Happy Thanksgiving

Everything is great - I will posts pics asap - just wanted to let you know I'm having a great time and have been very busy! I attended a conference and had to give a talk, but that is over now and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I didn't miss the gluttony, but I did miss family and friends and college football! Cheers all. I'm thankful for my wonderful life and the chance to go on this life-changing trip. Love to everyone.

On the road again

I'm taking a little road trip with Pat and Len in their hippie-esque conversion van known as Hurvey - so, no posts for a week but then there should be some really good pictures! We are headed to the Pinnacles, Kalbari National Park, and then Greenhead to do a little field work with Joe. Check back at the end of next week!

Cheers!

A dingo ate my baby

Okay, so it's not a dingo. But you knew that was coming eventually, right?

It's a southern brown bandicoot, also known as a quenda. Pretty cute. I almost stepped on one today. They are friendly little creatures, and they are all over campus. It let me get close enough to touch it, but I didn't.



Photo by Tony Brown

Jarrah woodland

The Jarrah woodland is characterized by sandy soils with impressive granite outcroppings inserted in the woodland. There are grass trees and species of Banksia (the tree with funny looking flowers), and some beautiful wildflowers, including orchids.

When it rains, water collects in depressions found on the outcropping, which creates conditions suitable for unique ecosystems on a smaller scale. I think these were called "namas" (spelling?) by the Aborigines, and were used as sources of fresh water. They are characterized by lichens, mosses, and other specialized plants. Pretty cool, eh?

So far...

This place is great! The weather has been beautiful, the city is beautiful (especially Fremantle – a suburb of Perth on the Indian Ocean), and the people are wonderful. On Saturday, I ran along the coastal path that goes from Mosman Park (the suburb where I currently reside) to Cottelsloe. The beaches are stunning here, and there seem to be beautiful, international people everywhere you go. Pat took me along to a faculty dinner and I tried kangaroo – it was delicious! It is a dark red, lean meat. It tasted to me like an excellent steak. Yesterday Pat, her husband Len, and Joe, a colleague from Oregon State University who just relocated to Perth for a post-doc position, were nice enough to take me out birding in Jarrah woodland south of the city. It is an ecosystem endemic to Western Australia, and is filled with plants (and birds!) from whole families and even orders I’ve never seen. Being in the most isolated city in the world, it doesn’t take long to get out of Perth and into some nice, continuous tracts of native habitat. The birding was fantastic. The flies were not so fantastic. We stopped for a quick break in a cute little town called Jarrahland, and then headed back to the coast and stopped at Woodsmen Point to look for shorebirds. For the birders who are reading this, here is my species list so far:

Little pied cormorant

Pied cormorant

Australian pelican

Straw-necked ibis

Sacred ibis

Wood (maned) duck

Pacific black duck

Brown goshawk

Ruddy duck

Nankeen kestrel

Eurasian coot

Black-bellied plover

Greater sand plover

Red-capped plover (Dotterel)

Red-necked stint

Great knot

Ruddy turnstone

Pied oystercatcher

Silver gull

Fairy tern

Laughing dove

Galah

Rainbow lorikeet

Laughing kookaburra

Welcome swallow

Richard’s pipit

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

White-winged triller

White-breasted Robin

Grey Shrike-thrush

Willy Wagtail

Splendid Fairy-wren (Wow!)

White-browed Scrubwren

Red Wattlebird

New Holland Honeyeater

White-cheeked Honeyeater

Western Spinebill

Striated Pardalote

House Sparrow

Magpie Lark

Woodswallow sp.

Australian Magpie

Australian Raven

Pictures to come soon. Love to all!

I'm in Perth!

Okay, I made it after 30 hours of traveling. I wasn't looking my best when Pat picked me up at the airport, but all in all it was pretty smooth traveling. I did have a hiccup at customs, because they saw my hiking boots in the X-ray machine and wanted to inspect them, so I had to pull ALL contents out of my backpack so the customs agent could literally dig through my hiking boots with a q-tip to make sure I wasn't bringing any nasty propagules into the country with me.

I'm staying with a lovely Portuguese lady named Cris, who generously offered to let me stay in her spare bedroom for a few days while I get myself organized. She is a plant ecologist who is working on her PhD at Murdoch University in Perth. The apartment is very nice and only about a block from the ocean.

So far, the place is great. The weather is unseasonably cool today, but it should warm up quickly. And, although I read all the converter/adapter instructions, double-checked all settings, and took all precautionary measures, I fried my hair iron when I plugged it in this morning anyway. I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I didn't need any coffee after that happened.