Dear Readers,
Last week, our group bonded together for a camping trip a
couple hours south of Brisbane at Lamington National Park. Our first few days
were spent exploring the eucalypt and rainforests with our lecturers,
researching the completion in those forests and presenting our findings—the
ecology section. We then split into two groups and while one group set up traps
and studied mammals, the other worked with birds. I’ve been trying to become a
birder for a long time and coming to Australia has prompted me to be a little
more dedicated, so I borrowed our professor’s book and went out looking for
birds. For those of you interested, my favorite bird I saw was the Red Capped
Robin, beyond adorable.
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| Our South African Army Tents! |
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| Swinging in the Rainforest |
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| Paddy Melon :) |
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| Group Presentation |
After two days of trapping, and cataloging of animals and
birds, we moved to insects. This section was by far my favorite. To start off,
we went and collected as many different kinds of insects from the forest as we
could. Nicky and I were the official log checkers—basically we flipped over
logs and grabbed the biggest bugger we could find. In the evening, we took a
night walk deep into the forest, turned off our headlamps and searched for glowworms.
Out of the darkness you could see tons of little green lights that you felt
drawn to and apparently that is how the glowworms catch their dinner, by
attracting supper to the light. The next day, we hiked up to the
lodge and looked at our catch of inspects under microscopes. Our instructor
was hilarious and kept making all these super funny comments on our attempts to
identify the insects.
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| Insect Inspection |
Our last day in Lamington was a free day where seven of
us took advantage and decided to go on a supposedly 7 hours hike to see a clump
of waterfalls. Deep into the rainforest, we soon discovered that there not only
were there snakes, abbies, and spiders to watch out for, but there were the
leeches! TONS OF LEECHES! I realize now, I should have gotten a picture of the
creepy things, but I was too busy flicking them off my shoes. By the end of the
hike, I had pulled 38 leeches off my body. Mind you, we were moving most the
time, so how those things latched on to me, I will never know. We completed the
hike in 5.5 hours, and it is my belief we did this so fast in order to get away
from the leeches (or that was my motivation).
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| The Serious Hikers |
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| One of Four Waterfalls |
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| Jungle Selfie |
Lastly, and I am mentioning this for the bragging rights,
I climbed this huge tree in the forest right up through the middle. It was at
least a 50 foot climb and while I was proud when I poked my head up through the
top, I noticed a HUGE yellow and black leech on my sleeve. I promptly screamed
looked around and saw the other leeches hanging out (for some weird reason) at the top
of the tree and I scurried my way back down to the bottom.
During our free time, the group usually played cards. I pride myself on getting everyone to play Rummy 500.
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| Playing Rummy 500 |
I think I’ve described enough
to make you bored, so ciao for now and as always if anyone has any questions my
email is sallen@lclark.edu.
-Seraphie
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| Group Shot |
