field notes on trees and hollows
in 2018 i spent a lot of time looking into the tree hollows on black mountain in canberra.
in the australian ecosystem, hollow trees are vital places for amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and bugs, for foraging, sheltering, and nesting.
i wanted to make a digital work that would create a sense of roaming about the mountainside, peering into its hollows, and wondering what kinds of animals could live in them. the end result of my work was something called field notes on trees and hollows, a text generator built in twine.
field notes generates its texts from two lists: first a list of hollow trees on the mountain and second a list of the local animals that use hollows. i compiled the list of trees from my own field notes. the list and descriptions of animals are drawn from several databases and sources:
ebird: an online database of bird distribution and abundance
kruno kukolic. a survey of the vertebrate fauna of mt ainslie, mt majura, and black mountain, 1975-76. canberra: act parks and conservation service, 1990
philip gibbons and david lindenmayer. tree hollows and wildlife conservation in australia. canberra: csiro publishing, 2002
ross l. goldingjay. “characteristics of tree hollows used by australian birds and bats.” in wildlife research, 36, (2009), 394-409
the latest and probably final version of field notes describes fifty species of amphibians, birds, lizards, and mammals, containing information on the types of hollows they are known to inhabit, the times of year in which they are present, and whether they use hollows for foraging, nesting, or shelter.
survey notes
midway through the year working on this project, i tried to set up a more routine way of taking notes. as it happened there was not much further opportunity for fieldwork, so these survey notes went unfinished.
survey notes 1 - an arduous workflow for gathering data on the mountainside
survey notes 2 - the data archive structure, which is lifted from paradisec since at the time this was the only structure i was familiar with
survey notes 3 - a briefer, albeit incomplete, description of the data gathering workflow