Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Attack of the Giant Huhu Beetles

We've been out for eight nights trying to catch another bat. So far we've caught four birds and at least FORTY huge huhu beetles. Last night we tried catching in a new place where Kerry had detected over 200 bat passes in 2 hours with her Automatic Bat Monitor (ABM). The bats were definitely there. I even saw one fly within a meter of the mist net and turn right around. One bat flew up and down the road for about a half hour, but never into the net.



We did, however, have incredibly unwelcome success in catching huhu beetles. They are the largest beetle in New Zealand and their giant grubs are a traditional Maori delicacy. These beetles are 50-80% of the size of our bats! Our 9 m x 30 ft mist net was chock full of them. This was a whole lot funnier before we realized we had to remove each and every one of them to put the nets away. They got themselves impossibly tangled in the fine mesh and it looked like some of them had actually chewed through the net. We couldn't just grab and yank them out for two reasons: 1) that would tear holes in the mist net. 2) they have big scary looking mandibles (mouth parts)!

Most of you know I am not easily grossed out by animals. I love all sorts of critters of ill repute. But having to extract these huge beetles from the net by ripping apart their oversized insect bodies while avoiding their mouthparts was just gross. I've always hated the sound of crunching exoskeleton. They even kept wiggling in pieces while the pale insect goo oozed out of their detatched abdomens. The ones we extacted whole were immediately stepped on to prevent them from flying back into the net. It took us an hour to get the net down compared to the 15 minutes it usually takes us.



A squashed one with my finger for scale.

We've ruled out this location for catching bats.

Carrie

P.S. On an unrelated note, it's just us and Kerry again. Kirsten had to unexpectedly leave on Monday because her brother was in an accident at home. She's trying to sort things out in Auckland so she can head back to Austria ASAP to be with her family.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Go Flush Your Toilets

Ok, so I'm sure you've all heard the rumor that draining water (or more specifically toilet water) rotates one way North of the equator and another way South of the equator. I've certainly heard it and people usually quote the "Coriolis Effect" as the driving force behind this difference. The Coriolis Effect is, of course, named after world famous industrialist and "grandfather of the modern potty" Antoine Coriolis whose son Thomas Crapper invented the ballcock (look it up, that's what its called).
I have also heard many people in my more recent years claiming that this is a myth and that water drainage is in no way influenced by Coriolis, Crapper or hemispheres. In preparing to visit New Zealand I was very excited that I would be able to really examine this toilet myth and so as soon as we crossed over the equator on the plane I tried the airplane toilet. Of course that was no use because apparently toilets near the equator make a large sucking noise and squirt blue liquid. As soon as we landed I tried the toilet in the Auckland airport and to my dismay the toilet was of a very different design and it (and also it turns out all New Zealand toilets) did not spin the water at all. They just sort of "swoosh" it (that's an industry term) down.
So here we go, I'm in the Southern and (most of) you are in the Northern hemisphere. Let's put this myth to the test. Tonight I filled the sink with water and Carrie and I carefully watched it drain. The drain in the sink spins the water COUNTERCLOCKWISE (when viewed from above) here. So if you would all take a moment to go flush your toilets (or, if you like, fill your sinks) and watch which way the water is spinning and then return and reply to this message it would be great. Let's settle this once and for all.

Matt

Monday, November 27, 2006

Welcome to our Korean visitor

We would like to welcome our Korean visitor whomever they are. Welcome to our blog and we hope you will return soon!

Sunday, November 26, 2006

The Bat Crew

Last week a new volunteer joined our batty pursuit. Her name is Kirsten and she's from Austria. She works at a national park doing environmental education programs like I did at Blandy.


From left to right: Carrie, Kerry, Kirsten, and Matt. That's the company 'ute' (aka truck) that we use to get around the forest.

We've been out mist netting for five nights now and haven't caught another bat yet. Hopefully soon! Last night I dreamt we recaptured Bernie in a harp trap. We don't really want to catch bernie again. We'd really like to catch a female because they are likely to be roosting with other females instead of alone like Bernie the Bachelor.

We took Friday night off to attend the forest company's Christmas party. It was pretty awesome that we got invited because we're just volunteers. It was at a venue in Rotorua, which is a major tourism town for the North Island because of its thermal pools, geysers, and Maori culture. We took a gondola up a hill overlooking the town of Rotorua and Lake Rotorua. Unfortunately, it was raining so we didn't have a very good view.



Once we got to the top, we had to LUGE halfway back down to the dinner location! This was such a blast. You sit in a little cart and roll down the hill on a paved track. We only had time to do it twice and it was raining both times so we didn't get any pictures of us on the luge :-(

The rest of the Christmas party consisted of dinner, drinks, and dancing. It was awesome to watch all the people out on the dance floor. Actually, it really made me miss Earlham! We only knew about 4 of the 200 people at this place so it wasn't quite the same as a rockin party on College Ave where you know everyone except the first years who just showed up. The uninvited guest at this party was a possum who wandered his way into the food tent around 9:30 when dinner was finished and the dance floor was heating up. We got the impression he'd done this before.



