Where? Where? Wedgie! 2018 Day 7 : 07-05-2018

A day late posting the video update but here it is:

We’re on the trail of Ernie the Eagle from Maria Island today. Ernie was tagged in late December and is still in his parents territory near French’s Farm on Maria. Due to a poor data signal I can’t get the daily video uploaded for you but I’ll put it up here when back in mobile range late tomorrow. James has a good Why? Wedgie! Why? question about why wombats have such small eyes? One to ponder.

To reach the island we hopped on the public ferry at Triabunna. It docks at Darlington which is the headquarters on the island for the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service. Maria has a long history of Tasmanian Aboriginal occupation, convict stations, agricultural pursuits and even a cement factory. These days it’s well known as a tourist destination and a place where Tasmanian devils have been released that are free from the facial tumour that has been a problem in other parts of Tasmania. 

As we walked south along the track we spotted lots of devil scats with hair and crushed bones. We lost count of the wombats chomping away hungrily on whatever grassy nibbles they could find. Stop press! As I’m sitting here writing this I’ve just heard a faint whoosh of wings above and spotted a Wedgie above the treetops right overhead. I couldn’t tell if it was young or old (Ernie or his parents) but it was cruising south. When we did some test surveys earlier we didn’t spot any eagles or other target birds. Just because an eagle is nearby certainly doesn’t mean you’ll see it. 

We’re camping at French’s Farm tonight and we’ll do more test surveys for Ernie tomorrow. If we can do lots of these test surveys in places where we know James’ eagles are close by the scientists can work out how likely someone doing a survey is to see an eagle even when it’s present. It’s helping us work out how detectable eagles are. This is important to understand for our big Wedgie survey.