Birdlife presents Powerful Owl online: 14 May 2020

Posted on 12 May, 2020 by Ivan

Are you looking for an interesting online bird event this week? Birdlife Australia is running a series of birding at home events and activities, to keep us engaged and learning at home during the COVID-19 restrictions. This week will feature an online event about our birds from the night, the nocturnal community, and will include a questions and answers session with Dr Beth Mott, Birdlife Australia’s Powerful Owl Project Officer.

Here is what Birdlife Australia has to say about the event.

Birding at home: Nocturnal birds with Dr Beth Mott

‘To help everyone who is now #BirdingatHome, Birdlife Australia presents a weekly live series on Facebook where our bird experts will be taking questions and talking about what we love best – birds. Beth is our Powerful Owl Project Officer (NSW) and is fully primed to answer your questions about noises in the night – your nocturnal birds!

Beth will talk about the night birds we are likely to see and hear at home, as well as threatened species such as Australia’s biggest owl – the Powerful Owl– so if you’ve got a query, post your question here! Beth will also touch on how you can help prevent our nocturnal birds from exposure to the dangers of rodenticides.

Even if you are an expert birder, we encourage you to join in for a chat – and please spread the word to all the bird and nature lovers in your life.

To find out more about our Powerful Owl project work in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria – see https://birdlife.org.au/projects/powerful-owl-project’

Topic: Nocturnal birds with Dr Beth Mott
Date: Thursday 14 May 2020 12pm – 1pm
Venue: online
Host: Birdlife Australia
To register: click here

Is landscape restoration working?

Posted on 7 May, 2020 by Ivan

We are super lucky to have secured local Newstead resident and blog royalty, the wonderful Geoff Park, as a guest blog author this week, exploring the question of ‘Is landscape restoration working?’ This topic is close to our hearts, given Connecting Country’s decade of landscape restoration work and ecological monitoring. We are enlightened to read Geoff’s well thought out article exploring the questions, answers and unknowns. Please enjoy the following insights from Geoff Park and subscribe to his excellent Natural Newstead blog (https://geoffpark.wordpress.com/author/geoffpark/) if you don’t already!

Is landscape restoration working?  

Across Australia (and beyond) there are wonderful initiatives, many community led, to restore damaged landscapes. Here in Mount Alexander Shire the work of dedicated landholders and community groups such as Connecting Country is part of a continental effort of landscape restoration – at many different scales from patch to paddock to catchment.

Revegetation of degraded woodlands. Photo: Gen Kay

photo by Connecting Country

photo by Connecting Country

photo by Gen Kay

All up it represents a monumental expenditure of time, human resources and money – so how well is it working?

I’d like to tackle this question from three different perspectives.

Firstly, to what extent have we been able to repair the key ecological processes, such as absorbing and filtering water, enabling soil formation and promoting natural regeneration – fundamental things that healthy landscapes do well.

Our local landscapes have been ravaged, especially by mining which began in the 1850s and continued into the start of the 20^th century at a significant scale, only to be followed by large-scale timber extraction during the world wars. At least five waves of vegetation clearance have occurred – each time the landscape has bounced back to some degree through natural regeneration, but it’s not the same and it’s certainly not as good. Much of the bush on public land in district is what I would term a thicket – regenerating eucalypts, often multi-stemmed and originating from an ancient lignotuber, at a density perhaps ten to a hundred times greater than the ‘original’ bush.

Repairing ecological processes is no easy task – with a metre of soil stripped from the land and new soil being formed at perhaps 10 mm in 100 years you can do the maths!

Secondly, how well are we succeeding in restoring the missing components?

Well what have we lost? A number of species of birds have become locally extinct – the Grey-crowned Babbler and Bush Stone-curlew have succumbed to loss of habitat and fox predation, while once common birds such as the Regent Honeyeater and Swift Parrot are on the brink. On the flora side of the equation we have retained most of the diversity of trees and larger shrubs (especially wattles), however smaller shrubs, understorey grasses, and forbs have been decimated. For example, Silver Banksia, was common locally until the advent of extensive grazing from the 1870s or thereabouts. It is now locally extinct around Newstead. It is encouraging to see landscape restoration becoming more sophisticated, moving from large scale establishment of eucalypts to more nuanced approaches such as targeted plantings of shrubs and grasses to an active exploration of how cultural burning techniques might restore something of the ‘original’ look and feel of the bush. Not only will this restore some of the missing parts of the puzzle it will also enable our landscapes to function more effectively.

And thirdly – what is happening to the structure, or put more simply … how does it look?