Possums were introduced to New Zealand from Australia and have become a major pest. There are approximately 4 million New Zealanders, 40 million sheep, and 70 million possums. The possums love to eat the native flora and fauna. They are trapped and poisoned, but they persist. I think this might be one of the only places in the world where swerving to HIT a mammal crossing the road is socially acceptable. Remember, their only native land mammals are bats, so all the rabbits, hares, possums, weasels, and deer are introduced (supposedly there are even some moose on the South Island. Imagine that- introducing and losing your MOOSE in the bush). I am amazed at how many possums we see driving along the forestry roads at night. We can hear them, too, while we're sitting around waiting to catch bats. They can make very unsettling sounds when you're sitting alone at night in the bush. I was totally surprised to see 'merino wool and possum fur' products all over the place when we arrived in Christchurch. The possum has beautiful, warm fur that they blend with merino wool to make gloves, socks, sweaters, scarves, and the like. Or they just skin the possums and make fur products like slippers and hats. New Zealanders would really like their 'fur for conservation' to catch on internationally. Ironically, the possum is threatened in its native Australia.

Tonight we'll try again for bats. Cross your fingers!

Carrie

P.S. We're really enjoying seeing where our blog visitors come from. We think we've got most of the locations figured out. Since we put up the little city counter on Friday it looks like there are lots of people from the forestry company (who show up as Auckland), my parents, Sarah K., Megan K.?, Cathi, Coco, Rusty & Wal?, and Adam.

Friday, November 24, 2006

It's Cold In Tokoroa

So, Carrie and I knew that when we left the warm summer of DC in August we were headed to the Southern Hemisphere and therefore we would be entering the end of winter. We prepared ourselves for this fact while at the same time taking comfort in the idea that we would be moving from winter to spring not too long after we arrived. Our first 2 or 3 months moved ahead as we expected. We were cold in Christchurch but there were also very nice days. Then we went further South to Waimate and then on to Dunedin. During this time the temperatures continued to move in the direction of summer and we were happy. After several weeks in Dunedin most days were nice but we still had the occasional cold one here and there. We figured we would fast forward spring by going ahead and getting closer to the equator.

We moved about 1000 kilometers North and we figured we were set. What we didn't know was that Tokoroa is cold. Somehow, despite the additional Northward kilometers we had managed to make the world colder. The best we can tell, the weather in Tokoroa is cold and overcast most days but clears in the evenings so that none of the radiant heat is trapped by the cloud cover. Its cold. We figured this was just a temporary state of affairs but as time has passed we began to assume that it would be like this forever. Perhaps the Coriolis Effect weirds things out in the Southern Hemisphere so that further from the equator means warmer.

We tested this theory last week when we drove a bit further North. Our hypothesis was disproved. Now we have a new hypothesis: Tokoroa is cold.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving!


Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I think that it is nice that a holiday that is pretty unique to The United States (or at least North America) has managed to remain esentially non-comercial. Of course there are cardboard turkeys and decorations that are sold but Thanksgiving, at its heart, is all about reflecting on how lucky we are and what things we have to be thankful for. I think that's lovely. It is too bad that with all of the exportation of Western culture we have not managed to export the one holiday that reflects a nice sentiment.

Anyway, we've tried to have a bit of a Thanksgiving dinner here. Carrie and I both love Cranberry sauce (the jelly kind from the can, not the fancy kind) and pumpkin pie. So we're having cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and guacamole (we like guacamole too). Ok, that's all, I hope you are all having a wonderful Thanksgiving and to our families we miss you and are both thankful to have you!

Matt

Monday, November 20, 2006

Adventures without bats

It's definitely time to post something about our recent adventures since you're probably completely underwhelmed by our recent book reviews. Bernie lost his transmitter last Monday so we got some time off to explore other parts of the North Island.



Kerry's family lives about an hour from Tokoroa and they invited us for dinner on Tuesday. On our way to their house we hiked up to a spectacular waterfall. There was a geocache hidden right under the viewing platform. The hike was awesome, too, but it demonstrated to me that I am very out of shape right now.

Before dinner on Tuesday we went kayaking down the river that runs right along Kerry's family's farm. They have a dairy farm with about 200 cows. Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures of their place so you'll just have to take our word for it. Kerry's brother and sister-in-law also joined us for dinner. We spent Tuesday night at their house.


After we left Kerry's family's house on Wednesday morning, we stopped in nearby Te Aroha to see a hot geyser. This was the first geyser for both of us. This one was interesting, but not very big. I imagine Old Faithful is much more impressive. Nearby was a hot spring where you could pay to go sit in the geothermally heated water. There are commercial hot springs all over this part of the North Island. This particular spring is supposed to have excellent soda water. We tasted it from the public water fountain, but it was kind of gross.



The little town of Paeroa is most famous for the drink Lemon & Paeroa, known just as L & P, because it originated there. It has an excellent slogan: "World Famous in New Zealand." Since every country has to have its share of oversized objects-turned-tourist-attraction, we stopped to pose in front of the enormous bottle of L & P while drinking the real thing.



Next we stopped in the town of Thames to do a little bird watching. Thames is at the southern end of the Coromandel Peninsula. They have a nice bird viewing shelter on a mangrove-covered tidal mud flat.



We continued up the west coast on the Coromandel Peninsula. By Wednesday afternoon it was getting pretty hot, and we had a delightful swim at Waiau Falls. Apparently this is a well-known swimming hole because we definitely were not alone. I had a hard time getting a picture of Matt in the water when he wasn't surrounded by other people!



We stopped at a Department of Conservation (DOC) campground at Waikawau Bay for Wednesday night. We had a great time exploring the rocks and tide pools during low tide. We saw tons of hermit crabs, some sea urchins and star fish. Just like we did on our trip through the South Island, we slept in the back of Lu, our trusty 1984 station wagon.



