I have been working up at Macraes Field Base recently - last week we had A LOT of snow and got snowed in!
Luckily the snow cleared away by Thursday and I was able to get out and do my work.
I was working on checking the tracking tunnels in the reserve predator-proof enclosures. We use the tracking tunnels to make sure there are no animals we don't want in the enclosures e.g. rats, mice, stoats etc - predators.
The tracking tunnels also help us to see where the lizards are by showing their tracks.
I use a map with all the tunnels marked on it to find my way around the reserve and make sure I have checked all the tunnels.
Each tunnel is marked with a blue triangle so I can find it. Can you find this tunnel on the map above?
The tracking cards are kept in a tunnel that directs the animals over them
A blob of peanut butter is placed in the middle to attract the animals over the ink.
The black stuff is a non-toxic, natural ink. The animals walk over the black ink and then over the white card at either end and leave their tracks.
This card has a mixture of skink and gecko tracks on it. Each type of lizard leave a unique print that we can use to identify what species it is. There were no predator prints on any of the tracking cards, which is awesome!
While I was checking the tunnels I saw lots of lizards - if you look closely at this picture you will see a gecko sleeping - geckos are nocturnal so don't come out in the sun like skinks do.
I managed to get really close to the skinks sunbathing! It was really exciting seeing so many.
These are two quite young skinks. It is unusual to see skinks sunbathing close together unless they are young siblings.
