Rain dancing

It's been a busy few weeks, though not necessarily productive. I've been slowly gearing up for the field season, which is rapidly trying to end. The field season for frogs here closely parallels the rains - when it is wet, the frogs are out, when the rains stop, the frogs tend to go away. Normally, it is quite wet in Darwin January-March, but this wet season has thrown us some curve balls. January was great, but as you may have read below, I was stuck in the US, giving lots of talks and making trips to the hospital. February, in contrast, was abnormally dry. In fact we were nearly 25cm (about 9 inches) below our normal rainfall in February. So, we have been trying to find frogs to do some radio tracking, and a good study of thermoregulation, but without the rain, there have been no frogs. Very frustrating, because these experiments take time (fitting the frogs with the transmitters (about a week), letting them re-acclimate to their habitat (2-4 days), actually taking the measurements (2-4 days)) and the wet season usually starts to dry out sometime in April. Doesn't give us much time.

So, I've been going out to our field site nightly for the last couple of weeks, and have found fewer and fewer frogs each night, as it dries out. I should mention that there are lots of frogs there, just not the two species we're focusing on this year. Instead of the 10-30mm of rain we'd expect daily, we've been seeing 0-6mm. Instead of the waist-deep puddles, we've been seeing mud, with a film of water over it. And instead of vast expanses of mud, we see dry sand. Until last night.

There has been a tropical low trying to strengthen over by Timor (a couple hundred km to the north). It finally decided what to do, and has created a nice monsoon trough that has settled over the Top End. Last night, I went out just at dark to try to find more green tree frogs (Litoria caerulea). I did manage to find one, but only because it was getting chomped on by ants. It made a very strange, quacking croak each time an ant bit. Strangest thing I've heard in a while. Stranger still, the little guy seemed to prefer sitting in his little hollow, getting chewed on by ants, rather than come out into the open and get away. He did this until the rains stopped, 2 hours later. Once the rains came, it was very wet. I'd guess about 20mm per hour or so. Water knee deep, where there is normally sand, rivers flowing everywhere. Very interesting. And frogs calling. Catching frogs is a lot easier when they are screaming at the top of their lungs, "I'm here baby! Come breed with me!" In an hour, I'd managed to find a half dozen, and caught some too.

The other major event around here is that after about 80 job applications, I've finally got a bite. Looks like I'm going to get an interview at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. I'm pretty excited about it - sounds like a good job, though of course it is hard to tell before actually going there. That means on top of the frantic field season, I'm frantically trying to put together a talk for the interview. It's a bigger talk than the ones I did at the meeting in January, and there is a bit more riding on it. As excited about this as I am, it really couldn't have happened at a more inconvenient time. I'll probably lose another week (or more) of my already too short field season. At least the outcome of this one may be a permanent job, rather than just a handful of scars and a big insurance claim. Wish me luck!