Rolling Down the Esplanade

Most weekends here, Saturday is like a weekday, filled with classes and field exercises, and Sunday is our only free day of the week, which most people spend lazily lounging around the Centre, reading books, listening to their iPods, and watching the rain. This weekend, we were tipped off on an Australian Soccer preseason game being played in Cairns, featuring two of the top teams in the league, and so we made plans with the staff to skip out early on Saturday and spend that night and all of Sunday in Cairns instead of at the Centre. Probably glad to get those troublesome kids off their hands, the staff agreed, transportation was arranged, and by Saturday afternoon we were off into the city, for the first time all semester.

Even Saturday morning was a bit of a break from class. The day started with community service work, as we helped TREAT (Trees for the Evelyn and Atherton Tablelands (we're on the Atherton Tablelands, I have no idea where the Evelyn Tablelands are, sorry Evelyn!)) plant rainforest tree seedlings on an abandoned farm on the banks of the Barron River. Trowels in hand, we removed saplings from their pots and carefully planted them along the existing rainforest edge. Our little group of 16, including a one-armed kid (dislocated elbow from frisbee two weeks ago, not a fun thing to watch), with the help of a handful of regular TREAT volunteers, managed to plant over 2000 trees in just over two hours' time. We were rewarded with an incredible barbeque at the planting's end, I drank a lime-flavored drink that looked like mouthwash but tasted like lime brilliance, and we headed off to the Yungaburra Markets, a monthly event where vendors from all over the region gather to sell their goods. We had been regaled with tales involving firebreathers and jugglers performing amongst booths filled with inventive crafts and fresh fruits, but instead we arrived at a nearly desolate field populated by a handful of small gift sellers. The only substantive purchase made was a VHS copy of Biodome, if that says anything at all about what was available. How disappointing, but we were assured that this was not normal, and vowed to return next month. Afterwards, I followed a few of the girls into a nifty-looking shop in downtown Yungaburra, which turned out to be an unfathomable mistake as the girls spent the next hour trying on skirts, asking for my wholly uneducated opinion on them. I emerged completely shell-shocked and shaken to the bone, and we drove back to the Centre for a short afternoon of lectures before we finally loaded up the vans and headed into Cairns.

Cairns is the one large city in our area; it's large enough to have a busy international airport, to give you a rough idea of its size. If you plan on ever visiting the Great Barrier Reef, you'll ultimately come to Cairns, as it's the gateway to the Reef which everybody comes through. Because of that, it's a really touristy city, there's Tourist Information Booths on nearly every block in addition to the dense concentration of Outdooring and Diving stores. To us though, it was civilization, and a chance to escape the increasingly suffocating boundaries of our relatively remote Centre.

We stayed at Gilligan's Backpackers, a hostel in downtown Cairns, and though I've never stayed at a hostel before, you really don't need to have any points of reference to tell that Gilligan's was an incredibly nice hostel. It didn't feel like a hostel at all, it felt more like a luxury 4-star hotel for young, attractive people. Instead of a ballroom, there was a nightclub attached to the hostel, and instead of fine dining, there was a retro bar and casual restaurant where I munched on Fish and Chips while watching rugby on a massive wall-sized television. But we didn't stay at Gilligan's for long, we dropped off our stuff and hailed a taxi to get to the football game.

I may have misled some people with information about this game, and part of it is due to my own misunderstanding: we were not going to watch a rugby game, or a soccer game, or an American football game, we were here to watch Australian football, a unique sport endemic to this continent which is best described as a cross between soccer and rugby. Instead of carrying the ball in for a score like American football and rugby, teams tried to kick the ball between goalposts like in soccer. Or at least, that's as far as we could tell. None of us knew the rules as the taxi rolled up to the stadium, and as we bought our tickets for the uncovered, outdoor spectator area, it started to rain. By the time we found an open place to stand on the hill, it was pouring, driving rain. And it didn't let up. We got absolutely soaked. My rain jacket was overwhelmed and even my t-shirt underneath got waterlogged. My khaki shorts got totally saturated, and even my boxers were dripping wet and soaked with rain. At times, it was raining so hard that we couldn't even see the players on the field. It was pretty much a stereotypical Idiot Male scenario; men drinking beer and disregarding the pouring rain to watch guys on the field throw a ball around and then smash everyone into the ground. It was a total blast. At halftime too, a bunch of little kids were brought on to play some Australian soccer, and we all jokingly picked our Fantasy Stars of the Game as the uncoordinated schoolkids bumbled around in the rain. After they were done, some of the guys ran down to the field to high five their fantasy stars, and then the rest of the kids too. Hilarious. I don't even know who won the game, we couldn't see the important part of the scoreboard and didn't really know the rules anyway, but we wooped and hollered and had a great time anyways. After the game, most of the group went clubbing, but instead I went to bed. Srsly, can you see me in a dance club? Ever? If I had to choose between clubbing, or helping girls shop for skirts, I'd probably...throw spears at Woolly Mammoths and watch football. And that was Saturday.

