Spotted Quoll Project

by Sharlene Cohen, Urban Rewild

This project is run by the local Coastwatchers Association; part of a contract with the Great Eastern Ranges initiative funded by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Australia.

We are collecting and recording information of confirmed sightings, conducting interviews, and placing cameras and food bait stations on private lands that we believe have either had sightings or scats, properties that have suitable vegetation and habitat that Quolls are likely to be either passing through or would have suitable breeding (den) sites.

Quolls cover great distances, especially in the breeding season around June, so keep your eye out for these cute cat-like predatory mammals (they like chickens) who have the second strongest bite of any Australian animal after the Tasmanian Devil.

The area we are observing is the Eurobodalla and lower Shoalhaven, from Termeil south to Dignam’s Creek, and inland to the top of the escarpment. A particular area of potential sighting is the Deua River.

GPS location is ideal, but if not, as much information as possible; for example, a cross-road or a distance from a specific location.

Facebook - Quoll Detectives | Facebook

Dolphins Use Baby Talk

A study of mother bottlenose dolphins in Florida has found that when they are communicating with their calves they use a higher-pitched whistle with a greater pitch range than when they are communicating with other adult dolphins.

The study used special microphones over a period of three years. It is thought that the higher pitch might be to signal to the calf that they are being addressed, as opposed to another dolphin, or perhaps the higher pitch is used to attract and hold their calf’s attention. Another theory is that the greater pitch range helps calves to learn novel sounds, as with humans.

"Female rhesus monkeys may alter their calls to attract and hold offspring’s attention. And zebra finches elevate their pitch and slow down their songs to address chicks, perhaps making it easier to learn birdsong."

Ref: Associated Press, Dolphin mothers use ‘baby talk’ with their calves, recordings show, The Guardian, 27 June 2023.

Insects Killed by Bushfires

The warm temperate rainforests burned out during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires killed more than 60 billion invertebrates in the soil and leaf litter.

"While our hearts went out to the burned koalas and kangaroos, this was a silent tragedy. These tiny creatures are enormously important in ecosystems. They eat dead leaves, create rich soil, and provide a key food source for bandicoots and lyrebirds. Many species have very small ranges, putting them at real risk of decline or even extinction from fire.”

Researchers took leaf litter samples from various rainforest locations that had been subject to medium or high severity fires between East Gippsland in Victoria and Nowra in NSW. They compared the number of macroinvertebrates with the numbers in locations that had escaped the fires.

By extrapolation they estimated that 60 billion tiny creatures had died in the rainforests, but since rainforests only make up about 1% of the areas burned, the total numbers killed could be 100 times more, and that doesn’t include even smaller insects like mites and springtails.

Ref: Heloise Gibb and Nick Porch, More than 60 billion leaf litter invertebrates died in the Black Summer fires. Here’s what that did to ecosystem, The Conversation, 8 June 2023.