Numbat Population Survey — Dryandra Woodland
An accounting of two weeks under a tent in WA, four observers, sixteen transects, and one cooperative numbat.
The echidna's gait, when undisturbed, has a quality of brisk preoccupation. It does not pretend to glamour; it shoulders its way along the leaf-litter as a tradesman might shoulder through a market. I came across one — a young female, judging by the bald patch of beak — at the head of the Eulah Creek track at 5.40 a.m., the morning the cold front broke over Narrabri.
I had been waiting four days for that front. The echidnas of the Nandewar Range time their winter foraging to weather, not light, and I had begun to suspect I would go home with nothing but blistered boots…
An accounting of two weeks under a tent in WA, four observers, sixteen transects, and one cooperative numbat.
Three sites between the Stewart and the Lockhart, and what their banks reveal about a six-metre adult male.
Where the recovery program has gone better than anyone admitted to expect, and the conditions that may yet undo it.
Ellen Pratchett has spent twenty-four years walking the inland of New South Wales, Queensland and northern Victoria with notebook, binocular and (when permitted) tape recorder. She lives in Dubbo with two pointers and an irregular pet wedge-tailed eagle named Mr Lavery.
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