On Sunday, I didn't feel like wandering around the city with bitter, hungover college kids, so I got suckered into joining a group of girls to ride the Skyrail into Kuranda. The Skyrail turned out to be a cablecar ride over the canopy of a rainforest, and it was one of the most touristy attractions I've ever seen. Fortunately, everyone else realized this too, and we spent most of the ride mocking the tourist brochures with our now superior knowledge of rainforest ecology. Near the end of the ride, we stopped over at an overlook to see Barron Falls, a very impressive waterfall that was swollen way past its usual capacity by the wet season that we're in. The Skyrail journey ended in Kuranda, a town which seemed to be populated entirely by tourists or tourist shopowners, I'm not sure if it has any permanent residents otherwise. How absurd.

I soon found out that the whole reason the girls were here was because an Animal Park in Kuranda allowed you to hold a Koala, and so the girls were just OMG KOALAS and Blaine and I were suddenly trapped. We got to the park, and spent some time looking at kangaroos, wallabies, monitor lizards, and some other things, but then as we got closer to the Koala enclosure and the girls saw the Koalas for the first time, they started squealing, I just about lost my hearing, and wanted to blow up the sun. The girls paid another fifteen dollars to have their pictures taken while holding the Koalas, and as they posed with the Koalas and the other girls squealed even higher, I was crossing my fingers for apocalypse. By the end, I'd gotten dragged into a group photo with the Koalas, which I hope to never lay my eyes upon ever, and Blaine and I finally escaped the Koala enclosure. Oh well, I guess that was their payback for the Australian Soccer game, well-deserved then. Which ultimately means that I'd rather stand in the pouring rain for three hours watching a sport that I don't even understand, rather than hold a koala? Amazing.

We rode the Skyrail back to Cairns, and headed for the famous Esplanade, a street along the beachside with tons of shops, restaurants, and a saltwater swimming lagoon. But once I got to the Esplanade, I saw something that I hadn't seen in more than a year, and missed sorely: the ocean at low tide. Exposed mudflats. Shorebird habitat. Crunchtime.

Lauren and Blaine and I, the three birders, spent two hours on the Esplanade, and only covered 100 meters of its length, a frighteningly slow pace. The reason: in those two hours, we found almost 25 new species of birds for our lists, probably the highest density of new birds we've had all semester. I doubt that the Esplanade is an especially great birding spot in the grand scheme of it all, but since none of us had been to the Australian coast before, all of these birds were new for us. Even the abundant gulls flying around were a new species, the Silver Gull. The evening closed with massive flocks of Pied Imperial-Pigeons wheeling over the city, another exciting new species for us, and we hopped back into the vans. Before we even knew it, we were back home at the Centre.

In two weeks, we've got our mid-semester Spring Break, and I have no idea what I'll be doing. Since I don't want to go horseback riding for five days, or spend ten hours driving stick shift on the left side of the road down to the reportedly 'totally sick' Whitsunday Islands like other members of the group, I may be stuck with the Koala girls again. Hopefully, no more Koala-holding or skirt-shopping will happen, but even with those nightmare occurences, it was still a fun weekend. Rehab is going well thus far.

Danger Danger Danger

That last post must have jinxed me or something. We headed out into the field the next morning, to the same forest fragment as before with the wait-a-whiles and stinging trees, to cut some more transects. Halfway into the second transect, it happened. I touched the stinging tree. I actually touched it! All of my wonderful dreams finally came true! I started drifting into a beautiful meadow, skylarks singing their songs on the wing as a rainbow soared over the sky, my dreams, they'd come true! Or maybe the pain was just making me go crazy, haha.

No but seriously, it's not bad at all. The first few minutes, okay, pretty intense. It was a lot like my experience with Stinging Nettle last year, except this time I'd somehow gotten stung through my pants, and I started to come to grips with the fact that I'd have to deal with this for months. The stinging tree has clinched the award for greatest tree of all time at this point.

But then, turns out that the pain isn't continuous; it's not like my knee will throb with pain every moment that I'm awake for the next few months. It comes and goes, I'll completely forget about it for hours on end, then for two minutes my knee will just spontaneously burst into really sharp pains, only to disappear just as suddenly, and I forget about it again.

