\Bo*he"mi*an\:
* A nonconformist writer or artist who lives an unconventional life.
* Bohemia is a district ... bordered on the north by cold, on the west by hunger, on the south by love, and on the east by hope.
* Bohemians express themselves without regard for social convention. They attempt to experience the mysteries of life through their unique perspective.
I did a live podcast/radio interview for Discovery Channel Earth Live which you can listen to at this link, Can Cassowary Poo Save the Rainforest?. It's broken into 4 segments, which you get to by clicking on the 4 photos.
All photos Copyright (c) 2008 Wendee Holtcamp
This was the sunrise the first morning I got to the Sanctuary Retreat, and wrote the entry describing my amazing glorious morning!
Not a great photo but this was the view out my window at the Sanctuary Retreat. Amazing!!!!
Native Australian water lillies. Notice the dragonfly! I thought these lillies are so beautiful!
The cassowary love spa. Cassowaries will come and play in the pond - they love to play in the water. Adrian Walker (see below) showed me this pond and said he's seen a male and female in there together and calls it the love spa! Ha ha!
Rainforest seeds collected by C4 (Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation) for planting in their nursery, and then used to reforest rainforest.
A cassowary walking by the Sanctuary Retreat. It isn't a good pic (out of focus)... but you get the idea of what they look like. This isn't a tame bird - it's completely wild. I got some better ones today but haven't had time to upload them.
A large pile of cassowary poo.
Fan palm in the rainforest.
An amethyst python - a little guy (about 5 feet long)
Adrian Walker, a local naturalist in Mission Beach, who helps people with their "snake problems," by catching them and releasing them back into the wild.
Yesterday I saw four cassowaries! None today though. At about 730am Jill and I were about to go walking down the steep trail to the carpark when right there at the trailhead on the driveway was a cassowary, just walking slowly up the dirt road. Then another! I tried to take some photos but they mostly turned out blurry. Cassowaries are normally solitary except during the breeding season, which it is, so that was probably a male and female. Apparently, according to a local guy who heads a conservation group here, the female will take the male around to show him the best fruit and then they may go for a swim - a love dip. Seriously cassowaries love to swim! So the male and female will just climb on into a pond and have a dip. That would be a sight to see! I think they look like Snuffalufagus from behind!! They have this black furry feathery stuff and no wings at all, just a big humpy body and two big legs and ginormous feet.
When I get to a place with better internet I'll upload some, as I did get some good pics of these pink waterlilies, the rainforest nursery (planted from cassowary poo!), and a python being released back into the wild. Jill is a School for Field Studies intern who is interested in becoming a writer so I invited her to tag along and see what I do "a day in the life" - and it was good to have some company. I met her when I gave the talk on sharks and being a writer to SFS back in April.
When we were out in the field with Adrian Walker, the local naturalist who was taking us to see cassowaries, we saw another. But no chicks. Then that evening back at the lodge there was yet another! So four in total, not bad. I took it easy and hung out here today, got a massage, and tried to work on my book, somewhat successfully.
Tomorrow I go out with the Australian Rainforest Foundation to see the rehabilitation center where injured birds go. I have just eaten too much sticky date pudding, and I'm stuffed. Time to go work on my book!
I'm not going to reveal where I'm at just yet, but let me describe it for you. I'm sitting on a wooden table on the back veranda just outside of my cabin, overlooking a stretch of tropical rainforest that leads down a steep hill to the ocean. I can hear the roaring of the waves crashing into the shore. Every now and then a cool breeze comes through, making my skin feel alive. The weather is mild but chilly - after all it's the dead of "winter" here in tropical North Queensland. Birds call to one another in the morning light, close, and then far, and then close again. Rustling sounds on the forest floor just below me indicate the presence of forest life - maybe bandicoots (rabbit-sized kangaroo relatives) or maybe brush turkeys or scrub fowl. I've yet to see a cassowary but that's why I'm here. The sun rises and the sky is now a pale periwinkle blue with a single long skinny cloud stretched over the horizon, the underside of which is golden yellow from the rising sun.
