Tree House Challenge Day 3 : 09-08-2017

Busy day in the bush today. We had visitors from all over the place. In the summary video below you'll see Yoav being interviewed by Sarah Abbott from ABC Open for a story on giant trees and students from Scotch Oakburn College who visited with Darcy and Hannah from the Forest Education Foundation. 

Before everyone arrived I woke up in the tree with icy cold toes and a half zipped sleeping bag. With the harness still attached to the main climbing rope I couldn't zip the bag right up. Tonight I'm taking up a spare sleeping bag and hopefully it'll be warmer. Sleeping on the harness wasn't as uncomfortable as you might imagine, but you wouldn't choose to do it for fun at home. 

Just after sunrise I descended to the ground and had breakfast with Yoav and Saul. Sarah arrived early to do a story about giant trees with Yoav and a second radio story on this expedition. If she managed to edit it in time and you live in northern Tasmania you might have heard it this afternoon. 

It was good timing because three classes from a Launceston school came to visit with Darcy and Hannah. To meet each group we decided that  I should start half way up to the tree house, dangling on the rope. A loud 'cooee' announced their arrival and we soon got down to questions and answers. It was a lot like the discussion boards actually. In other activities the students made their own model tree shelters. Maybe they'll post some photos and describe the activity for others to try?

After everyone left, including Yoav and Saul, I set up the remote sensing camera on a track near the tree.. Hopefully we'll get video evidence of the larger ground dwelling animals. Apparently a pademelon was spotted in the vicinity earlier. I also cracked further into the rotting log where I found the millipede and unearthed a couple of mysteries. Watch the video and let me know if you can help. 

The sun will go down soon so I'm getting ready to climb back up the tree. Now that it's very quiet the birds are more obvious. Wattle birds, thornbills, fairy wrens, and many that I can't identify. After our visitors the forest is settling back into its usual rhythm. 

And lastly for today, the t shirt winner is OysterCoveAaron for excellent follow up research on the tree rings:

"Hi Guys, after some investigation (and a lot of support from the experts) I think we might have an answer! A parent who works at the botanical gardens and an arborist were able to come up with this:
When a ring is presented high up a trunk the most likely candidate is borers. It starts with a stressed tree, the tree then is more likely to be attacked by insects. Firstly the small insects come leaving honeydew which attracts borers.
"Female eucalyptus long-horned borers…lay their eggs on stressed trees and the resulting larvae burrow to the cambium layer. These larval galleries can girdle a tree, disrupting water flow from the roots and killing the tree…"