And then, it even turns out that the pulses of pain only happened on the first few days. Right now, I am just about 100% okay, and I think it has to do with how I was stung. One of my professors posted a long article written by a scientist who had done her PhD thesis on these stinging trees, and it gave a pretty comprehensive history of the plant. How it works: Tiny silica hairs are found on the leaves and stem, and when someone brushes against them, they break off the plant and embed themselves into the skin. Whenever these hairs are exposed to moisture or to sudden temperature changes, they burst and release a neuro-toxin which causes all the pain, though scientists are still unsure as to how this neurotoxin exactly functions and triggers the actual pain. Anyways, the reason you stay in pain for so long is that the body cannot break down silica, so hairs can stay embedded for months before bursting. So I think I got lucky: most of the silica hairs probably got stuck on my pants, not my knee, so I should make a full recovery very very soon, if not already. I've done my laundry too, which is good, hopefully all the silica hairs will wash off, because apparently they also stay active for a really long time. A dried specimen kept at a herbarium in Brisbane was collected in 1910, and it still causes pain to those who touch it. Amazing. Also of note, when one of my other professors first moved to the area, he accidentally walked into a field of stinging trees while wearing shorts, and required extensive hospital treatment for shock and for lymph node swelling, and got injected with Morphine as part of the recovery process. Incredible. Best plant ever.

So yeah, I touched the tree, but I'm fine! I had a lot of fun while the pain lasted, and now I'm starting to wonder if I might be able to get stung more so that I can build up a resistance to it. Haha, no I probably won't be trying that. But this was a nice little intro, I'll be much more prepared the next time around. Though it's sort of demoralizing to know that you can still get stung through your clothes. One of my friends got stung through a rain jacket and t-shirt, and it caused welts. Intense.

Just for some more quick science, we also got to read a quick article on leeches. Most land leeches have three jaws, causing a y-shaped incision, but the Australian land leeches only have two jaws, causing a v-shaped incision. I thought that was really, really cool. Also, leeches have suckers on both ends of their body, but the front sucker is the weakest, so usually leeches attach with their posterior sucker. If a leech successfully feeds on your blood, you bleed for a long time, as I mentioned before, but the actual amount of blood lost is quite minimal, and doesn't really cause any adverse health effects. You're just being nice to the leech, in a way. And after a blood meal, the leech usually, "...retires to a dark spot, to digest its meal..." in the exact words of this formal scientific paper. Incredible.

In other wacky and dangerous organismal news, the Centre director's husband Alastair caught another Scrub Python on the property's access road. As a note, this is actually part of his job, he works for the government's wildlife service. I honestly think that he's one of the coolest people I've ever met, he's seriously like Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter, except a few years older and much more humble and kind. He just runs around Queensland capturing snakes for a living. He's sort of my hero. But anyways, he's doing a research project tracking Scrub Pythons around the area, so after he caught this newest Python, we helped him measure it this afternoon. Turned out to be 10 feet long, weighed about 8 pounds, thicker than my fist. Huge snake. Holding the snake straight out for the length measurement, the snake was squirming in my grasp, and woah, I did not realize that they were so strong. Turns out they're actually the world's strongest vertebrate, in terms of muscle mass or something. Even the very tip of its tail could probably crush most people in arm wrestling, the muscles were that strong. So it was really cool to spend some time examining this massive snake up close and personal, and we released it later at the same spot it was captured at. We also saw a Small-eyed Snake this afternoon, one of the most dangerous snakes in this area. One of them bit a cabinmate of mine two weeks ago, but luckily he got bitten right on the sandal strap, and missed the foot. You could not get more lucky.

And that's basically it, for these past few whirlwind days. Tomorrow the whole group is going to Cairns for a weekend break, with everyone heading to an Australian Football game tomorrow night, which I'm incredibly pumped about. Sunday, we have no idea what we're doing. We were planning on kayaking on the Great Barrier Reef, but it looks like weather conditions will be too harsh, and that'll get canceled. The girls wanted to go horseback riding, I think they wanted revenge for getting dragged to the football game, but that turned out to be too expensive. Four people just decided an hour ago that they want to go skydiving, which is sorely tempting, but it's a bit too short notice. I want to pump myself up for a few weeks before I go skydiving, and believe me, I want to go skydiving at some point. But not two days from now. I'd rather find something much more peaceful and relaxing to do.

