The idea was to take in the sunset before the full moon rose an hour later. The sunset held its part of the bargain, extra-fiery with smoke and glow of a large prescribed burn to the south. But, as darkness fell, rain began to sputter. The moon stayed hidden. (The night before, I rode my bike by moonlight without a torch, er, headlamp, and cast a sharp shadow.)

Rain or shine, though, Swanie had made a pot of dhal (Indian lentils), and we ate while sitting on the warm sandstone, actually glad for the rain. It’s been one of the driest wet seasons on record; this place needs it! JoJo, though, will be missed.

Within seconds, birds were all around me. In such dry conditions, water is a precious commodity around here, and this particular puddle was perfectly shaped, with a long, gradual ramp of gravel where the birds could wade and drink. In just a few minutes, I watched Peaceful, Bar-shouldered, and Diamond Doves; Brown, Rufous-throated, Yellow-tinted, Black-chinned, White-throated, and White-gaped Honeyeaters; a Sacred Kingfisher; and Crimson, Long-tailed, Double-barred, and Gouldian Finches, all vying for a spot next to the water, not paying much attention to my presence. I was more than happy to snap this photo of five Long-tailed Finches, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, with perfect reflections!

After careening for a while, crammed four across the backseat, we  stopped next to a grove of ancient Boab trees. Heat crackled the dry grass. “Check out the carvings on the trunks,” Michelle said, pointing at a particularly large one. “And the graves underneath.”

Two (or maybe three) rough sandstone crosses were arranged on the ground. On the boab tree was etched in long-overgrown letters: “Harrey The Hon. W. Allen Esq.” and a date that looked like 18-8. “It’s said that some explorer stopped here in the 1800s,” said Olya, “but who, or why, I’m not sure.” In any case, at least two bodies were buried here, absolutely the middle of nowhere, and I wondered about their fate. I suppose an ancient boab would mark a fine resting place, but this one was really off the edge of the map; we’d driven an hour and a half, far from even any decent 4×4 road, and it looked like nobody else had visited this year, anyway. The boabs, inscrutable, inverted-looking, weren’t telling. We left shaking our heads, with piqued curiosity about the people who came long before.

More specifically,  Green Tree Ants (Oecophylla smaragdina). As the name implies, they’re green, and they nest in trees, building softball-sized enclosures of dead leaves stitched together among living foliage. But you see a lot of them on the ground, on logs, rocks, mud, wherever, doing what ants do.

On one of my first field days, Michelle picked one up, gently gripped its head between thumb and index finger, and delicately licked the ant’s butt. “Try it,” she suggested, as she released her victim. “Tastes like citrus.” Sure enough, when I cornered my own green ant, it shot an unexpected, strong taste of lime on my tongue, actually quite agreeable. I wondered what was passing through the insect’s tiny mind. What would you do if a giant licked your backside? In this case, I had a quick answer as the ant latched its jaws on my finger before I set it free. Definitely wouldn’t want to lick the wrong end of that one!

We drove to the end of the 4×4 road, then hiked in the dark to reach our target just before sunrise, wading the river and bushwhacking through thick vegetation en route. Setting up four mist nets was relatively straightforward until Michelle slipped on a treacherous patch of mud by the second net and fell in the river, immersing up to her neck with her binoculars, field notebook, headlamp, and GPS. The clay bank was sheer enough she had to swim around to a different spot to haul out, dripping wet, with a wan grin; under a hot morning sun, though, it didn’t take her long to dry out.

Meanwhile, the Fairy-Wrens were being wily today, flying around and over the nets without getting caught. After about four hours of this (and unintentionally catching five Yellow-tinted Honeyeaters, a Brown Honeyeater, a White-gaped Honeyeater, two Crimson Finches, and a Peaceful Dove, along with the male Fairy-Wren), Michelle finally managed to trap the targeted female by playing a recording of Fairy-Wren song. After a quick blood sample, band combination, set of measurements, and molt assessment, the bird was released, and we packed up for the long hike to lunch.

We headed to a hole in the ground behind the kitchen. “I had a children’s python in there yesterday,” Paul said. “Let’s stick a stick in there and see what slithers out.” Today, the hole was empty, but Paul wasn’t done yet.

“I was sitting on the toilet in the dark day before yesterday,” he said, “and felt something brush my leg. Figured it was a frog, but it slithered up my shorts. Turns out a tree snake lives in that toilet – he just used me for access.”

Paul’s most wicked snake encounter this week, though, was a bit more dangerous. He discovered a five-foot mulga snake in the kitchen – or, rather, the snake discovered him when he opened a cabinet at eye level. “That thing struck at my face,” he said; “I could see the whites of its fangs, and shut the cabinet door as quick as I could. It got pinned with a couple feet of its body on either side of the cabinet hinge. I called for help on the radio, and JoJo and Jen showed up. We got the mulga into a box but it stuck its head into a plastic grocery bag, got disoriented, and slithered straight at us across the kitchen floor. JoJo tried to pick it up but it squirmed away and hid behind the freezer. And that’s where we left it.”

A mulga bite can kill a man within five hours, so all of us have been tiptoeing around the freezer ever since. That snake hasn’t reappeared, but mulgas are pretty common; I should see one soon enough – hopefully from a safe distance.

