caught on film...

Two weeks ago the gals from National Parks & Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority (SRCMA) came to Sams Creek with their spiffy motion sensitive infra-red cameras -- today we had a look at what they captured...

swamp wallaby (check out the joey following)

 (I wonder if this is the same mother and baby moving in the night?)

brush tail possum 

(notoriously renown for running off with the bait traps!)

bandicoot

wombat mother and baby 

 (too cute eh?)

echidna!

and then there was my favourite find...

  lyrebirds!

 (heaps of them!)

other creatures caught on film -- 

bush rats, rabbit, wonga pigeon and other birds...

But this is not what we have the cameras out and about for....  no no no -

Earlier in the year, while out on a walk around the farm, a visiting girlfriend spied something she'd never seen before 'it's kind of like a cat... but not...' I had a thought and whisked her off to a computer - 'could THIS be what you saw?' (and I pulled up a piccie of a quoll) ....

A few months later Phil found the limp body of a strange creature --- now there was no doubt we had a quoll... Now all we have to do is find the little dears!

And that's where the Nat Parks and SRCMA came in --- it's quite a thing to find a quoll (its even MORE of a thing to find a potoroo ---- check out this amazing footage of a potoroo mum and joey captured on one of these cameras in the Nagee Reserve, south of Eden .... ahhhh I can live in hope...) So for the past two weeks, two cameras have been taking THOUSANDS of pictures of creatures on the move here on our farm.... but we have no quoll pictures... YET
 

I'm resetting one of the cameras by myself tomorrow (ooo the responsibility) -- I need to find a suitable location (look for 'diggings' and signs of animal activity... find a nearby tree to attach the camera to ... make sure there are no moving plants that will trigger the motion-sensitive camera... ), set up bait station (which is usually filled with a mix of peanut butter and truffle oil... but I'm going to be trying to lure quolls, so I'm going to use a bit of a chicken wing along with the smelly mix) then arm the camera and test that I've got everything in the right place... oh and make sure I know how to find the camera again (as I don't have a gadget to take GPS reading)

wish me luck


....