And also, after my program's over, I'd been planning on spending ten days in Sydney, but after having a long conversation with Alastair the Crocodile Hunter, I've decided that I'm probably going to fly to Alice Springs to spend a few days. Alice Springs is in the center of the continent, right in the middle of the Outback, and that's an environment that I desparately want to see before I leave here. Plus, the birding will hopefully be incredible. And I trust Alastair's advice, actually I would trust him with my life. If we really had gone sea kayaking, and our kayaks had flipped, and sharks (or octopuses) were circling, I could totally see Alastair skydiving to our rescue, wrestling with the sharks (and octopuses), and saving everyone without breaking a sweat, and flying off to return to his job and find some more huge snakes. What a ridiculous country that I'm living in.


Leeches attached: ~70
Leeches that have feasted upon my blood: 3

Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles

Most of today was spent in the field, collecting data for a field exercise in my Forest Management course. We were running transects into edge habitat in the Curtain Fig National Park, in order to investigate how physical conditions on edges affect the ability of invasive weeds to proliferate. That part probably doesn't interest any of you, so I'll get to the exciting parts. In order to cut our transects, teams of us armed with clippers and sharp knives dove into the thick brush, hacking away at the plants ahead of us in order to clear the way for the data collectors to move in. Sometimes the brush was so thick that we couldn't cut straight through it, and we ended up constructing TUNNELS THROUGH THE BRUSH. So much fun, you don't even know. At one point, we had to climb up a huge fallen log, and on the other side, you dive into a tunnel. I've never had so much fun while getting torn to pieces by thorns.

Which I should probably mention. Not only was the understory thick with plants, but most of these understory plants were either the weeds we were researching, or the two most feared plants in this corner of Australia: the stinging tree, and the wait-a-while (also known as a lawyer vine). I've probably mentioned the stinging tree to most of you. If you touch any part of it, you will be in pain for months. Months. And there's nothing you can do about it. You're just going to have to be in pain for months. I cannot fathom this. I ran into some Stinging Nettle in the Crum last spring, in the Skunk Cabbage Hollow behind the Fieldhouse, and I couldn't feel my leg for almost five hours. But running into the stinging tree would put you in that position for...months. Unbelievable.

But don't worry, I didn't run into any. According to my professor, it's basically inevitable that I'll run into one at some point if I choose to do my resarch project with him, which is my current plan of action. But I haven't run into them yet. Today, a few of my colleagues ran into them, our first close experiences with them. Two were in extreme pain, especially one fellow who got stung on the top of his head. They've been told that they'll have to deal with the pain for months. They did not appear to be especially pleased by this news, oddly enough. Two of the others who got stung didn't seem to mind too much though, so that's good news. The closest I got was one section of the trailblazing where I was working on cutting down a stinging tree, and removing it from the area of our path. Clipping it branch by branch, the wind nearly blew a few leaves onto my hands, but I lucked out there. So I'm fine. So far. Hehe.

But I mentioned another plant earlier, the Wait-a-While, something I didn't know about until I got here, but it's almost just as feared as the stinging tree. It doesn't sound bad on paper, it's just a really thorny vine. What I can't emphasize enough, based on experience in the field over the past three weeks, is how easily these thorns catch on your clothing and skin, how violently they rip up your clothing and skin, and how long those thorns stick in your skin if you're unlucky enough to have that happen. Most of us have gotten Wait-a-Whiles stuck on our clothing, and one of today's stinging tree victims even had his favorite Philadelphia 76ers t-shirt ripped to shreds on our first day in the field. It's a good thing that a 76ers shirt is nothing to flaunt around, it's not like they're a good team or anything. Anyways, today were the first experiences of Wait-a-Whiles on skin. I was completely covered up in rain gear, but it didn't really help, my left index finger knuckle has about 8 Wait-a-While thorns completely embedded in it at the moment, and there's nothing I can do about it except wait-a-few-weeks. The thorns are more like thin splinters, but you can't extract them because there's also tiny side hooks that are angled such that they slide into your skin easily, but don't slide back out without intense pain. Sitting in my knuckle though, it's not too bad, no wuckers, seriously. If I try and take them out, then yeah, it hurts, but if I don't do anything, it's barely noticeable. No wuckers, no wuckers. All semester, we've been trying to find a slogan for our group t-shirt, and so far the two front-runners are:

SFS Wet Season 2007: No wuckers, mate!
SFS Wet Season 2007: It wasn't that bad

The latter was in response to a stinging tree encounter. Hilarious. Anyways, I also got a Wait-a-While across my face in one of the tunnels, but luckily it didn't stick, I carefully peeled it off without a scratch. Phew.

By the by, I've been told that an Australian naturalist (whose name I've suddenly forgotten) has written a book of the title 'Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles', detailing humorous adventures of his in this part of Australia, which comes highly recommended from several of our professors as a great read. Obviously I'll read it at some point, but if any of you are in need of a good book, take a look.