In fact, we rolled in to camp at 7:30 pm, well after dark, just before the staff here was ready to start searching for us (they soon got distracted, though, by distress calls from two Mornington staffers in a broken-down vehicle halfway to Derby). The hike was much longer than anticipated, and Jen and I never found the paintings.

By 9am, I had drank all my water and resorted to creek water to avoid dangerous dehydration. Jen’s camera became waterlogged when we crossed the river and shut down completely. We spent all morning searching sandstone rock faces for ancient artwork to no avail – either we missed the spot, or didn’t go far enough. Meanwhile, though, Tin Can Gorge was full of enticing swimming holes, idyllic waterfalls, and other interesting bits seldom scanned by human eyes.

After regretfully turning around in early afternoon, we floated back downriver using inflated truck tires brought for the purpose. It was a nice way to travel except for the three freshwater crocodiles we spotted swimming alongside us; though they don’t usually attack humans, two people have been seriously bitten by crocs at Mornington Station in the last two years, and the ones I saw today were at least 4 or 5 feet long.

When we finally hauled out downriver, just after sunset, I discovered that my drybag had failed and everything inside was soaked. This included my Canon 20D camera, Leica 8×32 binoculars, and cell phone. The camera and phone are probably toast (completely wet inside), but my binoculars survived their two-hour sloshing just fine. Luckily, I have a backup camera body. Unluckily, it was an expensive way to end the day. But still a worthwhile adventure – capped by a nice Australian Owlet-Nightjar sitting on the road after dark!

So, after another long day in the field with Fairy-Wrens, people gathered in late afternoon to make the short drive to a nearby escarpment, where a picnic table overlooks an expansive surrounding region of bush. In the distance, red bluffs meld with green trees and brown grass. As the sun went down, most of the Mornington crew munched on various tasties and meditated on life beyond the “real” world. And played with Taegan’s 7-month-old baby, Archer. Sometimes, life is simply incomparable.

Most everyone was in bed by 7pm, even on a “social” evening. I’m still up at 7:30 because I got 10 hours of sleep last night, even though my alarm went off at 4:30am (as usual) – work that one out! Anything after about 8:30 goes by “Mornington Midnight” and is a dark hour indeed.

When sweat began dripping uncontrollably off my nose at 5:45 a.m. this morning, I knew it was going to be a hot one. I was just beginning a long march down the Adcock River to census a distant group of Fairy-Wren territories; basically, this involved a six-kilometer bike ride followed by a eight-km bushwhack downriver (roundtrip).

It took me 20 minutes on the bike and another hour of hard, sweaty, overland hiking to reach the wrens. Think of the Discovery Channel’s “Man Vs. Wild,” subtract the backflips and gross snacks, and you get an idea of today’s hike: slipping, crawling, climbing, falling, up and down riverbanks, over logs, navigating by GPS, and wearing jeans and a long-sleeve in 105-degree sun. At midmorning, the humidity hit 90% – brutal conditions to slog through. By noon, I had waded the muddy river twice above my waist, stood in a red ant’s nest, fallen in mud three times, and used leaves for toilet paper. When I eventually returned to the station in early afternoon, nothing could have been more satisfying than standing inside the walk-in fridge, eating an apple, and downing liter after liter of cold Gatorade.

Here’s some pics to keep all you birders happy!

Of every five Purple-crowned Fairy-Wren nests with eggs, only one will fledge at least one chick. Predators eat the rest (except for a few that are flooded during rainstorms). The most regular villains are probably goanas (5-foot-long lizards) and snakes, but who knows? We’ll have to check the photos. With these cameras, we’ll even be able to tell what’s happening at night, because they switch to infrared during darkness – except, of course, if a cold-blooded snake hits the nest at night, the infrared won’t pick it up.

Another sunny day here, hot, sweaty, and sticky. Yesterday I hiked up a small escarpment next to camp to get an overview of Mornington Station. In every direction, arid bush undulated unbroken to the horizon – this is really the middle of nowhere!

Last night everyone gathered around the outdoor pizza oven for a pizza party, Mornington-style. The raised, open-door oven bakes nicely when filled with hot coals. Pizza-making festivities were as creative as the potential ingredients (or lack thereof); Sara and I layered baked beans, salsa, onions, cheese, and chili powder on our dough. Tasty! Two of our closest “neighbors” even came over for the occasion, flying in from an outlying station 2 hours away.

When I went to bed, though, my feet were itching like crazy. I counted more than 40 mosquito bites on each leg below the knee (that’s probably a hundred just on my legs). Everyone says not to scratch, because it causes heat rash, and at least one field tech has landed in the hospital this year with severe heat rash after a week of unbearable agony – while several others have come down with less extreme cases. Not something to be trifled with, so I try to leave my itchy mozzie bites alone.

They look cool, but Pandanus fronds are lined with rows of sharp, serrated edges. My arms are scratched up from pushing through them for the last week. Fairy-Wrens love them, though; territories are built around large clumps of Pandanus, and the wrens spend most of their time skulking through the densest stands. Since the wrens are there, so am I. My days are spent alternately crashing through thick riparian vegetation and making quiet observations along the creek, searching for color-banded birds and hoping to find their nests. All the time, Pandanus is my guide, close at hand; it’s a jungle out there!