On Thursday we continued down the east side of the Coromandel. The hike out to Cathedral Cove is extremely popular- for good reason. On the way we saw a beautiful whorl from a tree fern about to unfurl. I thought you should see just how big these things are so I wrapped my hand around it for the picture. New Zealand is full of all kinds of unique vegetation, but I think tree ferns might be my favorite.



This is part of Cathedral Cove. It was just a little too cold to go swimming, but DOC created a snorkeling trail at nearby Gemstone Bay to highlight the marine life. We'll have to go snorkeling sometime since Matt has never been.



At the far end of Cathedral Cove was a beautiful little waterfall that was like a natural shower on the beach. It was amazing! Unfortunately you can't see the falling water very well in the picture.



Next we stopped at Opoutere Beach. It's one of a few breeding sites for New Zealand dotterels. There are only about 1400 of them left. A large portion of the beach is fenced off to protect their nests (which they're currently tending) from foot traffic and dogs. We spotted 3.



We spent Thursday night at a place called Dickey's Flat. On Friday morning we did a few geocaches and went on an awesome hike in the Karangahake Gorge. This area was mined for gold and is still full of abandoned mine tunnels. They incorporated the old tunnels into an awesome trail system. They cut a series of windows into the tunnels going along the edge of a slope to let light in and to create scenic lookouts. At right is a picture of Matt in one of the windows.



This is also in the Karangahake Gorge. Can you see me at the entrance to one of the tunnels?

Friday afternoon was spent geocaching through the small towns along the coast of the Bay of Plenty. We spent the night at McLaren Falls Park where we were swarmed by insects. We invented a makeshift screen system using a sheet to keep the bugs out while having a window open. Definitely a major breakthrough for our car camping experience.



On Saturday morning we woke up and hiked to another scenic waterfall in McLaren Falls Park. This one was about the same size as the one we swam under but the pool below this one wasn't as inviting.



On the way back to the car from the waterfall, Matt spotted some excellent swinging vines. Lookout Tarzan and Jane! It started raining as soon as we got back to the car and didn't really let up for the rest of the day. This eliminated most of our plans for beaches and hikes.



In spite of the rain, we were able to find the ENORMOUS kiwifruit along the highway. Remember, a Kiwi is a person, a kiwi is a bird, and a kiwifruit is what you eat. This is the big icon for the orchard-turned-theme-park that gives tours and sells all sorts of kiwifruit items. The tours were way too expensive, so we just opted to take a picture of the huge fruit in the parking lot in keeping with our attraction to oversized objects as foreign tourists.

We were going to visit some free hot springs near Rotorua on Saturday and Sunday, but the rain really put a damper on those plans, so we drove back to Tokoroa on Saturday evening. Rotorua isn't far so we'll go some other time. Another volunteer, Kirsten from Austria, arrived on Saturday. Tonight we start catching bats again!

Carrie

Sunday, November 19, 2006

A book about bats

Silently By Night: About the little-known but fascinating world of bats
by Russell Peterson



There are only two books about bats at the Tokoroa Library, and this is one of them. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it before, since I have a fairly long list of bat books on my Amazon.com wishlist but this wasn’t on it. This book was published in 1964 and really dates itself with statements that try to explain the distribution of different bat families around the world, “There have been varied hypotheses regarding the representation of species in both the Old and New Worlds, ranging from the wildly improbable to some very sound reasoning. Wegener asserted that there was a splitting of world, one drifting from another. Matthew reasoned that land masses have remained stable except for the flucuations of tide levels and eruptive forces from within the earth.” Boy, was Peterson wrong in his reference to the ‘wildly improbable’ and the ‘very sound reasoning.’ This book made it to print just a year before continental drift was accepted, and Peterson’s statements made in pre-drift ignorance have demonstrated to me how profoundly plate tectonics enhanced our understanding of biology. For example, now that we know when Pangea split up to form Laurasia and Gondwanaland, we are better able to understand why Australia and South America have marsupial mammals and the rest of the world doesn’t (with the exception of the Virginia opossum in North America). This site has a good explanation if you’re interested:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio303/contdrift.htm

The second obvious way in which this book dates itself is Peterson’s zeal for collecting bat specimens. He wrote, “… for what naturalist will not glory in a fresh specimen of an exceptionally rare species of animal?” While we can still learn much from the zealous collecting of earlier generations of scientists, we mostly opt for methods of study that don’t destroy the subject.

Like Krakatoa, the writing style was pretty old fashioned (unlike Krakatoa, this one really was 40 years old!). I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone unless they were already really interested in bats, since now there are much better books out there to introduce people to this unique critters. My favorite aspect of the book were the little illustrations of bats in the page margins.



He didn’t have a drawing of the long-tailed bat, so I was inspired to do a drawing of my own.



This is drawn from a photo Kerry took of Alfred (an injured bat who was brought to her before we arrived). Alfred, Bernie… we’re going in alphabetical order so the next bat we catch will start with C.

Carrie

P.S. Our next post will be about what we've been up to instead of just what we've been reading. We just got back from 4 days along the nice, warm coast.

Nothing to do with New Zealand: a more interesting book review

Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa’s Notorious Man-Eaters by Bruce Patterson


This is a very long post that has nothing to do with New Zealand, but it does have a lot to do with my time in Kenya. This book has intersected remarkably with my own life in many unanticipated ways. I’ll explain that later, though.

