Day 3 began bright and early with a Bird watch along the shore. Alexa, Kelsey and I decided to choose this day over others since the shore bird watch involved more riding in the 4WDs....meaning less walking for us early in the morning! For not being a huge bird fan, this excursion wasn't partucularly the most interesting, but it certainly was enjoyable! We got to watch the sun rise, saw some neat birds as well as some more of those cute dingoes! I would have to say my favourite bird was the White-Bellied Sea Eagle - a majestic bird that "rules" the island according to Steve.
After birding, we had another fantastic breakfast followed by the next step in data collection. This time, we hiked 3km to the Eucalyptus forest near our campsite to assess tree height, diversity, leaf morphology, insect diversity and other things. Our group really wanted to study the insects, since we thought that plants were a little boring and tedious, but we we assigned plant diversity. That meant more transects, quadrats, measuring tree girth and height and trudging through more shrubbery. It wouldn't have been so bad but right before we started, our professor stumbled upon a brown snake in the brush, and promptly told us these creatures are lurking around so watch out. It didn't help our mentality when we were walking through the leaf litter on the forest floor!
After about 3 hours of data collection, in on and off rain, we headed back to the camp for some lunch before a 7km walk to another lake on the island. No one had told us this lake was going to be 7km away, but we stopped at a couple sites along the way which broke it up a bit. The best stop was at the dunes - huge sand dunes that have drifted into this valley. We stopped here for quite a bit, took some awesome photos of us leaping off this one portion of the dune into softer sand below (you will have to wait for photos - the professional photographer took them and has yet to upload them online for us to access). At the end was the weirdest lake I have ever seen. It's called Lake Boomanjin, and it is a tea-tree oil lake. The water color is this iodine-color and makes you look like you have jaundice when you swim in it. It did wonders for all our skin though, and after swimming in it, we all felt like we had just come from a spa!
This evening was an evening devoted solely to data analysis since we only had a couple more nights to finish up the workbooks and assignments due upon departure. We stayed up until 11:30pm, sorting through leaf litter and organizing dead leaves into their respective species....NOT fun. I've included some photos we took to show you our mood as the night progressed......
Day 4
Today was a sleep-in day since the night previous wore us out completely. Our morning activity was comprised of yet more data collection and observation - except this time we headed out to the rainforest instead of the Eucalyptus forest. Our group was stuck with more tree diversity - this time assessing canopy coverage, seedling coverage and leaf biomass. It wasn't as bad as the day before, since we knew what to expect, but this time we all were worried about leeches in addition to snakes. A couple kids on the trip ended up being sucked dry by leeches - which was the most gross thing I have ever seen. These Aussie leeches are massive and disgusting. Thank god I chose to wear pants!!!
This afternoon, we drove to another lake to relax and enjoy the scenery. Here, we took some neat underwater shots with Kelsey's camera, and I played my first cricket match with the tutors and Steve while the other students slept on the beach. Unlike footy, I am not a natural at cricket and really sucked. The only thing I could do was wicket-watch or something....the position equivalent to the backcatcher in baseball. It was brutal. I'm not even going to go into my batting skills!
This evening was a brainstorm session to think about ideas for our projects and major write-up. All the data we collected is going to be complied and posted online for us to pick and choose what we want to use and how to incorporate it into the report. I've decided to compare plant density and diversity between the two types of forests.....I've started my initial research today, but with all the photo and blog updates, as well as some anatomy preparation, I haven't gotten very far. I'll let you know how I fare the next couple weeks before the due date in early May!
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