The emerald green of the rainforest surrounds me, becoming ever more verdant as the sun rises higher and illuminates the trees and brush. Figs, ferns, vines, lianas... so much green climbing, crawling, stretching for light. A bird song pierces the air.
As I sip my coffee, I am smiling in every part of my body and soul. I've got a perma-grin on my face I can't erase. I am grateful to God for the incredible world He created. What a paradise. I am grateful for my life, my breath, for my day, for being here in this incredible place. I'm grateful for being in a career that allows me to hop on a jetplane and travel halfway across the planet to exotic gorgeous destinations and immerse myself in the experience, see wildlife, and experience both solitude and the ability to meet new people.
And now, the sun! A melon orange pink orb glows like fire behind the cloud that has now splintered into a dozen smaller clouds. Its color and light radiate out from its center like rays. Rays of light. I am taking photos of the sunrise. Every moment it becomes different, more beautiful, more light, more brilliant!
In about a half hour, at 730am, I'm headed out to meet a local naturalist who will take me to where cassowary papas hang out with their chicks (that would be "baby chicks" not "female chicks"!) The chicks are brown and yellow striped and about the size of a chicken, only with long legs and no wings. Then if I get back in time, I will go to a yoga class, and then there's more but I'll just wait until tomorrow to fill in the details. I may try to get a massage. This place in amazing. I'm in love!
Update - I wrote that this morning, and am typing it up on the common computer (no wireless here!). I saw three cassowaries today, and two were right in front of me, I could almost reach out and touch one! Very cool.
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp
My adorable kids under a ginormous staghorn fern in the rainforest in the center of Australia's Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island - and a World Heritage Site.
I'm starting to get excited about my upcoming trip to Australia! I leave August 5th for a couple days in L.A. and then on to Australia. I am going to spend a few days in Mission Beach and talk to people who are working on cassowary conservation. Cassowaries are an endangered bird that lives in the rainforests. They are relatives of emus and ostriches, and really cool. And there's only around 900 left in the wild! The recent Cyclones that have struck the Austr
alian coast have wreaked havoc on their habitat, and many people started feeling sorry for them and started leaving fruit out to feed them. Well that turned out to not be such a good idea... it led to a lot more car strikes and dead birds. So feeding cassowaries was recently made illegal. There's a rehabilitation center led by the Australian Rainforest Foundation that works with injured birds, and I'm trying to also meet with some biologists studying the birds.
I first learned about cassowaries when I was at the School for Field Studies (SFS) Center for Rainforest Studies in Fall of 1990 as a college student, and was fascinated that they're the only bird that can "scarify" certain rainforest seeds. Many seeds must pass through the gut of an animal to germinate, but some rainforest trees have fruits with seeds so large that only the cassowary can eat them. There are not any large mammals in Australia and the cassowary is the biggest animal there! So if it goes extinct, many rainforest species may go extinct also.
Speaking of SFS, remember how I went back to the Center when I had a couple extra days at the tail end of the first trip in April, after the shark blog work, and I gave a talk to the current students? Part of this "Visiting Alumni" program was that I also write a short article about the visit and my career for their Alumni newsletter, and you can read it here, Wendee Finlay Holtcamp: Return to Warrawee.
Also mark your calendars, the documentary that was being filmed during my shark blog work, Mysteries of the Shark Coast (formerly called Expedition Shark) airs in the U.S. during Thursday of Shark Week which is July 31st at 9pm EST, and that is 8pm my time (Central)! We're having a viewing party!! Unless I got cut out, I may be in the documentary background as the "shark nurse" handing biologist Richard Fitzpatrick tools as he surgically inserts the radio transmitters into the whitetip reef sharks at Osprey Reef.
Last year during the 20th anniversary, Discovery Channel got a lot of grief because they focused so much on shark attacks. This year they changed their tune and focus much more on conservation and the ways we humans have attacked sharks!
(Image Copyright (c) 2008 John Rumney)
Last but not least, check out the new Sharkrunners Game Season 2: Australia - the Great Barrier Reef, which I wrote the "facts" for... it is all based on the actual data Richard et al collected on real sharks, their movements are tracked from the transmitters that were put in while I was at Osprey Reef! (they put some in at other times too, but... still! Cool!)