Bruce Patterson is a mammologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. This book covers a range of interesting physiological and ecological questions brought up by two famous lions killed in 1898. During the construction of the Kenyan railroad from the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria, about 135 workers were killed by two male lions before they were shot. Their skins are now on display at the Field Museum. The movie Ghost in the Darkness is based on this story (I haven’t seen the movie so I can’t say how closely).

The first part of the book examines the story of the Tsavo man-eaters as well as other man-eating lions to identify potential causes of human hunting. It seems to be a combination of factors, including reduced availability of normal prey items, scavenging human bodies after epidemics, and injury to lions that prevent them from hunting the harder-to-kill prey (humans are quite easy). These chapters are incredibly gripping (and often gruesome).

Besides eating people, the Lions of Tsavo are remarkable because they are nearly maneless even though they are adult males. Maneless lions are still found in the Tsavo region (and elsewhere) today. The second part of the book examines potential explanations for the causes of manelessness in lions. In 2002, Patterson started studying lions in the Tsavo area by radio collaring a male, ‘Romeo,’ and following the behavior of prides and individuals. In short, it seems that Tsavo is so hot and dry that the physiological disadvantage of having a mane is greater than the sexual advantage of having one.

Patterson also addresses the complex relationships between humans and lions. We kill them to prevent them from killing us, sometimes we let people pay a lot of money to kill them, and we’re still trying to protect them without compromising the safety of people that have live with them. I find these kinds of dilemmas fascinating and resolving them is incredibly important for conservation all over the world.

Overall this book is captivating and easy to read. I especially like the way Patterson presents the testing of various hypotheses about lion ecology. The book seems to be well-edited, although I did find two footnote errors (one was on the wrong page and one was duplicated). Much of the research Patterson describes was still in progress when the book was published, so I am left wanting more. I wish he had waited a few more years to write the book. Perhaps there will be a sequel.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in big cats and especially lions. I also recommend it as post-safari reading if you’re going to Africa. Since about one-third of the book is story after story of man-eating lions, I think it is best read in the comfort and safety of a building on a different continent (like New Zealand) instead of in a tent in African bush.

How this book has crossed my path numerous times:
First of all, in the summer of 2002 I worked at the Field Museum sorting tiny shells from microscopic ocean bottom sediment. The Man-Eaters of Tsavo have a prominent display on the main floor of the museum and I walked past them frequently. Shortly after ending my internship at the Field, I flew to Kenya to begin my semester-long program there with Earlham. Our group of 17 Earlhamites met at the Amsterdam airport and flew to Nairobi together. While I was in the Amsterdam airport, Bruce Patterson (the author) struck up conversation with me because we had been on the same flight from Chicago to Amsterdam and were continuing on the same flight to Nairobi. He was going to Kenya to lead a Field Museum expedition. We had a brief conversation about the Field Museum and such since I’d just worked there (though our paths never crossed in the Museum as far as I’m aware).

The Kenya program traveled to many places around the country, including the Taita Discovery Center located on the Taita-Rukinga Ranch situated between Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks. Taita Ranch was the location of Patterson’s lion radio collaring work to study the maneless lions of Tsavo. Teams of Earthwatch (www.earthwatch.org) volunteers had been out earlier in 2002 collecting data on ‘Romeo,’ the radio collared male. Well, one night while our group was at the Taita Discovery Center, we had the opportunity to go out in search of Romeo. They said there was no guarantee we’d find him- we might just drive around in the dark for hours with no lion sightings. About half of our group (regrettably including me) decided to stay at camp while the other half of the group quickly found Romeo and got to watch him mating with lionesses. The group who went came back around midnight positively wired with excitement. I decided to go to bed early and thus missed my chance to see the Romeo featured in Patterson’s book.

While I was in Kenya, I knew about the man-eaters of Tsavo. I knew that sometimes people were killed by wildlife (although elephants, hippos, and buffalo are the most dangerous). But I didn’t know that man-eating lions actually make a habit of it. I didn’t know that lions in search of the sweet taste of human flesh have gone into houses and tents and chosen one unlucky person from the lot to eat. Ignorance is bliss, and I was thankfully blissfully ignorant of these facts because I had an experience that was absolutely terrifying without this additional knowledge. A few of you have heard this story, but I think most of you haven’t and I think it is worth repeating because it is one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.

In the middle of the Kenya program, we spent three weeks at a field station at Lake Naivasha, Kenya. During this time, we were doing small group projects for our ecology class. Many of us chose to work in the nearby Hell’s Gate National Park (I spent 30 hours observing zebras- you really can tell them apart by their stripes). Hell’s Gate is to small to support many carnivores or large herbivores such as elephants and rhinos, so it is one of the only game parks in Africa where you can walk around on foot. Shortly before our group arrived, a pride of lions was seen in the park, which was quite unusual. We saw a few lion tracks, but no lions. In Hell’s Gate they told us you just need to be sure if you’re walking through scrub with low visibility that you make lots of noise so you don’t startle any cape buffalo. Cape buffalo are vicious when startled and can maul a lion to death. If they know you’re coming, you’re ok, but for heaven’s sake don’t sneak up on them.