It’s ironic, but there are now more trees (in terms of stems/ha) in our landscape than there would have been 200 years ago, the thickening of eucalypts in response to repeated clearing has created a very different landscape. Where once there may have been 3 or 4 massive Grey Box per hectare on the low rises leading away from the Loddon River, there may now be upwards of a 1,000 stems per hectare. The open, ‘park like’ appearance that was often remarked on by landscape chroniclers, starting with Mitchell in 1836, was a scattering of large gums above wildflower filled native grassland – it was a mosaic with lots of open space. Sadly, there are few remaining examples – generally postage stamp remnants on private land.

This of course provokes the question, often hotly contested, of what should we be aiming for. One commonly used reference point is provided by what is known as the pre-1750 benchmark for ecosystems. Vegetation communities across Victoria have been described by botanists and ecologists in terms of what we think they might have looked like prior to European occupation, a descriptive reconstruction of the species composition and the abundance of some of the key species in each community, for example the density of characteristic eucalypts. While this can be a useful starting point and a guide, the onset of rapidly unfolding climate change has led to active questioning of this approach. In my home garden, some years back, I started planting beautiful, hardy Riverina wattles from 150 kilometres north – species such Eumong, Weeping Myall and Willow Wattle will I suspect become a feature of future local landscapes.

So … is landscape restoration working? It’s too early to say, however, there are some positive signs.

It’s instructive to look at time series aerial photography and in more modern times, satellite imagery Close to home, at Newstead, the change along the Loddon River between 1949, when the first aerial surveys were done, and 2002 – not long after Catchment Management Authorities were established to coordinate what is proving to be very successful large-scale river restoration, shows a remarkable and positive transformation. Click here for the details. The simple act of removing grazing along the riparian zone has led to extensive and sustained natural regeneration, augmented in recent times by strategic Landcare plantings.

Natural regeneration is happening on a significant scale across box-ironbark ecosystems in Victoria, but it is concentrated on the more marginal agricultural lands, the stony ridges and eroded hillslopes where topsoil is scant and fertility is low. Increasingly, however, a decline in some agricultural commodity markets and our proximity to large urban centres has driven a shift in land use across much of central Victoria, from a largely farming landscape until the 1980s to one where nature conservation is now a serious, widespread and legitimate land use – increasingly this is seeing once heavily cleared alluvial areas, not just the ‘lizard country’, being actively managed for biodiversity.

In my small patch around Newstead I’ve been tracking the disappearance and return of iconic woodland birds, like the Hooded Robin, Crested Bellbird and Chestnut-rumped Heathwren. My observations are anecdotal and are by no means systematic, but I am seeing some positive signs. The majority of species are doing okay, and while numbers move up and down with the seasons – there was a significant rebound after the Millenium drought broke in 2010-11 – my sense is that the trend is neither decline or resurgence but a fragile stability. How climate change plays out over the coming decade will be critical.

A core feature of Connecting Country’s work when it started over a decade ago was the establishment of a long-term monitoring program. This program, focusing on woodland birds, nest boxes and habitat assessment is a great example of tackling the question … is landscape restoration working? With monitoring results across reference and restoration site in a variety of ecosystems some patterns are starting to emerge to shed light on the question.

I’ll be interested to see what is emerging from a preliminary analysis of this data and while it won’t definitively answer the question … is landscape restoration working? … it will be a very useful start.

Geoff Park
Newstead VIC

Team Awesome: our volunteers add 17,000 records to Victorian Biodiversity Atlas

Posted on 7 May, 2020 by Ivan

Databases are only as good as the data that is entered (or not entered) into them, with many important decisions relying on databases being up to date and conclusive. Connecting Country and our monitoring partners have collected tens of thousands of wildlife records over the past decade. But there’s no point collecting data if it’s not accessible to the people who need it.

From 2019 to 2020, Connecting Country’s amazing volunteers have entered a whopping 17,175 wildlife monitoring records to the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas (VBA), with thousands more records currently being progressed in preparation for uploading soon.

Adding this amount of data to the VBA has taken a substantial effort of over 500 volunteer hours. Anyone who has entered this amount of data onto the VBA can attest that the process is not straight forward, so this has been a huge effort by our volunteers and a significant contribution to conservation efforts in the local region. Uploading our records to the VBA means that the data we have collected is no longer ‘locked up’ within our organisation, but available for researchers and decision-makers when they are making important decisions about where to allocate government resources, where to do planned burns, and whether to approve developments such as residential subdivisions.

Our awesome team of data entry volunteers volunteers

Initially, we were seeking just one volunteer to help enter data for us. However, when we put the call out for a volunteer we got such an incredibly strong response that we chose to engage four enthusiastic volunteers to share our data. These four amazing and tireless volunteers are Alexandra Reinehr, Corey Greenham, Karen Stuart and Lou Citroen.

