Monday, March 17, 2008

it's a land of dreams out there.
dreams awaiting to be lived out.

i lived mine out this past weekend.


Fortesque Bay

remember i was complaining about the weather? (if not, refer to previous post.)
when we drove out, i saw that the temperature was actually a whooping 38deg! no wonder it was so uncomfortably hot. but anyway, when we got to Fortesque, it was a nice warm. the weather was fantastic throughout the whole duration of the camp except for the first night when i was half-freezing in my sleeping bag. alright enough of the weather... now the cool stuff!

first night there and we went out setting possum traps. managed to trap 2 possums that very night. fun part is what follows; the tagging of the possums, weighing them, measuring the length of the tails and feet and determining what gender they were. the first possum we got was grumpy and struggling a lot, making it very hard to handle. the other one was calm and nice and it allowed us to do just about anything we wanted with it. both the possums we got that night were males and no prizes for guessing which of the 2 had the teeny weeny pair of testicles (it had a pair that was about 1cm in diameter when the average size is about 2.1cm). no wonder it's all grumpy. the other one had nothing to hide and was showing off whatever he had. a 2.3cm pair with a beautiful bushy tail and very nice feet with no signs of being bullied or being involved in a fight. according to the phD student who's doing her thesis on possums, that male was the nicest one she has seen so far. we got a hot hunky possum on the first night... not bad.

the next morning, we played detectives looking for animal tracks and poo to see what animals were running about the beach the night before. spotted some wallaby tracks, possum tracks and water rat tracks. the prints that they leave behind are really quite nice. i've got some pictures of them but unfortunately blogger does not allow me to load them up and i have no idea why. so no pictures to see until i've figured it out. i've always wanted to do things like that, you know, bird-watching, following animal tracks and things like that. however, these are things that will just bore you out if you don't know what you are looking for or can't identify them when you see them. so it's great that i get to learn these things in school, making me fall even more in love with these activities. now i can tell a wallaby track and a wombat poo when i see one.

we caught some stuffs from the freshwater stream and the marine intertidal site as well but i shan't bore you guys any further with that. we didn't catch anything worth blogging about... just the usuals.

now for my favourite activity of the entire fieldtrip! we went exploring the breeding site of a penguin colony. it's not breeding season now unfortunately but it's moulting period. so the penguins are back in their nests to moult and they usually stay for 2-3weeks without leaving the nests to feed. this means we get to see penguins! it's easy to spot their nests during this time because they'd be filled with feathers. we managed to find a few nests and penguins in their nests. the last time i saw fairy penguins was on my roadtrip and that too i saw them from wayyyy above them. with binoculars and a camera that has a 10x zoom, they still look the size of my little finger. this time... I ACTUALLY GOT TO HOLD ONE IN MY HANDS!

another thing i got to get up close to was a fur seal. it was a decomposing one though. skeleton and a little bit of fur here and there. it was nice to see the composition of the bones especially after i have seen an entire colony of them tossing about in the water at close range on my roadtrip.

now that's what i call getting a feel of nature.

i enjoyed the activities immensely but the lack of sleep, good food and clean water has deprived me of my basic survival needs.

so i'm off to get some food and rest now.