So that was my day! On a more pleasant note, there have been some really beautiful sights over the past week as well.

- Tens of thousands of bats flying over the town of Chillagoe at sunset.
- A crop duster gracefully gliding low over some fields below Halloran's Hill. Even in North Carolina, I don't think I'd ever seen a crop duster in action before this, but it's quite beautiful, the graceful plane soaring over the fields.
- Oh, during this entire day in the field with the stinging trees and wait-a-whiles and everything, it was also pouring rain, harder than it has all semester. It stopped raining just before dinner, and a rainbow appeared just above the hills to the North.

We'll leave things there.

Chillagoe

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, I'm starting to get used to life in the rainforest, so the excitement level is inching back towards normal, and I have less to report on. For most of this past week though, I've been camping on the edge of the Outback, and I feel like there's some things to mention about that.

We spent our time in the area of Chillagoe, a small town to our west which took four hours to reach on poorly maintained country roads. Biologically, Chillagoe was fascinating because its dry, arid environment is so different from the lush, tropical one we've been frolicking in for the past few weeks. For me in particular, that also meant a whole slew of new birds to watch out for, and the area did not disappoint me, bird list to be updated as soon as I'm done with this. The other two birders got many more species than me though, mostly because their van got lost and drove on through the Outback for an extra 90 kilometers, through some apparently incredible habitat that netted them stuff like Sarus Crane, for which I will forever be jealous. I mean, c'mon, Sarus Crane! Whatever, I'm relatively happy with the birds I got to see, and that's good enough for me. I did get to be the only observer of a Black-breasted Buzzard on the way back, which I did not realize is an astonishing sighting, our Centre Director (who's also an avid birder) has only seen three in her entire life, and two of them were sitting on a nest she was directed to. So yeah, I was pleased with that, wish I got a better look rather than just a quick drive-by glance, but I'll take whatever I can get with that bird.

Our first night camping was pretty rough unfortunately. It was scorching hot, I was sweating buckets, and my sleeping bag could not have been more uncomfortable. The guy (not) sleeping to my left ended up abandoning his sleeping bag completely and rolled it up to use as a pillow, a strategy which I quickly stole and was subsequently also adopted by the (not) sleeper on my right. At one point during the night, the kid to my left got up to use the bathroom, and since he's also one of my cabinmates, I know his general schedule, so I figured oh, it must be 4:30 in the morning, since that's when he usually gets up to do this, and that means the night's almost over! I looked at my alarm clock anyways and, no way, it's only 12:30?! I clenched my eyes shut, cursed silently at the Chillagoe night, who didn't respond, and tossed around some more in frustration. At some point during the night, it started raining, highly unusual for the area, and at some point after that, part of our tent collapsed from the rain. Highly amusing stuff to deal with in the rain at 5 in the morning. At least we didn't get flooded like a few of the others. Fortunately, I was a lot more comfortable the next night, and by comfortable I actually mean that I got flooded with mosquitoes and biting flies instead of rain. But I slept through that at least!

Chillagoe is a small town, population around 250, and I learned something intriguing from my Poli Sci professor. In the big cities of Australia, like Sydney or Brisbane, people wave with their entire hand, much like we're used to seeing in the US. But the further you move away from the population centers, the fewer fingers people use in their waves. As you head into the country, people start waving with just four of their fingers, then three, two, and finally at Chillagoe the locals were acknowledging our presence with just one finger. It was interesting to watch. People seemed to be really freaked out by this, and for some reason I wasn't as much, and I couldn't figure it out for a while. Then I realized something: I don't know when I started, but for years, I've been waving with three fingers. That didn't occur to me until this trip. I still do the full palm wave occasionally, but only sort of ironically and playfully to certain friends who I find especially amusing. If I'm saying hello to anyone else, from across a room or down a long hallway, it's my default three-fingered wave, which I really didn't realize that I used, until now. Isn't that exciting?! Why didn't anyone point this out to me? I wonder if it comes from North Carolina, though Raleigh seems more like four-fingered territory. Maybe I need to move further out into the country, amongst my three-fingered comrades. This three-fingered wave feels completely natural to me, and I feel really strange doing the full palm waves unironically at this point. Curious.

I wish I could post some of my photos from Chillagoe and from this entire Australian adventure in general, but like I said earlier, the internet connection here at the Centre is slower than frozen molasses, so not happenin. I finally got to try out the Internet Cafe in a nearby town today, but it was pretty amazingly slow as well, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised since Atherton is still just a country town, somewhere between Cairns and Chillagoe. Anyways, none of my photos were done uploading by the time I headed out to play Ultimate Frisbee with all of the guys, so we'll have to wait a bit longer. I'll see if I can wrangle a bit more time at that cafe, or if I can find a better connection over Spring Break, or something at some point would be good. We'll cross our fingers and shoot for then, whenever it is.



