Ryan and Sarah hanging out with a stickbug!
Waking up in Lamington Plateau means waking up to brilliant sunshine and the chorus of hundreds of birds singing in the trees above your head.
The air smells like the rich soils still wet from the overnight storm, and you can hear the sweet sound of bacon sizzling in the kitchen tent. As half the group returns from their early morning birding walk, the
Julia, our resident mammal enthusiast, getting excited to go spotlighting
rest of us eat breakfast and prepare for our long hike on the border track through the altitudinal ranges of the rainforest. We were on a mission to find Nothofagus – an ancient living Gondwanan plant relic – as it can only be found in higher altitudes. Returning successfully from this hike, some bull ants escaped from the forceps when being rehoused, causing a bit of pandemonium, but all was set straight eventually!
Our amazing coordinator Nat setting up some mammal traps!
After another wonderful dinner, my group was taken aside for a quick lecture on coevolution between mammalian flyers/gliders before taking off in the darkness to check the mammal traps we had set up earlier in the day and to go spotlighting for ones we wouldn’t catch. We caught two bush rats, and were even taught how to read a dichotomous key! What another lovely day in Queensland.