I sat upon the back steps looking out out clothesline and the apple trees as I ate my morning muesli.

 

Crested Pigeons

Creatures of the night:

Night Stalk: spotlighting trip 1

Went for a walk to Gunghalin hill nature reserve, which is just behind Crace and spent over an hour spotlighting.

Tonight we saw..... 3 micro-bats and heard many, 14 grey kangaroos, 3 Brushtail possums, one on it's own and a mother with a baby on her back, 1 cockatoo, three wood duck and 3 foxes. Definitely going out spotlighting for Nightstalk again!

 Another cool thing from last nights "Nighstalk" was playing recorded animal sounds and listening for a response. We had minimal luck... except for a moment in the forest of eyes where we played a recorded fox call. I don't know what the recorded fox was saying, but it made the local foxes a bit excited!

We tried the same technique with a Tawny Frogmouth call and a Southern Boobook call but had no luck.   The Museum of Victoria has produced an iphone App called the "Field Guide to Victorian Fauna". I'm not in Victoria but many of the species are the same.

 Link to: Field guide to Victorian Fauna

Madagascar

Lemurs are among the most loved animals in the world, naturally we see keeping them and their habitat as extremely important.  But we go to bed at night with full bellies and if we dream of Madagascar the chances are our minds don't wander far beyond lemurs with their delightful behavior and cute looks.

But what about the people who live there? They are an amazing mix of settlers from the Malay Archipelago, Africa and India, who began arriving in Madagascar around 200 ce.
Madagascar is home to 20,713,819.0 people, with 69% living in rural Areas (World Bank). 
     4 years ago the current regime came to power and political turmoil ensued. In this period the country has lost much of it's foreign AID as well as commercial investment. Food shortages were already on their way when a new problem arose. Locusts. With up to 1/2 of the island affected by locusts food resources are decreasing and many Madagascans are surviving by exploiting the islands natural resources. 

 This means Lemur Habitat is being lost to illegal logging, both for export and local use. It also means that Lemur is now on the menu.

In these circumstances it will take a great deal of work to safe guard both the people and wildlife of Madagascar.What is needed to create this is political stability and  the reinstatement of government authority throughout the country. The recently announced Presidential Election on the 25th of October gives me hope that we may not be to late to save an amazing island and it's inhabitants.
 

Nightstalk..... 

  This is something I am doing to increase peoples awareness of wildlife, in my case in Canberra. Of course I'm just offering my brains and previous experience, the program itself is run by Perth Zoo. I also realize that they rely on sponsorship from a Mining Company, I still think that the potential benefits may be great though.

For more info and to find out how to organize a Night-stalk to invite me along to go to ......

http://www.perthzoo.wa.gov.au/act/night-stalk/

I think this is a really important opportunity, Let me know if you are interested. (I am not affiliated with this program or institution)