Near the end of our 3 weeks at Lake Naivasha/Hell’s Gate, I decided to go camping in the park with a few other students. One attempted camping trip in this park (by my friends Cody and Megan) was cut short when they were attacked by a menacing troop of baboons who broke into their cooler and ate all their food even before they’d set up camp. Still, I wanted to spend a night in the bush. My camping buddies were Alison, Teresa, and Justin. Our program leaders dropped us off at the campsite up on a hill about 3 km from the park gate overlooking the Hell’s Gate gorge. It was a beautiful place. We made a fire, cooked dinner, and stayed up until about midnight talking in the tent before we fell asleep. Our leaders would be back to pick us up at noon the next day.

I have no idea how long I was asleep before I awoke to the sound of something very large moving around outside our tent. Alison and Teresa were already awake. They shushed me when I tried to ask them what was going on outside. We lay there, hardly breathing, listening to the animals outside the tent. I couldn’t tell what the animals were, but I tell they were big. These weren’t baboons. It sounded like they were over at our firepit where we left a chicken carcass from dinner. Hyenas, I thought, they would eat the chicken bones. Then they would sniff their way to the rest of the food in the cooler, knock it over, and eat everything else. I waited for the sound of the cooler crashing, but it never came. I was too terrified to move. I was afraid that the sound of extracting my arm from my sleeping bag to check the time on my watch would attract them to my presence. Lions, I thought, Oh God that pride of lions is here. They’re going to sniff around the tent, smell our tracks going in and out, then rip through and eat me first because I’m lying next to the door. Hyenas might do that too. Or a leopard. I was petrified. Even if any of us lived through an attack, no one would be back to check on us until noon, and we’d sure die of blood loss before then. Opening a window flap to peek at our unwelcome visitors would have created far too much noise and possibly confirmed our presence inside the flimsy nylon shelter to suspicious predators. It was completely out of the question. I could see the headlines already: U.S. students killed in Kenyan game park and Earlham mourns the loss of four students. I have never in my entire life been so sure of the end. I really, truly, thought I was going to die.

This may seem overdramatic to you, but imagine for a moment how you might react if you were sleeping in a tent in Kenya far from safety and the only thing you knew about the animals outside was that they were big.

We heard the animals run past the tent. Then, about a meter from my feet, I heard riiiiiip munch munch munch. Riiiiiiiiip munch munch munch munch. That was the sound of an animal eating grass. Whew. It was an herbivore. At least it didn’t want to eat us. Alison, Teresa and I quietly came to consensus on the animals’ identity in the hushest of whispers: Cape buffalo, easily one of Africa’s most dangerous animals. If we startled them with a sudden noise, they could charge the tent and maul us to death in short order. An Earlham professor miraculously averted death in a buffalo attack years before in this same park. Justin was blissfully asleep for the whole affair, until Teresa woke him up for making too much noise moving in his sleep. I never looked at my watch, so I have no idea how long the ordeal lasted. Long after the last animal noise was heard, we went back to sleep. The next morning we saw the cape buffalo tracks all over our campsite.

As long as we were quiet and still, we had little to worry about with the buffalo. Apparently the campsite offers excellent midnight grazing. In retrospect, I'm able to laugh about the experience and the craziness of it, but nonetheless it was a reminder of my mortality. Our fear of being eaten by carnivores was probably exaggerated. Still, before we knew they were buffalo, I think I would have been even more convinced of my death (if that’s possible) had I read The Lions of Tsavo. If the pride of lions in Hell’s Gate were out to eat us, we wouldn’t have heard them coming since cats are expert stalkers. And I still think they probably would’ve eaten me since I was closest to the door.

After the program ended, I stayed in Kenya for a few extra days with Megan, Cody, and Alison. We all took the overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa. It was during the construction of that rail line that tens of people were killed by the man-eating lions of Tsavo that are now stuffed for display at the Field Museum.

Now, four years (almost exactly) after my imagined death by lion, I came across this book at the Tokoroa Library. Just before I checked out this book, I decided to email Bruce Patterson. In addition to lions, he has done some work with bats. There are very few people working with bats in Africa, so I decided to email him about the possibility of working with him in grad school. I received a very positive response, so I might be applying to University of Illinois Chicago where he has a faculty appointment. Maybe I’ll get to see Romeo after all.

Carrie

Monday, November 13, 2006

The Bernie Update

We successfully radio tracked Bernie for nearly two weeks. Last night the weather was cold, wet, and windy, so Matt and I just sat in the car by Bernie's day roost the whole time because he didn't leave. The tiny radio transmitter batteries die after about two weeks, so we knew we wouldn't be able to track him much longer.

From what we've seen, Bernie has a pretty regular foraging routine. The picture of the map below shows a typical Bernie night. His day roost is marked with an X along with other night roosts. The pen lines in between are approximately the paths he's flying.



We start each night with one car waiting near his day roost and one car waiting up the road. When the person at his night roost hears him moving, they radio the other car to tell them he's on his way. Then he usually flies back and forth along the road for most of the night with some breaks and side trips.

This afternoon when Kerry went to check on Bernie at his day roost, she made an exciting find- Bernie's transmitter! He must have lost it late last night after we stopped tracking him. The battery was still working so Kerry was able to find it. It's quite a big deal to recover one of these because they cost at least $200 each. It will need a new battery, but it's still perfectly useable!


Imagine trying to find this on the forest floor. You can kind of see where some of Bernie's hair is still stuck to it.