And of course, leech update!

Leeches attached: ~65
Leeches that have feasted on my blood: 2


Got my first exams on Monday, but I'm not too worried. Hopefully I'll get back to you guys sooner rather than later this time. Peace out.


Edit: It look like two of my photos mysteriously made it through the upload process, which is cool. So here's the two that randomly made it through:

Lindsay, Wynnie, and Josie on the Site Walk


Cathedral Fig in the Danbulla National Park, a 4 km walk from our property

The Bloody Sock

Spent the entire day on one of those field trips that are supposed to be educational, but nobody ends up learning anything at all, so we just end up goofing around. Yeah, it was one of those trips.

Started off at Lake Eacham, to take a swim test. Turns out that the lake is actually the crater of an extinct volcano, and has been filled entirely with rainwater, and has no river outlets. It's also something like 50 meters deep. So yeah, treading water in the middle of the lake, fun stuff. I was starting to imagine a giant squid rising from the depths and dragging us down into its inky lair. Oh well, at least it wouldn't be an octopus. Okay, just looking at that word typed on my screen, I'm shuddering. I'm seriously thinking of deleting it.

Anyways, at one point I was standing in the shallow end, and I felt this thing poking my ankle, I thought it was a rock at first, but then it stopped poking, and then came back in. Then I realized that A FISH WAS BITING MY ANKLE WTF. So now I have a small bite mark above my left ankle. I hope it scars over, best scar ever?

A few stops later we ended up at another extinct volcano, this one with an incredible overlook over a 80 meter deep hole, at the bottom of which was another lake. This crater was contained within a national park with some nice rainforest habitat, so we spent some time exploring it, and by exploring I actually mean playing frisbee on the lawn beside the parking lot. Come on, we see plenty of rainforest every day, what could possibly be new about this place?

And that's when we heard that a Southern Cassowary was standing next to the trail.

Okay, woah. Oh man.

This is THE bird that everyone comes to Australia to see. It is a national symbol, alongside the koala, kangaroo, platypus, and all that other stuff. It's critically endangered, it's beautiful, it's got character, it's the perfect storm of a bird. Did I mention that it's critically endangered? It's incredibly difficult to find, and hadn't been seen in this particular park for many many years. It was absolutely incredible luck that we happened to find one at all, much less standing right next to the trail, 50 meters from the parking lot. The whole group was ecstatic, taking dozens of pictures (I left my camera in the van again, I really need to make it a habit to carry it around), and generally just going wild. This was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that you're actually self-aware of as they're happening, and everyone realized it! I hate cliches, but it really was pretty magical. Previous groups have gone an entire semester without seeing a Cassowary in their prime lowland habitat. At this rate, we'll see one every week!

I did pay a price for the Cassowary though: my first leech bite! I got back into the van, and as we pulled out of the parking lot, I gradually became aware of some pain below my right ankle, so I looked down and noticed a leech right on my sock line. I ripped it off and threw it out the window, but it was too late, I was bleeding, and I didn't stop bleeding for the next five hours. Fun stuff! I ended up getting a bloody sock, Curt Schilling-style! And just as worth it, hah.

After a few more stops on the trip, I got back to the Centre. While all of my classmates are nice folks and fun to be around, they're also pretty fond of drinking, so most of them are spending the night at a pub in Yungaburra, the nearest town. It's just Blaine, Lauren, and I hanging around here. The three birders! We took advantage of the situation and went on another Blue-faced Parrot-finch expedition once we got back. This time, we got more lucky, and I got to show the other two their very first Blue-faced Parrot-finches. So in one day, the three of us managed to see the two most sought-after Australian birds. Simply amazing. Tomorrow, we'll see if our momentum can hold as we go on the 6 km hike to the nearby curtain fig tree, a local attraction.

Lingo update: Gas station attendant said G'day to me as I bought a coke. Later, receptionist at Herberton Mining Museum said G'day to our Poli Sci professor's wife. But no else. Hmm...

And I almost forgot, the Coca-cola I got came in this slick new slimline can, how new is this? Are they available in America? Also, Coca-cola tastes a lot better with cane sugar than with the artificial stuff they use in the US.

And last, it's time to update a few things. First, the bird list has been updated, I wasn't able to do so the past few days, but now it's fully up to date. 58 species?! I think it took me four or five years to get my last 58 species before this trip, so my mind is getting blown a continuous basis at this point, basically. I've added a link to the list on the sidebar as well. And now, on Evelyn's suggestion, I think I'll start a leech count too!

