant to get into the bag, didn't struggle at all on release and were extremely cautious to leave the bag on release. 

Measuring the head width of a bettong.

What’s intriguing is that these individual personality differences in personality are often overlooked when assessing the success of wild re-introductions, but they could be key to the population’s success in the wild. For example if you find that bolder animals survive better when faced with predators, releasing only the bolder animals into the wild could ensure the maintenance of the population. I don’t know about you, but I think this is a really interesting novel perspective in animal re-introductions. Maybe focusing on personalities within a population when planning animal re-introduction is the way forward… 

During the day when we weren’t setting traps, or collecting a trap which had to leave wired open because it had caught a western brown snake (yes it is venomous!), we were digging up poor Beethoven. This was the second time he had been dug up from a warren in the 9 weeks since I’ve arrived (remember we dug him up during my first week because the fixtures couldn’t be downloaded from his collar). After firstly thinking it was the remote downloading box that was to blame, and getting one sent all the way from Canada, only for it not to work, it could only be the collar that was the issue… requiring the collar to be changed which unfortunately was attached to a feral cat (damn technology). 

Above photos: western brown snake that ventured into the traps set for bettongs! Bec wouldn't let me get any closer!

Unfortunately this time Beethoven was in a calcrete warren…slightly more difficult than a warren in a sand dune. But luckily we managed to recruit 3 more willing volunteers: Reece, Bec’s partner, Toby and the new intern (to replace me- boo) Evan from the States. After a good hour and a half of using the crow bar and digging, Beethoven made an appearance, looing rather dishevelled, and in the kitty crush just sat looking at us with his big eyes (like Puss in Boots from Shrek). He does seem like a rather pathetic feral cat, but you never know maybe he is a good hunter. 

Beethoven just after he was dug up sitting nicely in the cage trap (not exactly the behaviour you'd expect from a feral cat!)

The cat digging up team posing after the victory of retrieving the cat! From left to right: Toby, Evan (Bec's new intern, Bec and Reece).

Bec checking that the remote download feature of the Beethoven's new collar is working.

If this week couldn’t get more exciting Evan and I also managed to get the Kubota bogged! This can only be attributed to a rooky mistake of not having it in 4WD going up a dune (we were very tired)! I was determined to get the vehicle out, despite Evan wanting to call for help, because I’d know the stick we would get and quite frankly I was determined to get it out ourselves…the saying here goes “you are not bogged unless you have to get pulled out”. Despite many attempts at digging the wheels out, deflating the tyres and wedging sticks under the tyres it would just not shift (despite now being in 4WD) and we had to be rescued by a knight in shining armour (David the Remote Jobs and Communities Officer supervisor) riding his white stallion (driving his white Ute). But technically I can say I have not got bogged as Evan was driving the vehicle. 

Finally, after being towed out the Kabota was no longer bogged.

What an eventful, varied week! 

What was expected to be an equally huge week in week 9, repeating the task of re-collaring and personality scoring in red lake, turned out to be the least productive week due to rain closing the road to the reserve! And what a shame as we had Katherine (Research Scientist at Arid Recovery and Bec’s supervisor on the ARC Linkage project, Tackling Prey Naivety) all week to help with the task. But, I did get through data from the cameras in red lake to see what feral cats are present in red lake and where they are hanging out. And I also had a lovely Barbie put on for my leaving…little did they know that because of the rain I decided to stay for another week to help with bettong trapping! Which also means another blog entry next week!