Now that we're finished tracking Bernie, Matt and I get some time off until November 20 because Kerry won't need our help until we start trying to catch bats again. Tomorrow we're going to visit Kerry's family on their dairy farm, and then we're going to spend some time on the coast. Hopefully, it will be sunnier, warmer and drier than here!

Carrie

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded 27th August 1883 by Simon Winchester



This book caught my eye at the Tokoroa Public Library. I’d heard of Krakatoa, but didn’t really know anything about it. I quickly learned that Krakatoa is considered the 5th largest volcanic eruption in recent geologic history. In decreasing order of size, the eruptions were:

1. Mt. Toba (Indonesia), 74,000 years ago (I’m not sure I consider this one recent compared to the other four).
2. Tambora (Indonesia), 1815.
3. Taupo (New Zealand), AD 180 (we are only 60 km from Taupo, but it is thankfully considered dormant)
4. Katmai (Alaska), 1912.
5. Krakatoa (Indonesia), 1883.

This book certainly did impress upon me the enormity of Krakatoa’s 1883 eruption. The island basically blew itself into oblivion, leaving just one peak behind. Airwaves reverberated around the earth 7 times and were detected in Europe and North America. The sea was filled with floating pumice, making it difficult for boats to navigate the waters. 36,000 people died, mostly from the tsunamis created by the eruption. This is the kind of stuff I was interested in. Winchester did a good job of including eyewitness testimony of the events. The unfathomable things that were witnessed continue to remind me that truth is often stranger than fiction (hence my fascination with non-fiction).

But with 391 pages of text (excluding references and index), Winchester doesn’t just talk about the facts of the eruption. He links Krakatoa to numerous social trends and technological advances. For example, he talks at length about the telegraph lines that allowed news of the explosion to be communicated around the world faster than was ever possible before. Towards the end, he also links Krakatoa’s devastation of Sumatra to the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia.

Although interesting, this book was incredibly long-winded. Winchester abuses the footnote, often writing whole paragraphs. I didn’t count, but I think he averages a footnote for every other page. As if the footnotes weren’t enough, he frequently goes off on tangents (sometimes interesting ones). For example, 200 pages into the book, right when he’s getting to the big eruption, he goes off a tangent about a circus that happened to be performing in a nearby city prior to the eruption.

The author almost lost me in the first two chapters of the book. He went on and on about Dutch colonial history in Indonesia. I actually skipped ahead to chapter 3, which is something I never do in books. Luckily, chapter 3, Close Encounters on the Wallace Line, was my personal favorite. Here he explained why Krakatoa is where it is. The subduction of the Australian Oceanic Plate under the Asian Plate has created numerous volcanoes, forming many of the Indonesian islands. Central to this explanation is the theory of plate tectonics. Chapter 3 is a short history of the development of this theory. Alfred Russell Wallace (of Wallace’s Line) has been largely forgotten in the history of the development of the theory of natural selection, but his writings had a significant influence on Darwin’s writing (from what I’ve read of each of them, Wallace was much easier to understand). Wallace spent years in southeast Asia studying the flora and fauna, and he noticed a division (the Wallace Line) between the plants and animals of Australian origin and Eurasian origin among closely spaced islands. Today, we know that this is a result of the meeting of the Australian Plate and the Asian Plate- just like Krakatoa. Another major character in chapter 3 is Alfred Wegener, advocate of continental drift. Although Wegener had fossil evidence that the continents were once joined, he couldn’t explain the mechanism by which they moved and was widely ridiculed. It wasn’t until 35 years after his death, in 1965, that plate tectonics was widely accepted. I am absolutely amazed that this earth-shaping mechanism has only been understood for the past 40 years. That’s well within the lifetime of many of you reading this now! Incredible.

I highly recommend chapter 3, but other than that I found the book to be lengthy, sometimes repetitive, and written in a tone that makes it seem much older than its publication of 2003. Winston talks about people in a somewhat non-PC way, which also makes this books sound like it was written shortly after the acceptance of plate tectonics. Right at the end, he really annoyed me while talking about the colonization (by plants and animals, not people) of the newly formed Anak Krakatoa. He wrote, “…And as the forests thickened, some amphibians that had somehow found their way across the sea began to slink in and make their nests- monitor lizards, paradise tree snakes….” Snakes and lizards ARE NOT amphibians; they are reptiles. This kind of mistake is just careless. The only possible excuse would be if this book were written 100 years ago when amphibian (both life in Greek), not just amphibious, could refer to animals (including mammals) that spent part of their lives on land and part in water. I think the book could have been much better (and shorter) with aggressive editing.

If you’re interested in reading more about Krakatoa, I recommend the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa

Carrie

P.S. If you're interested in reading more about Alfred Russell Wallace or Alfred Wegener, check out their wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russell_Wallace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Three Books, Four Days


