Where? Where? Wedgie! 2018 Day 3 : 03-05-2018

We headed south into Ezio and Emma territory today. They are two of James’ tagged eagles that live in neighbouring territories, still with their parents. Although we didn’t sight either of them we did practice doing the surveys that everyone is invited to do across Tasmania at the end of May.

Waking up on the banks of the Huon River at Franklin I had a chance to take our first bird photograph! Of a goose, not an eagle. There are several other birds that can be confused with the Wedgie... a goose is probably not one of them. Can you think of five birds that you can confidently identify in the bush or around our school or home? James explains in the video how he has been tracking eagles. We headed south to see if we could find Ezio. He hasn’t checked in for last 2 days but his last known location was just north of the town Dover.

We set up on the side of the road overlooking the last patch of trees he was in and did a 10 minute survey. If you do the public survey at the end of May you will book a patch of Tassie that may or may not have one of James’ tagged eagles in it or nearby. We didn’t see any birds of prey in the 10 minutes and moved on to a second spot to do another 10 minute survey. A few cockatoos but no eagles. We did this 6 times over 3 hours. No Ezio sighted. But we will know if Ezio was nearby next time he checks in with James and this will give us really interesting information on how detectable a wedgie is. That means even when a bird is there it might not be seen by human eyes. Our big citizen science survey will be much better if we know how detectable eagles are.

We have camped at the same spot as last year’s Tree House Challenge ‘wet forest’ climb. It’s fun to revisit sites from past adventures. I think they call it nostalgia. Must mean I’m getting old.

Tomorrow we will try to find Wollowra around Huonville area and then on Friday head into the laboratory to see what James gets up to when he’s not fracturing his leg looking for eagles (watch the video!).’

Day 3 t-shirt winner: Mighty Rock (Sharing your own story that related to the expedition was thoughtful and made James’ day.)

Day 3 updated map: