{"id":175,"date":"2012-10-15T11:48:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T01:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/?p=175"},"modified":"2012-12-24T11:51:45","modified_gmt":"2012-12-24T01:51:45","slug":"olong-night-at-bribie-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/olong-night-at-bribie-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Olong night at Bribie Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok, the night wasn\u2019t much longer than others I\u2019ve been out frogging on, but hopefully you\u2019ll appreciate the play on words \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

I was looking forward to the 15th October. Not only because it was my birthday, but also because I\u2019d been invited by Harry Hines from the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP) to join him-self, Ed Meyer, Jesse, Adam, Michelle and Matt to assist with monitoring of Litoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrogs) in Bribie Island National Park. I\u2019ve previously been with these guys back in February this year so was looking forward to joining them again. Once we all met up at 6pm, on went the waders, headlamps and camera gear. Once Harry saw the cloud of mosquitoes swarming around Jesse\u2019s head, he also thought it a good idea to put on some insect repellent like we\u2019d all done. We looked quite the part once we were all geared up. Gosh, what we\u2019ll do for frogs! That\u2019s half the fun anyway. The two monitoring teams for the night were then finally decided, and after a quick-fix of a light covering off the back of the 4WD and the sighting of 500 or so bats flying by above us, we headed off!<\/p>\n

The team I was in comprised of Harry, Adam and Michelle and myself. Our first transect was completely dry underfoot, as a result of scarce rainfall for a few months. Usually all four transects are covered by water. We could hear no frogs calling at both beginning and end of the transect and it turns out we only found 22 L. olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrogs) and one L. fallax<\/i> (Eastern sedgefrog).
\nLitoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrog)<\/p>\n

\"Litoria
Litoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrog). He\u2019s not particularly thin for his species.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Litoria
Litoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrog)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Wallum
Wallum habitat, home of the acid frogs such as Litoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrog)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whilst we\u2019re searching, Harry tells us off the time Ed accidentally sat on and killed a particular bird species of which I can\u2019t remember the name. It\u2019s now a museum specimen. At the completion of our search, we met up with the other group and we\u2019re unperturbed by learning that they found ~180 L. olongburensis<\/i> plus four L. tyleri<\/i> (Laughing treefrogs). Ok, I lied. We were distraught. We had a pep talk amongst ourselves afterwards.<\/p>\n

After arriving at Site 3, our team\u2019s last site for the night, Harry tells us they\u2019ve found L. caerulea<\/i> (Green treefrogs) here before. A moment after telling us this he finds one just in from where we\u2019d parked. We\u2019re excited and begin taking photos. Whilst our cameras are flashing Harry spots another only a metre or so away from the first.<\/p>\n

\"Litoria
Litoria caerulea<\/i> (Green treefrog)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once we\u2019d blinded them both, we head back out to the vehicle track whilst still surveying the area with our headlamps. I spot some eye-shine other than spider eyes and discover they belong to a Limnodynastes terraereginae<\/i> (Scarlet-sided pobblebonk). I\u2019d seen one before but this guy was quite smaller.<\/p>\n

\"Limnodynastes
Limnodynastes terraereginae<\/i> (Scarlet-sided pobblebonk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On our way to the transect Harry spots a tyre-frog AKA another L. caerulea<\/i> (Green treefrog).
\n

\"Litoria
Litoria caerulea<\/i> (Green treefrog). Why there are tyres in here I haven\u2019t a clue.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Once we\u2019d finally reached the transect we find it still underwater (only up to our knees) despite the minimal rainfall. During our search we hear several L. olongburensis<\/i> calling sporadically and receive encouragement that we\u2019ll find lots more frogs than our previous search. Site 1 isn\u2019t known for finding a great amount of frogs anyway apparently. To compete with the other team, they\u2019d have to find only ~5 frogs \u2013 highly unlikely since Site 4 is known for finding a large number of frogs and for holding the most water as I found in February (we were in up to our chests). From memory, I think we found 118 frogs at our last site. Ed\u2019s team found ~98 (we win! \ud83d\ude1b ).<\/p>\n

\"Litoria
Litoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrog) metamorph (only just).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Litoria
Litoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrog)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Litoria
Litoria olongburensis<\/i> (Wallum sedgefrog)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once we returned to the other team, we find them appearing to be searching for something. Harry interprets the situation as \u201cOnce we find Ed\u2019s headlamp we\u2019ll begin our frog monitoring\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was a great night to be out frogging with everyone there and a great way to spend the final hours of my birthday. I hope to join them there again in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok, the night wasn\u2019t much longer than others I\u2019ve been out frogging on, but hopefully you\u2019ll appreciate the play on[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froggingaround.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}