Leeches attached: ~30
Leeches who have feasted on my blood: 1
Fishes that have bitten my frickin ankle: 1
Rogers that are having the time of their life: 2. Oh wait. 1. Well, maybe there's more than one Roger having the time of his life, who knows. But there's at least one out there for sure.

And one last thing: I feel like such a dirty hippie when I sit on the veranda and play the acoustic guitar as the sun slowly sets over the rainforest. It's a good thing that I suck at the guitar and it's cloudy most of the time.

Crikey, Mates!

With so many new things to see and do every day, I really don't know what I should say here, and what I should choose to leave out. So a few random occurrences, even though I feel like I'm leaving out tons:

Yesterday the group spent the day exploring local towns, getting a feel for the area's attractions, general character, and history. I ended up in the large town of Atherton, notable among the students here as the location for some of the area's better pubs, and also the only local hospital where we can get treated for venomous snake bites. Yeah, if I ever goto Atherton again, let's hope that it's just to pick up minor school supplies. For some reason, Wal-mart is known here as Big W, but everything else is the same, including the slogan, the rollback smiley mascot, the employee uniforms, everything. Curious. Anyways, by far the best part of Atherton was the kebab restaurant across the street from the shire courthouse. It's often frequented by our Rainforest Ecology professor, who highly recommended it to us, so we stopped in. The food we're getting cooked at the Centre is really surprisingly great, I haven't had a disappointing meal so far, but man, this kebab place was incredible by any comparison. You can pick two sauces to include in your wrap, so being the spice-loving guy that I am, I got spicy chili and bbq sauce. It was...incredible. Everything about it. The quality of the pita bread, the flavor of the chicken, the quality of the ingredients, the contributions of the sauces...best wrap ever. So...I ordered another one, which is apparently unheard of and completely unprecedented, even according to our fanatical professor. But that first warp was just so good that I wanted to have another one, and try a different combination of sauces. So the second time, I picked tahini and garlic yogurt. Also amazing. Okay, so we'll adjust the previous statement: I will be in Atherton as often as possible, if only for the wraps at this kebab place. I guess I'll just happily munch on a wrap while my classmates get wasted at the bar or get saved from lethally venomous snakebites.

Speaking of snakes, we found a massive Scrub Python between Cabins 1 and 2 last night. And by massive, I mean that this snake was almost 10 feet long, and was a good deal thicker than my fist. This wasn't even a particularly large Scrub Python, but it was still really, really big. The guys all yelled and hollered, probably out of a combination of excitement and sheer terror, as the snake just sat in the road watching us. I'd left my camera back in the cabin, so I didn't get off any photos, by a few others did, so I hope those turn out well. After a five minute standoff on the road, the snake backed off and slithered off into the bush. We stood our ground and watch its entire length go by, refusing to believe that a snake could be so long. Thing was frickin' amazing. Imagine seeing that in the Crum Woods! This is why I went abroad.

I'm seeing fewer and fewer new birds, which was obviously expected, but two of my most recent pickups were quite memorable. The first was the Tooth-billed Bowerbird, a species only found in this sliver of Australian rainforest, and that's it, for the entire world! Bowerbirds are famous for their elaborate mating rituals, in which the males build 'courts' filled with various found objects in order to attract a mate. Probably the most famous example is the Satin Bowerboard, which will weave an elaborate den out of sticks and then pick a bright color to show off. For example, if the bowerbird picks the color orange, it will find every bright orange object in its territory and artistically place it around the court, it could be orchid flowers, fruits, or even human artifacts like bottle caps or pieces of plastic, all of it gets placed around the bowerbird's court. The Tooth-billed Bowerbird isn't quite as elaborate as the Satin, but its court is still fascinating, as it finds leaves that it likes and creates a mat of turned-over leaves. Anyways, I wasn't expecting to find a Tooth-billed Bowerbird, as they normally occupy their courts during the dry season, during which they stand on their favorite perch and sing for hours on end, making them among the easiest birds to find in the rainforest. However, we're now in the wet season, and during that time bowerbirds are nearly impossible to find. I got lucky. The Centre director Amanda, who's an avid birder as well (there's so many of us, yes!) told me a few days ago that she'd heard two Tooth-billed's singing at their courts along the Centre's access road (the road we hurtled along after the terrifying entrance). This is an extremely late date for them to be singing, but I hoped that I could catch them in the next few days before they disappeared for good. Yesterday morning I went out and checked, but no luck, there was nothing but Chowchillas singing at the two bowerbird sites. Today however, my luck came through. I heard a bird calling stridently from the vicinity of bowerbird court three. After fighting my way through some thick brush, I tried to get a better angle on the hidden singer, and after some searching, I finally found the Tooth-billed Bowerbird, sitting still on its favorite perch about four meters above its court. I watched it for a few good minutes, before it dropped down into the brush, and I looked at my watch and decided that it was time to head back to the main building for breakfast. But I'm so glad that I got a chance to see this unique bird, because I have no idea if it will still be there tomorrow, even.