• Alexandra is about to complete a Bachelor of Science with an Environmental Management and Ecology major. She lives on an 153 acre property in central Victoria so it’s not surprising her focus is on sustainable and biodiverse farming practices. Alexandra came across Connecting Country through one of her lecturers at Victoria University and was interested in volunteering so she could learn more about the flora and fauna of her region as well as help contribute to their mission to restore and enhance biodiversity.
• Corey grew up in the Bendigo area and currently lives in Melbourne. Corey finished his Bachelor of Environment and Society at RMIT in 2018. He has a broad passion for the environment and sustainability but has strong interests in biodiversity, urban greening, and community-based environmental initiatives. Corey says, ‘I thought the project would be a fantastic chance to learn more about the local environment in the Bendigo and Castlemaine region while helping to improve the existing information on local species such as the Phascogale. Even though I grew up in the area, I only spent a little bit of time in Castlemaine and have really enjoyed exploring the town and surroundings over the course of volunteering.’
• Karen is well known here in the office at Connecting Country, having previously completed a work placement in our office and helped make sure our nest box database is in good shape. After working in administration and finance for 35 years and raising two children, Karen seized the opportunity to follow her passion. She is studying a Diploma of Conservation and Land Management. A highlight includes two weeks of volunteer fieldwork on the Eyre Peninsula with Australian Wildlife Conservancy, where she worked alongside expert ecologists. She is blending her work history with her studies and (partly due to her volunteer work with Connecting Country) Karen is beginning to obtain work through local ecologists. Karen says, ‘It is an absolute privilege to have the opportunity to volunteer with Connecting Country and the wonderful people associated with the organisation, and to be able to combine my data experience with my environmental studies.’
• Lou has volunteered extensively with many diverse causes over the years. He started with volunteering for his daughter’s athletics competitions, then a placement in the 2000 Sydney Olympics (‘And what a blast it was!  A thrilling, unforgettable two weeks of my life!’), followed by nine years at BirdLife Australia, before moving to Castlemaine. Lou says, ‘During that time a BirdLife staff member suggested I make contact with Tanya Loos (then at Connecting Country), which of course I did.  Community-based Connecting Country, a small not-for-profit, focussing on restoring biodiversity in Mount Alexander region, is a vibrant, indefatigable, well-organised, friendly and inclusive group of dedicated scientists and veritable army of volunteers.  My volunteer ‘career’ aspiration, to make a contribution to conservation, however humble, has happily continued in Castlemaine.’

Connecting Country warmly thanks each of our data entry volunteers for the enthusiastic contribution of their valuable time and expertise to what we know can be a tedious task! We simply couldn’t have shared our monitoring data without them, and they’re a delight to have as part of the Connecting Country team.

Habitat Health Check

These new records have been added to the VBA as part of our Habitat Health Check project, funded by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust. Habitat Health Check: empowering citizen scientists to monitor habitat health in Central Victoria has supported our transition to a citizen science model.  This two-year project ending in June 2020 and consisted of reviewing our four monitoring programs: Birdwatch, Nestboxes, Plantwatch and Reptile and Frog monitoring. It is a collaborative, robust, citizen science project that monitors native animals and plants in the Mount Alexander region. We have reviewed our existing monitoring programs, and moved to a new collaborative, targeted model that empowers our enthusiastic and skilled volunteers, improves scientific rigor, and promotes data sharing via the Visualising Victoria’s Biodiversity online portal.

Photo: Connecting Country

Volunteer celebration 2019 (photo by Frances Howe)

Photo: Connecting Country

Photo: Connecting Country

What is the VBA? 

The value of small patches of remnant vegetation: 14 May 2020 webinar

Posted on 7 May, 2020 by Ivan

One of the biggest challenges for restoration projects across the region is habitat fragmentation and how to manage isolated patches of remnant vegetation. Connecting Country has been working for over a decade to restore our fragmented landscape through strategic planning, and working with local landowners to help protect and restore wildlife habitat and connect areas of remnant vegetation.

Although traditionally, conserving large patches of intact habitat is considered a priority, the value of smaller patches is less clear. Connecting Countries biodiversity monitoring programs have highlighted the value of the small patches of remnant vegetation for woodland birds and the Brush-tailed Phascogale, among other species.

We discovered a useful upcoming webinar that explores the value of small patches of remnant vegetation. It is hosted by Ben Zeeman, a vegetation ecologist working at the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority. Ben will discuss recent research examining the relevance of habitat fragmentation theory when conserving critically endangered ecosystems in highly modified landscapes. The results of this work challenge some long-held conservation principles, identifying that small habitat patches often have high ecological value.

