Wow, what a trip :) Me, Ellen and Susi went for a 5 day fieldtrip and stayed in a Caravan Park in Nelson, which is an hour from Portland. The trapping sites were in gorgeous heathland outside Nelson with looooots of spiders :) like the Jewel spider which live in huge multiweb, many spiders in the same web and Leaf curler spiders which were absolutely everywhere. We trapped loads of animals, mostly Heath mice, Bush Rats and ANTECHINUS MINIMUS !!!! All these species are just adorable and we had some fantastic moments with them, even when one Bush Rat peed on me twice and some Antechinuses had diarrhea... We also trapped one big fat Bandicoot (marsupial) which had squeezed itself in the small trap and was stuck there, just hairs sticking out of the trap... Poor thing.
When we came to work last thirsday to take the car it did not start so we had to jump start it and we drove to Warnambool where a guy checed out the battery. He said it was fine so we did not do anything... The morning after the car would not start so we got another jump start ... and we had to keep the car running while we checked the traps because if it would die again we would have to walk for 2 hours back to Nelson. The car somehow survived and when we got back we got the battery replaced. Apart from that there were no dramas, lovely weather most of the time but it rained the last night so the heath was completely soaking the last morning. Would have wanted to have my gumboots then.
Fresh pictures will appear here very very soon :o)