The other great bird I got was the Blue-faced Parrot-finch, a rare denizen of the Australian rainforests. The species is also found in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, but because of the relative inaccessibility of these locations, many birders come to Australia to find the bird, and indeed Amanda's husband Alastair stated that it's probably the second-most sought after bird in the rainforest, after the Southern Cassowary of course. Fortunately, this is the best time of the year to find the parrot-finch, and even more fortunately, the bird can occasionally be found on the centre's property. Amanda and Alastair pointed me towards some of the more promising locations around the property, and I watched over them vigilantly over the next few days. This afternoon, with some free time available, Lauren (one of the other avid birders) and I decided to launch a Blue-faced Parrot-finch expedition, to find this beautiful but elusive bird. Lauren had stood at the abandoned orchard below the main building for an hour without any luck, but decided to keep her vigil there, while I split up and headed uphill for the nursery. After a few minutes sorting through the dozens of Red-browed Finches, I noticed a small green bird at the edge of the grass. It was light green, with a red tail, and that led me to believe that it must be an immature Blue-faced Parrot-finch or something. But I wasn't totally sure, so I watched the bird for another minute, collecting notes on its behavior and plumage. Suddenly, two adult Blue-faced Parrot-finches flew up into the branches around the first bird, and I pretty much flipped out. They were absolutely beautiful. Blindingly bright green, with a shocking blue face, and bright red tail, these were probably the most striking birds that I'd seen here yet, and that's with some pretty impressive competition to boot. I watched them for just a few seconds before sprinting downhill to find Lauren, hoping that the birds would stay in the same general area. The two of us ran back uphill to the nursery, but after standing around for ten minutes, it looked as if the birds had unfortunately moved on. We moved to the water tower at the top of the hill, where the flock of Red-browed Finches seemed to have moved, but there was no sign of the Blue-faced Parrot-finch, and then it started to rain, as it always seems to in the rainforest. It's an apt name for the habitat, most definitely. So while I'm glad that I got some brief, good looks at the bird, I'm a little disappointed that Lauren didn't get a look, I wonder if she even believes me! Hopefully we'll get to see the bird again, we'll certainly try our best.

The leech saga continues as well. There's an acoustic guitar in the common room, and yesterday morning I found two leeches on the guitar strings! They were just waiting for us, those devious 'suckers'. Oh wow, terrible joke. But yeah, the sight of two leeches attached onto guitar strings, waving around in the air seeking my blood, was completely surreal. Went on a hike this afternoon too, before the Blue-faced Parrot-finch expedition, and somehow two leeches ended up on my neck. I plucked them off before they feasted on my blood, but I really have no idea how they got there, but I wish I knew so that I could prevent it from happening again. Two of my friends here got leeches in their armpits, and on their stomachs, and they just don't have any idea how that could possibly happen. It's sort of ridiculous, and there's nothing you can do about it except cover up your body and stay vigilant, there's no leech repellent or anything. At least I haven't had to deal with too many mosquitoes.

By the way, I think I forgot to include my contact info in the last post. Email is probably the best way to do things, though I will warn that our internet is very spotty, we rely on a very slow satellite connection that doesn't always work. The phone on site doesn't accept incoming calls, but I can make international calls on the cheap, so let me know if that sounds good. As for letters, it actually looks like I'll be able to receive it quite promptly, it turns out that one of the staff members checks our post office boxes on his commute to work. It'll take around three weeks for me to receive anything, but if you really want to send me anything for whatever reason, try:

Roger Shaw
SFS Centre for Rainforest Studies
PO Box 141 Yungaburra
Queensland, 4884 Australia

Unfortunately that still means that I'll have trouble sending out mail back to you guys, but if you'd really really like to, let me know, and I'll try my best.

Oh, and pictures! They're on my computer, but the internet here is astonishingly slow. By the time this post finishes publishing on blogger, I'll probably be done with breakfast. I have a lot of free time later today and tomorrow, so I could try and just settle into the computer lab here to upload a few, but until then, more black text will just have to do.

Oh, and on the lingo front, 'tuckers' is the same as lunch, and I still haven't heard anyone say 'crikey'. Well, except by us, jokingly, when we saw that massive snake.