Well, we've been chasing this bat around all night and sleeping all day but the rest of the time (and actually a lot of the time we've been chasing as well) I've been reading. I've read three John Grisham books this week. The first one (The Partner) was VERY good. The second one (The Last Juror) was not quite as good and the third (The Broker) basically sucked.
I have always lumped John Grisham into the same group with Michael Chrichton and Stephen King. They are writers who write lots of books and are wildly popular but get a snort if you say you like them in public. They are the Vanilla Ice of literature. Everyone does a bit a dancing when they are alone but you don't go out and tell your friends about it. I figured that Grisham wrote one kind of book and that he just basically changed the names of the main characters.
I expected that all of his books would be something like this:
John is brought in for murder. John didn't do it. All the evidence is against John. Only one lawyer is willing to take up the case. Eventually they prove that John didn't do it. They catch the person who did. The End.
It turns out that none of the Grisham books I have read have even come close to that. It is true that his focus is on law (except for in The Broker but, like I said, that one sucked). However, law can be approached from many, many different angles.
Anyway, those of you who know me best know that I HATE it when people tell me anything about the plot of a movie or book. I don't even read the back of books I buy until I'm finished reading them. In that light I am not going to tell you anything about the plots of these books. I'm just going to say that for those of you who, like me, had dismissed John Grisham as not worth your time he is worth picking up for a plane ride. The Partner was VERY good, The Last Juror was quite good, and The Broker was terrible.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

NSF GRF: My self-imposed homework

For the past four days I’ve done little more than sleep, eat, and do homework. Yep, self-imposed homework. I’ve spent hours in front of the computer reading pdfs about fruit bats, figs, sampling techniques, germination trials, community structure, seed dispersal, statistical analyses, and African forest dynamics. I’ve labored over words to describe my motivation for pursuing graduate study and incredibly short page limits for describing my plan of research. I haven’t even been out tracking Bernie since Friday night. I passed up sparkler bombs and other flammable festivities on Guy Fawkes Day (remember remember the 5th of November). All that missed fun because I decided to apply for a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). These NSF fellowships are extremely competitive. They award about 1000 fellowships (across all scientific disciplines) annually to graduate students beginning their study. The fellowship provides a stipend of $30,000 for three years plus a $1000 travel award to be used for international research. This is a big deal for a graduate student because it means that you have more flexibility to pursue your own research.

I suppose at this point I should mention (in case I haven’t already) that I’m planning to begin graduate school in August 2007 for a Ph.D. in ecology. Don’t ask me where yet; I’m still applying.

A few weeks ago I realized that the NSF fellowship, financially at least, is an even bigger deal than the Watson Fellowship. Still, I’m not nearly as emotionally invested in this as I was in the Watson. I spent months developing my Watson proposal and I only had one shot. The advantage of this is that I can apply again next year. So if nothing else, this application process has been a valuable learning experience and I’ll be better prepared for next year’s application.

Many thanks to my mom, Matt, and Nicki for your diligent editing and helpful suggestions. Thank you also to Sarah, Coco, and Seth for emailing me pdfs of the articles I needed! And, if you’re reading the blog, thank you in advance to T’ai, Bill, and Cameron for writing my letters of recommendation.

So, now that that’s off my plate I can be fully stressed out about the election results…

Carrie

Thursday, November 02, 2006

We Read A Lot

Carrie and I have had lots of time to read while we've been here. It's been really nice. So we decided, last night, that it would be fun to write book reviews when we finish books. I'm not sure that they are going to be very in depth or detailed but at least they will say what we thought of the books and maybe you'll decide to read them (or not read them) based on our recommendations. I have read several books since we've been here but I'm going to start with the one that I finished last night.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
I had heard of this book for several years now and I always thought that it seemed interesting but I never really knew what it was about until about six months ago when Carrie read it. While she was reading it she kept telling me about these neat anecdotes that are in the book and my interest was piqued. Unfortunately Carrie got the book from the library so I couldn't read it right after she did and then I just never got around to it. Now that we have time here in NZ I've been keeping an eye out for it. Kerry, who we are living with, (yes its very confusing to have two of them) has a copy of Guns, Germs, and Steel so I started reading it.
Basically the book is a 400 page summary of the last 13,000 years of human history with the goal of explaining how it is that Eurasian cultures have managed to become so dominant. In other words, why was it that the Spanish sailed across the Atlantic and were able to colonize Central and South America instead of the Incas sailing across the Atlantic and colonizing Europe? This book is a search for the ultimate factors that led to that outcome. It has been the racist argument of many that this happened because of a biological superiority of the Eurasian people but Diamond's book goes much deeper to demonstrate that factors of geography and flora/fauna led to this dominance, not any innate difference between peoples.
Anyway, this was a fascinating book that I'm sure many of you have already read but if you have not read it I recommend getting it from a friend or your local library and diving into a book that is much easier to read then it looks. You won't regret it.

In hot pursuit of Bernie

Wednesday night was quite a night. Kerry did some amazing radiotracking on Wednesday afternoon and found the area where Bernie was roosting. It was in a stand of eucalyptus trees. Eucalyptus was introduced from Australia and is grown in this forest in addition to lots of pine. Kerry was able to narrow it down to a couple of trees, but couldn't figure out exactly which one.


This is a picture looking up at the Eucalyptus trees where we suspect Bernie is roosting.

Kerry and I went out to the roost site before sunset with our radio telemetry, bat detector, and night vision in the hope that we could watch Bernie (and other bats) emerge. Matt was stationed on a nearby road in position to follow him when he took off. Well, he took off with little warning and only one call before he disappeared completely from our telemetry at 8:33 pm. Kerry and I had to tear down the hill back to the car through heaps of blackberry brambles. Meanwhile, Matt followed Bernie up the road towards where we first caught him. It turns out he has a relatively repetitive foraging route, so we spent a long time driving up and down the same roads. He even forages within telemetry range of our house! He stopped at two different night roosts in some pine trees for a while. Bats often take breaks during the night while they're out foraging. Amazingly, we were able to track him pretty much continuously from when he left the roost until he returned to it shortly after 1 am. Then we sat and waited for four more hours, until 5:30 am, to see if he'd leave to forage again. We weren't expecting him to return to the roost so early. We'll see if this trend continues.

