Went camping about 3 hours north of Melbourne in a town called Benalla last weekend. Benalla's a rough little town of mostly farmland and bush. We (the 'enviro' club...everything has a nick-name) went to go check nest boxes that had been placed throughout the town. The nest boxes are intended to house sugar gliders, squirrel gliders, antichinus, and yellow-footed phascogales- all native, and presently endangered, species of Australia. These guys love to nest in tree hollows, but only old trees have hollows. As the area became increasingly inhabited, farmers began clearing large areas of wooded bushland to make room for grazing livestock. They left the trees along the roads and set up barbed-wire fences to mark their property. The glider territory became extremely fragmented, between those living on roadsides and those still living in the few hollowed trees inland. The gliders living along roads are more at risk of getting caught in barbed wire than are the gliders inland. The nest box project intends to restore the glider's natural habitat. Since gliders will always prefer a hollowed tree to a nest box, our job was to check to see how many nest boxes are actually in use, and how they could be more accessible to the little guys. Gliders, antichinus, and phascogales are nocturnal so they use the nest boxes to sleep and raise young. Super important for the continuation of these species.
We learned how to identify each creature, as well as how to identify characteristics of the different nests they make. For example, gliders make bowl-shaped nests using fresh/drying leaves, while phascogales use a combination of leaves and stringy bark. By the end of the second day, I was pretty comfortable ID-ing.
Ray, the head and founder of this volunteer effort gave us a warm welcome the night we arrived; cracking jokes and giving us all hugs. He's a goofy old man who is passionate about conservation; a real pleasure to work with and a great teacher as well.
It seems our group stood out like a sore thumb considering we received an interesting welcome the first night. We decided to walk to the McDonald's just down the street for a late night snack. In the 2 minutes it took us to get there, we had two cars drive past us honking and yelling at us. Then, walking back, we passed a KFC and the kids inside flipped us off as we walked past. It was pretty funny, we figured they must know everyone in town and could tell we weren't locals.
Day 1: Woke up at 8, went down to the Dept. of Sustainability and Environment at 9, broke up into groups of 4 or 5, with a group leader. My group leader for the day was a real wildlife enthusiast. He specializes in birds but is knowledgable in all critters. He can identify a bird by its call and can tell how it's feeling based on the frequency of its chirp. Really cool guy. I didn't know what to expect from the first day so I was thrilled to have seen 3 squirrel gliders but apparently that's not a great statistic considering the rest of the volunteers had seen at least 5 in their assigned nest box- zone. We spent the day trekking through private property (farmland), ladder in hand, climbing up trees, and looking into nest boxes. The hardest part is actually finding the nest boxes; we're given a topographic map of the area and we were literally navigating using gullies, creeks, and hills- pin-pointing exact locations can be tricky, to say the least.
SQUIRREL GLIDER! Precious little thing!
Typical nest box
Scout Hall accommodation for volunteers
I was hungry and exhausted by the end of the day. At 6:30 we met up with the rest of the volunteers and had a BBQ. I have never seen so many stars in the night sky. Granted, anywhere will have better star visibility than NY or Cairo. I got to meet some of the other volunteers, many of whom had come from all over the world; Indonesia, France, and Sweden, to name a few. It got to ~40 F degrees so it was nice to be huddled around a fire. I had a 'kanga banga' (kangaroo sausage hah) and chatted with the other travelers. Such genuine, down-to-earth people on this trip. Ray had us gather round and discuss our findings and share interesting observations about our first day in the field. After we had finished, one of the volunteers had brought his guitar and began to play. It was the perfect way to end a wonderful day; sitting around a bonfire, in good company, listening to music; warm, full, and ready for a good night's sleep.
Day 2: Rearranged the groups and was assigned Ray's group! His approach is a lot more hands-on than my previous leader's; he taught us how to tie some cool knots and how to navigate the bushland. Had better luck with the gliders that day and managed to see 7 squirrels in total!
This was such a memorable experience, I'm so glad I went on this trip. I had a great time getting to meet the enviro club as well as the other volunteers who came down to help with the nest boxes. Opportunities like this really bring out the best in people.
