Jess the Phascogale Lady
Ever heard of a brush-tailed phascogale? Me neither, until I met my friend Jess. A phascogale is a tiny little marsupial with a big brushy tail and an unusual habit: after what Jess calls a "frenzied" mating season every autumn, all the males of the species drop dead of exhaustion... I'm not making that up! The phascogale is the central species that Jess is studying for the PhD she's almost completed. She's recently had a paper about her research published in the academic journal Austral Ecology, and asked me to take some photos to accompany a press release issued by her university. So we went down to what little bushland we could find in our 5km COVID lockdown limit, and this is one of the results.One speedlight through a MagGrid, screwed onto a Gorillapod hanging off an adjacent tree to my right. Second speedlight perched on a convenient tree stump left of shot and behind Jess. Each triggered with a set of Phottix Odin IIs.