Last night was definitely our latest bat night so far. But what an accomplishment! We tracked him for 9 hours

Carrie

P.S. Marie Adele- bats are not slimy. In fact, they are actually quite warm and fuzzy. Snakes aren't slimy eiither, by the way, so don't listen if anyone tries to tell you otherwise.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Bernie the Bat

We’ve been in Tokoroa for two weeks now. I really should’ve explained what we’re doing here a while ago, but I was trying to wait until we actually caught a bat. By Monday night I’d resigned myself to posting to the blog even though we hadn’t caught a bat yet when WHAM-- we got one. Ever since then, we’ve been quite busy trying to keep up with it (I’ll explain later).

So what exactly are we doing here? I am planning to begin graduate school in August 2007 for a Ph.D. in ecology. I’m especially interested in bat ecology, so when Matt and I decided we were coming to New Zealand, I contacted some bat researchers here. They put me in touch with Kerry Borkin, a grad student beginning her Ph.D. research who was looking for volunteers. I got in touch with her back in May and arranged for us to work with her for a few months. So now we’re in Tokoroa living in a house with Kerry and assisting with her research.

New Zealand has two species of bat: the long-tailed bat and the short-tailed bat. These are New Zealand’s only NATIVE land mammals. In spite of what their common names would lead you to believe, the long and short-tailed bats are not closely related at all. The short-tailed bat, with few native predators, is actually quite quadrapedal and forages on the ground in addition to flying. Kerry is studying how the long-tailed bats use the huge exotic pine plantation surrounding Tokoroa. This involves identifying where they are roosting and foraging within the forest.

For the past few months, Kerry has been using Automatic Bat Monitoring units (ABMs) to record bat activity in different parts of the forest. The ABMs record the bats’ echolocation calls that are made audible to us by a bat detector. You can also just use a bat detector (separate from an ABM) to listen for bats. Last Wednesday, Kerry’s advisor from the University of Auckland came down to train the three of us how to catch bats. Kerry is just beginning her research so she was learning with us. On Wednesday and Thursday nights we set up mist nets near a pond where an ABM had recorded a lot of bat activity. We listened for them with bat detectors and used night vision goggles to watch for them, but it was much more fun to use them to look at the stars. The bats seem to be active in those areas until about midnight, so we closed up the nets and headed home around then. No bats in the net on Wednesday.

This picture is pretty blurry because it was taken by holding the camera up to the night vision eyepiece, but I think you get the idea.

On Thursday night, Kerry invited a man who works for the forest company to come look for bats with us using his thermal vision camera. That’s right, we’re talking night vision and thermal vision like right out of the first person shooter video games. When you focus the camera on something, it will tell you the temperature of the object. This camera is INCREDIBLY cool. So incredibly cool that it made night vision seem quite boring.

This is a picture of me in thermal vision. Again, it’s blurry because we just held the camera up to the eyepiece. The camera operator might send us some of the better images he captured, in which case we’ll try to post them. You can see from the scale on the right that my nose is the coldest part of my face.

These cameras cost over $100,000, but the forest company uses it at their paper mill to detect leaks and equipment that isn’t running properly. Apparently it saves them a pretty penny to be able to pinpoint problems precisely with this precious piece of picture producing paraphernalia. We could see the bats swooping down to the water with our thermovision. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch any in our nets.

On Friday night we put up the mist nets just down the road from our house. Only one bat was detected with the bat detector and it didn’t visit our mist net. Around this time, we learned that someone else did her Masters thesis on bats in this forest and never caught a single bat. Yikes. That would be a real bummer. Saturday night we tried catching down the road again and didn’t even hear a single bat on the detector. Sunday night was crappy weather so we had the night off.

Monday night we set up on the road again. We put up a 9 m high mist net (I like to call it the Big Rig) across the road and a smaller mist net nearby across a trail. The three of us were taking turns watching the two nets and waiting in the car when it happened- a bat flew into the mist net! We untangled the bat, bagged it, took down our nets, and brought everything back to the house. When you catch a bat the night is just beginning. We took measurements, collected hair and poop, and named him Bernie. Most importantly, we glued a wee radio transmitter onto its back. This allows us to track it, and makes sure that none of the cool bats will play with it at recess.



Not a bad shot of him, but unfortunately you can’t see his little eyes. I promise he has some.


Tiny little thing, isn’t he?

At this point, things get complicated. We had two vehicles and two radio antennae. All kinds of things can go wrong at this point. Once you release the bat, the radio transmitter could fall off and that’s the end of tracking that bat. Or the bat could fly a completely different way than you expect it to and you could lose the signal in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, we got lucky. Matt drove and radiotracked in one car while Kerry drove and I radiotracked in another car. We were able to track the bat for an hour! Not bat at all for our first bat tracking.

There are two things to be determined from radio tracking. The first is a bat’s foraging path. More importantly, it can be used to find roosts. So on Tuesday (in daylight), we drove around the forest trying to pick up a signal to no avail. No leads yet on where this bat is roosting. Theoretically, we have about 2 weeks to find it before the battery on the transmitter dies.

Carrie

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