Reptile Trapping

   The date was approaching I had been dreading but looking forward to at the same time…. Reptile trapping… Considering I hadn’t swung a mattock for over 3 years and the days leading up had been far too hot to do anything other than read my book under the air conditioner, the next 2 weeks were bound to be a struggle. My positive outlook that I was going to be ‘fine’ to manage without Ethan began to change as my volunteer numbers went from probably 4 to definitely 2. I began looking at past years data and emailing previous people who had lead the survey to find out just how much trouble I was in. Another ecologist was quick to respond by telling me that they had been flat out the previous years and one of her volunteers had suffered heat stroke on the first day and to get the earliest start digging as possible! Just brilliant!

Northern Spiny-tailed Gecko

   Ethan and I collected the volunteers in Katherine from the always reliably late greyhound bus and headed back to Wongalara… Arriving in record time, they had set up camp before sundown; so far a good start. On the drive out we tried to answer as many questions as possible without crushing their spirits about what exactly was in store…

   Up at dawn to get the most digging out of the way by lunch, it was a slow start. By 1:30 we finally had 9 sites in and all jokes and chatter had subsided, as people were too hungry to talk! Being the team leader, I had to lead by example… not admit to my volunteers that I felt as if I could pass out several times during the morning and definitely hadn’t drank enough water even though I was on everyone else’s case to “drink more” and frankly didn’t really care about lunch as I would sooner throw up. Everyone showered, ate and had a bit of a lie down before heading out a few hours later to open the pitfalls and funnel traps. I think everyone got a great night sleep except for me… dreaming of reptiles and the chance that I had forgotten all my reptile knowledge.

   Ethan helped check half the traps the next morning then headed for Darwin to catch a plane to New York! The first day checking sites is always slow as your new volunteers ooh and ahh over the species that will later be so common you groan when you see another one in the pit… But this is why they are here, to learn and see all the species they have never seen before. We finally checked our last trap around 10:30 and took a short break before beginning the task of putting in another 9 sites with a man down! We were starting to get faster… or our attention to detail was waning. Either way, we were back at the homestead for another very late lunch. We had caught a lovely blind snake in the mornings' trapping and hadn’t had the time to properly ID him at the site so had bought him back with us. The task consumed the rest of the afternoon as we all tried to count mid body scales on a squirmy worm that smelled terrible! 

Blind snake

We were back from checking traps and opening the new sites around 7:30pm and the news that the managers had enough dinner to feed us as well was very much appreciated. The next three days just involved checking the sites morning and night so we managed to find a little bit of spare time for bird watching and a night time spotlight. On the third day we awoke to rain… not just a sun shower, but serious rain that fills pit buckets quicker than you can drive to the site! We left the homestead in a hurry only to discover that the rain was yet to reach our sites, but was only minutes away. Luckily the manager’s daughter had agreed to help us that morning and we split up and sped around all the sites checking them and putting the lids on the buckets. By the end we were all soaked through, except for Christina, who had managed to pull wet weather gear from nowhere! The sites remained shut for the rest of the day as the sky threatened more rain.

Baby goanna!

   Soon was to come pack up day, when we packed up each site and headed to the other enclosure to repeat the whole process again. We had smartened up this time and had got our set up time down to 30mins per site. The managers' daughter had once again agreed to help us out and arrived just in time for the digging- we had 11 sites in by lunch! These two set up days we stayed out and spent the rest of the day relaxing next to a small spring in the shade and bird watching up at a nearby wetland.

   We were getting towards the end of the survey and people were getting tired. I arrived in the kitchen one morning to find one volunteer with a bowl full of muesli already at the table. I switched on the light and heard him laugh behind me… He had realised that he had poured himself a bowl of ant-ridden muesli and hadn’t even noticed in the dark! I tried to convince him to throw it out, but he soldiered on and finished the lot! Needless to say, the ants had taken advantage of our hectic schedule and had managed to get into a lot of our food!  They're rather cunning in the art of war.

The trapping team

   The end of trapping was soon approaching and we looked forward to rolling up the last fence and covering the last pit fall bucket. I took the vollies into Katherine and we treated ourselves to Asian noodles and a tub of icecream! One of the volunteers caught the greyhound back to Darwin while Christina decided to stay the night so we could head out to Edith Falls the next day to hunt the elusive Gouldian Finch.

   All in all, it was a very successful two weeks! We caught enough animals to keep us very busy, ticked lots of new bird species, listened to good music and had many laughs. I can only hope the next group of volunteers is as good! Although next time there will be 5 of us, so easier times ahead.