To A Place Unknown: 9-10.July.2016 (Day 34-35)

Terror birds

The work bells were ringing in my ears yesterday morning. Playtime didn’t last as long as I wanted (is it every long enough?), and it was back to the grind.

If you’ve been reading the blog thus far, it probably looks pretty glorious. Kewl animals, amazing landscapes, colorful Ozzies.

And it has been amazing.

But there’s a flip side to science that I’d be remiss if I left out, a dark side… The bane of my existence…

Data entry.

Ugh

I’m normally pretty good about it back at home. It’s important to not rely on only your field notebook and keep backups on the computer and somewhere online. Over the past five weeks I’ve been, umm, negligent. Since this data is my lifeblood I wanted to take most of the day to store it away somewhere safe.

Who’s to say I can’t be responsible while also playing tourist for the day? So I headed down the coast to a spot called Mission Beach to do some much-needed computer work.

You can stop anywhere along the highway in Queensland and find something interesting. On my way down I pulled over and stumbled upon Paronella park which is a ~80-year-old castle built by a Spanish immigrant who dreamed of having a Catalan castle in the jungle. Unfortunately floods and fires have gutted most of its grandeur, but the ruins still stand surrounded by forest and remind me of king louie’s ruins from the jungle book.

Paronella park

Just below the ruins was one of the most idyllic waterfalls/swimming holes I’ve seen yet (although Josephine still takes the cake).

Mena Falls, Queensland

As tempting as the water looks (it was a hot hot day) – like many bodies of water in Australia swimming here was not a possibility.

It’s a good thing I took 7 years of German

There were plenty of hiking trails in the area and since I had so much daylight left to do data entry before toad catching, why wouldn’t I take a little stroll?

Throughout certain types of trees (even more so as you get into town) are an over-abundance of non-marsupial mammals, a somewhat rarity in Australia where every other one seems to have a pouch.

Spectacled flying fox (Pteropus conspicillatus)

Like most bats, they tend to hide out during the day, but at night when you see them flying it’s really incredible how big they are. Some individuals have wingspans of up to 1.6 meters (~5 feet)!!! These bats are actually the main pollinators of many Australian trees and are really important for cross-pollination when the winds aren't up.

Just like a few days ago, I was prepared to turn around and keep driving when I heard something rustling in the bushes…

Coming right towards me…

You don’t look too particularly happy to see me

I know you’ve already seen pictures (and my advisor Dale has been constant with his objections of my bird photos), but these birds are just too cool.

The last father/child pair I saw were pretty mellow. They didn’t want much to do with me and scampered off into the jungle. This one didn’t like the idea of me and was very clear with it’s hooting and hollering. The show they put on is really impressive.

You shall not pass

I was not about to mess with this thing, especially after I got a better look at its terror-death-claw.

Grrrl, you need a pedi

You better believe I high-tailed it out of there.

It was back to work for me, I had 5-6 hours of pages and pages of notes.

Sizes, dates, sexes, locations, etc., etc.

All of it needed to be meticulously documented in case anyone ever wants to repeat what I’ve done. A daunting task to say the least.

I have to admit, I’ve had much worse spots to work though…

Mission Beach, Queensland

For some reason (maybe I’m just a sucker) I agreed to collect various body parts and organs for my colleagues back at the field station. When I said ‘yes’, what I actually should have said was: ‘how long, per toad, do you think this will take?’.

I was up until all hours of the morning collecting liver, colon, brain, blood, toes, and reproductive organs.

Those poor housekeepers…

One last oddity than I ran into last night collecting toads was some strange bird that honestly looked like it was trying to fight me. For a medium sized animal it was making some pretty ferocious noises too. It certainly sounded frightening, but after getting a good look at the little bird making all that big noise, I couldn't help but giggle.

Bush-stone curlew (Burhinus grallarius)

I honestly had no idea why this thing was so mad at me. It kept charging me too. Was it protecting the toads? Was the vengeful spirit of 120 cane toads being channeled through this menacing tyrant? What could I have possibly done to incur the wrath of the feathered-reptile gods? (Also, why were birds turning out to be the most terrifying animals I kept running into?)

Turns out, I was just too close to home and it was being a good, albeit comically terrifying, helicopter-parent.