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I got back on
Tuesday from a week in the Kimberley. A fabulous trip and - for once - the
heaven's were smiling on me in my search for all the species I was
after.
Arrived in Broome at midday and headed up the Gibb River Road to
stay at Mt Hart. They'd had Golden Backed Tree Rats here this time last year but
I saw
no mammals at all when I was spotlighting, quite possibly because it
was so cold (5 degrees or so).
Continued on to the Mitchell Plateau the
next day and arrived just before dark. That evening it was again pretty chilly,
though not as cold as Mt Hart. Mammals were fairly thin on the ground during my
3 hours spotlighting
along the track from the campsite to Little Merten's
falls and around that fall's area. But its quality not quantity ... I got
crippling views of a Golden Backed Tree Rat just 400 metres from camp (about
half way between
camp and the first falls). It was feeding in a small tree
just off the trail and obligingly froze in the spotlight for 10 minutes. A
spectacular beast and one, I think, I was pretty lucky to see there. Didn't see
a great
deal else that night other than a Monjon near Merten
Falls.
The next day I did a recce for good Scaly-tail Possum sites and
after advice from Jiri Lochmann decided to focus on the stretch of vine
thicket/rain forest, a little more than half way on the trail to the falls.I
arrived at dusk and walked the few hundred metres of most productive
looking habitat every 45 minutes. On my 5th transect, at 10.30 or so, I saw a
Scaly-tail right in the middle of the rainforest. Brief but excellent views of
it as it shimmied down a tree and wandered off into the rocks.
Jiri suggested
that these possums are pretty secretive and tend not to emerge until well after
dark so this late sighting helps confirm that theory. Tonight was much warmer
and there was a good deal more mammalian
activity. ON the walk in, and
subsequent spotlighting, I saw 6 northern quolls! though some might have been
the same animal, a Kimberley Rock Rat, Black Flying Foxes and what appeared to
be a Rock Ringtail - a brief
glimpse as it was bolting down a tree near
Little Merten's (it could have been another scaly-tail). There was a Monjon at
Little Merten's the next morning.
Stopped in to the Australian Wildlife
Conservancy's fabulous Mornington Station on the way back to Broome for 2
nights. Steve Murphy - one of the
managers - had been good enough to ask me
along to the fauna survey they were running. They caught a decent haul of
mammals: Western Chestnut Mice,
Pale Field Rats, Delicate Mice, Common Rock
Rats and Common Planigales and - on my second morning - the Long-tailed
Planigale I was hoping for. They'd also got a Leggadina Lakedownensis (Tropical
Short-tailed Mouse) - but before I arrived (bugger).
So an awesome
trip with three new mammals for me.
Big thanks to Tony Start and Andrew
Burbidge from CALM for their help with Possums and Tree Rats sites, to Jiri
Lochmann and Steve Murphy.
Jon
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