Sunday, January 08, 2006
Wild About Emus
7:43AM. Training starts at 10. Then I will finally learn more about the volunteering that I have signed myself up for. I have yet to see a turtle, though I did see some tracks in the sand yesterday. But I'm sure that will come soon.
Meanwhile, there is wildlife enough to be seen just around town here. You see, there is a small posse of wild emus who seem to have chosen the streets of Exmouth as their home. You see them sitting in the shade of trees, loping down the streets (on which there are only occasional cars), and wandering around the courtyard in the hostel. My first day here, I saw what I assumed was a mother and her three young all wandering around together. But yesterday I learned how wrong that assumption was. Apparently female emus are smarter than that - they let the males take care of their young from the point the eggs are laid onwards. And furthermore, males seem to see having a large number of chicks as some sort of status symbol, so they will even steal or adopt chicks from other males. One of my fellow turtle volunteers says she saw a male herding around 13 young here last year!
In other wildlife news, when I went down to the town beach recently, the first thing I saw as I went wading into the shallows was a little mini shark (about 50cm long)! A little further along, I spotted a smallish manta ray and then another shark (this one about 40cm long). Oh yes, and back on dry land there are a lot of lizards that run around on their hind legs (basilisks, I think?). Usually after a run, they will stop and rhythmically lift one or the other of their front legs, slowly patting the ground or waving. I'm not sure why they do it.
Well, perhaps I will go see if any of my dormmates and fellow turtle volunteers have risen yet (I think everyone is taking advantage of this opportunity to sleep past 5am which is around the time we will be getting up the rest of the week for turtle monitoring). I am in a room with 9 other volunteers, 8 of whom, like me, just arrived yesterday. Last night there was a social event for all of the volunteers - a pool competition at one of the local pubs. I was paired up with Craig and we lost the first game quite miserably. But then I took on some foosball challengers and fared much better.
A bientot!
Kat
Meanwhile, there is wildlife enough to be seen just around town here. You see, there is a small posse of wild emus who seem to have chosen the streets of Exmouth as their home. You see them sitting in the shade of trees, loping down the streets (on which there are only occasional cars), and wandering around the courtyard in the hostel. My first day here, I saw what I assumed was a mother and her three young all wandering around together. But yesterday I learned how wrong that assumption was. Apparently female emus are smarter than that - they let the males take care of their young from the point the eggs are laid onwards. And furthermore, males seem to see having a large number of chicks as some sort of status symbol, so they will even steal or adopt chicks from other males. One of my fellow turtle volunteers says she saw a male herding around 13 young here last year!
In other wildlife news, when I went down to the town beach recently, the first thing I saw as I went wading into the shallows was a little mini shark (about 50cm long)! A little further along, I spotted a smallish manta ray and then another shark (this one about 40cm long). Oh yes, and back on dry land there are a lot of lizards that run around on their hind legs (basilisks, I think?). Usually after a run, they will stop and rhythmically lift one or the other of their front legs, slowly patting the ground or waving. I'm not sure why they do it.
Well, perhaps I will go see if any of my dormmates and fellow turtle volunteers have risen yet (I think everyone is taking advantage of this opportunity to sleep past 5am which is around the time we will be getting up the rest of the week for turtle monitoring). I am in a room with 9 other volunteers, 8 of whom, like me, just arrived yesterday. Last night there was a social event for all of the volunteers - a pool competition at one of the local pubs. I was paired up with Craig and we lost the first game quite miserably. But then I took on some foosball challengers and fared much better.
A bientot!
Kat
Comments:
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emus!
i love emus!
did you pet any? can you eat emu down there?
i hope to see some turtle pictures!
i love emus!
did you pet any? can you eat emu down there?
i hope to see some turtle pictures!
# posted by 
: 1:08 pm
: 1:08 pm
I haven't petted the emus.. and doing so with these wild ones could result in a nasty kick, so I'm told! Yes, you can eat emu. And kangaroo. Australia seems to pride itself on being one of the few countries that eats the animals depcited on its coat of arms. Pictures of turtles and everything else will eventually appear in my gallery, I but I make no promises that this will happen before my return to Canada. We can hope, however :)
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