This talk will be delivered online with time for questions and conversation at the end. Please register for the session and you will be emailed a link before the event.

Topic:           The value of small patches of remnant vegetation
Date:             14 May 2020 at 6.45 pm
Venue:          online
Host:             Ben Zeeman
To register:  click here

Agenda:

• 6.45 pm – Livestream starts – allowing for the resolution of technical issues
• 7.00 pm –  Ben to speak about remnant vegetation
• 7.45 pm – Ben to take questions

Small patches of remnant vegetation are vital in connecting larger tracts (photo: Connecting Country)

Calendar competition highlights: Week 3

Posted on 7 May, 2020 by Ivan

A couple of weeks ago we announced our inaugural Connecting Country calendar competition and entries have been flowing in steadily. 

Our theme is woodland birds and this photo competition is open to all Connecting Country members and people of the Mount Alexander region. The aim of the competition is to highlight our special woodland bird community and share the passion and skills of our passionate local photographers, as well as produce a beautifully printed calendar for the year 2021.

The calendar will be available to purchase and will feature the top 12 photographs, as selected by the Connecting Country team. There is a limit of two entries per photographer, and the competition opened on Monday 20 April and will close at 5 pm on Monday 18 May 2020. Both experienced and amateur photographers are encouraged to participate. Simply email your chosen images to ivan@connectingcountry.org.au by 5 pm on 18 May 2020.

We have been extremely impressed with the quality entries so far and thought we would share the highlights from this week in a gallery below.

Thank you to everyone who’s contributed so far! Keep the entries coming until Monday 18 May 2020.

Musk Lorikeet by Noel Ruedin

New Holland Honeyeater by Noel Ruedin

Red Browed Finch by Deb Worland

The Swift Parrot uses habitat in both Bruny Island and the Mount Alexander area. Photo by Deb Worland

Calendar competition details:

• Photos must be relevant to the theme of woodland birds and taken in the Mount Alexander region in central Victoria.
• There is a maximum of two photo entries per photographer.
• Entries must be submitted by email to ivan@connectingcountry.org.au, including the location, date and subject of the photo.
• Original photos must be at least 3 MB for image quality, but to enter please email files under 1 MB.
• Entries close on Monday 18 May 2020.
• Winning images will be selected by Connecting Country and published in a 2021 woodland birds calendar.
• There will be no commission paid to competition winners, but full recognition of your work will be featured and acknowledged.

Further details on the competition format and conditions are provided on our website: click here

Biodiversity Response Planning: project update

Posted on 30 April, 2020 by Ivan

During six months of 2018, a diverse array of government, Traditional Owners and community organisations from across Victoria came together to participate in an intense Biodiversity Response Planning process. Connecting Country was one of these organisations!

After a lot of hard work, 89 new projects were announced by the Hon. Lily D’Ambrosio MP, including 85 projects for on-ground biodiversity action worth $33.7 million. These projects are part of the government’s investment to implement ‘Protecting Victoria’s Environment – Biodiversity 2037’ to be delivered by various stakeholders.

Connecting Country was excited to be selected for funding through our project: Remnant rescue – restoring woodland bird habitat in central Victoria.

Connecting Country is proud to have overseen this three year project in collaboration with our project partners: local landholders, Dja Dja Wurrung, Trust for Nature, Parks Victoria and Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. The project extends to the end of June 2021.

To date we have achieved some excellent on-ground outcomes, as well as building landholder capacity to understand their land and restore woodland bird habitat on their land. We have delivered strategic revegetation across 150 hectares of land, adding much-needed diversity and habitat, including may prickly understorey shrubs. Planting included locally threatened species such as Late-flowered Flax-lily (Dianella tarda) and Buloke (Allocasuarina luehmannii). We have also delivered weed and rabbit control across 190 hectares of private and public land, which will allow for natural regeneration of many indigenous plant species.

Project highlights

Some project highlights so far:

• Meeting with landholders on site to discuss their property goals, values and threats to their biodiverse and beautiful properties.
• Working with keen and enthusiastic landholders to support them to commence landscape restoration.
• Collaborating with project partners to help our local environment and restore important habitat.
• Empowering landholders to manage their land for biodiversity.

Landscape Restoration Coordinator, Bonnie Humphreys, said ‘The project has allowed Connecting Country to align our habitat restoration goals in priority areas with the State Government’s Biodiversity Response Planning. We are delighted to deliver the on-ground works to our regional landowners, and contribute our skills to restoring native vegetation and ecological assets in the region’.

