It’s still a world of dryness and dust out here, so I decided to head for Fivebough Wetlands in Leeton, on the basis that there’s generally some water there, and therefore the place might be a bit livelier than certain other localities.
Ecosystem: Wetland
January 2019 Field Visit – Tasmania
In 2009 I bought a pair of comfy hiking boots for a trip to Tasmania I was planning to take with Conservation Volunteers Australia. Sadly, the trip ended up being called off.
A decade later, and my boots and I finally made our way to Tassie.
October-November 2018 Field Visits – Riverina Drought
My apologies for the lack of October blog post, it’s been hard to find much to blog about recently, with natural areas across the region being not really at their best, given the current drought conditions.
Today’s post will be a selection of photos I took while driving around my patch during October and November; a mixture of incidental wildlife sightings and snapshots of the drought-affected landscape.
In roughly chronological order, I present to you:
A Bearded Dragon (Pogona barbata) sunning itself in a driveway near Narrandera. I saw at least three of these within a two week period in various locations, which is more than I am accustomed to seeing over such a short period of time. Either I was lucky, or they’re yet another species that’s venturing closer to roads and human-inhabited spaces looking for water and food this season.
August 2018 Field Visit – Assorted Locations
My apologies. August’s Field Visit report is both late and short.
August rather got away from me, but when a friend of mine said she’d seen both a water rat and some echidnas along the Bundidgerry walking track beside Narrandera’s Lake Talbot I decided to go try my luck. My friend took me to where she’d seen them, but unsurprisingly they weren’t hanging out in the same places when we got there, so no water rat or echidnas for me.
November 2017 Field Visit – Marrambidya Wetlands
Hello lovely readers!
My ‘being less busy in November’ turned into ‘being sick and then getting busy again in November’, so I didn’t manage to get anywhere all month. Until this evening.
This evening I finally found the secret entrance to Marrambidya Wetlands in Wagga Wagga.
May 2017 Field Visit – Fivebough Swamp
I wasn’t going to do another wetland for a few months, because I feel like I do wetlands a lot, but a friend of mine told me that Fivebough Swamp was spectacular at the moment, so I decided that was too good to pass up, and off to Leeton I went. As coincidence would have it, I ran into the same friend and her sister while I was there, and we spent a while wandering along together before parting ways.
January 2017 Field Visit – Yarradda Lagoon
Welcome to 2017!
My year got off to an exciting start when I was contacted by someone from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) asking me if I’d like to visit one of their environmental watering project sites with some field officers doing a wetlands health survey. Naturally I said yes, and so last Tuesday I headed to Yarradda lagoon (within the Yarrada precinct of the Murrumbidgee Valley National Park) near Darlington Point with four field officers: two from OEH and two from Charles Sturt University (CSU).
December 2016 Field Visit – Campbell’s Swamp
I was at a loss as to where to visit for my final field trip of 2016, when a friend on Twitter unwittingly provided inspiration:
So off to Griffith I went to visit Campbell’s Swamp.
ACT Field Visit Part Two – Jerrabomberra Wetlands
As mentioned in my previous post, I visited Canberra this weekend with my parents. After attending a night tour at Mulligans Flat we decided to visit Jerrabomberra Wetlands the following morning.
It was quite windy, so we weren’t sure if we’d see many birds, but we were delighted to find several families of ducks, swans and swamphens, including fuzzy babies of assorted species.
ACT Field Visit – Mulligans Flat
This weekend my parents invited me to visit Canberra with them. After a look around the National Museum of Australia, we headed out to a night tour at Mulligans Flat.
Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary is an area of remnant Box Gum Grassy Woodland that is being managed to conserve and restore the entire ecological community at all levels. Non-native predators are actively excluded, rabbits are gradually being eradicated from within the reserve, and several locally-extinct native species have been reintroduced over the past few years, including Eastern Bettongs, Eastern Quolls, New Holland Mice, Bush Stone Curlews, and others. There are a large number of other native species living within the reserve as well.
Riverina Wildlife 