Project property in Walmer with a new fence protecting regenerating Buloke plants from stock grazing (photo by Connecting Country)

Why is this project important?

We know that much of central Victoria’s native woodland has been heavily disturbed by a long history of mining, clearing, woodcutting, grazing, and changes in fire and water regimes. The Box-Ironbark landscape contains provides habitat for many threatened species including members of the threatened Temperate Woodland Bird Community. Scientific studies demonstrate an alarming acceleration in the decline of most species within this community over recent years.

Habitat loss is the single greatest threat to woodland birds, and exacerbates other threats, such as predation by cats and foxes, and prolonged drought. Many of the remaining woodlands lack complexity and are missing the key understorey species that provide food, nesting sites and protection from predators for woodland birds and other animals.

Gorse treated in Metcalfe to allow regeneration of critical native understorey species (photo by Connecting Country)

Bird of the month: Eastern Spinebill

Posted on 23 April, 2020 by Ivan

Welcome to our third Bird of the month, a partnership between Connecting Country and BirdLife Castlemaine District. Each month we’re taking a close look at one special local bird species. We’re excited to be joining forces to deliver you a different bird each month, seasonally adjusted, and welcome any suggestions from the community. We are lucky enough to have the talented and charismatic Jane Rusden from BirdLife Castlemaine District writing about our next bird of the month, with assistance from the brilliant Damian Kelly. You may be familiar with the third bird off the ranks.

Eastern Spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris)

This month has seen the return of the Eastern Spinebill to Central Victoria, as they leave higher elevations for the winter. I’ve noticed them feeding on Rock Correa around my house and Geoff Park wrote about their return on his blog, of course, accompanied by his stunning photos. This is a species that has adapted to gardens and will utilise non-native species of flowering plants, such as Salvia, in their search for nectar. Did I mention Correa, they LOVE Correa.

The Eastern Spinebill, though a Honeyeater, is arguably our local answer to the humming bird, as they have a habit of hovering whilst using their long curved bills to probe flowers. This ability means they can feed on nectar plants too delicate for birds to actually land on. In addition, they eat plants and a large assortment of insects. If you’ve read Tim Lowe’s book ‘Where Song Began’, you’ll know birds use nectar for energy, but its’ relatively low nutrient levels mean birds look to insects for minerals and other nutrients.

Pineapple Sage is a favourite of the Eastern Spinebill (photo by Damian Kelly)

So here’s an interesting thing: through our research on this gorgeous little honeyeater, Damian Kelly and I noticed an anomaly that we can’t get to the bottom of. The guide books say that during the summer Eastern Spinebills retreat from low elevations to higher elevations and can be found in places like the High Country. However, around mid elevations such as Cottles Bridge (north east of Melbourne VIC), they can be found all year round. Young birds are known to travel larger distances and usually appear locally before the mature adults do. However, an extensive long-term study across most of their range (from South Australia, through Victoria to New South Wales) from 1984 to 1999 involved mist netting and banding 39,572 Eastern Spinebills with a re-capture of 3,602 birds. The study discovered that 99% of re-captured birds were less than 10 km from their original banding location. In short, they had moved very little distance at all, but the same cannot be said for our local birds. It would be fascinating to know what’s going on here.

Perhaps this is a highly adaptable bird? It will nest under verandahs and utilise non-native food sources such as fuschia, move if it has to, or not if it doesn’t. For a small bird they are reasonably long lived. In the  study mentioned above, one individual was banded as an adult, then caught six more times during the study period, which means it was an adult for at least 13 years and 2 months.

I suspect there’s much going on with the Eastern Spinebill, much more than feeding on their favourite Correa and being chased across the garden by other honeyeaters, which is how we often see them. Anyone up for a PhD on Eastern Spinebills …?

To listen to the varied and lovely calls of the Eastern Spinebill, and see a map of its distribution, please – click here

The eastern spinebill is a species of honeyeater found in south-eastern Australia in forest and woodland areas, as well as gardens in urban and rural areas (photo by Damian Kelly)

Written by Jane Rusden
Research by Damian Kelly and Jane Rusden
Photos by Damian Kelly

Backyards are a beautiful bird haven: Cornell Lab

Posted on 23 April, 2020 by Ivan

Fortunately there are many online resources that can keep us learning and connected to nature, while we stay safely at home. Here are some great suggestions about how to improve your bird watching skills, using the excellent Merlin Bird ID app on your smart phone or other digital device, and via educational videos from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. A reminder though, to ensure you use Birdlife’s Birdata App, when entering your data, surveys and observations.

One of the delights of bird watching has always been that you can do it anywhere, including right at home. Take a quiet walk or enjoy a moment of reflection at your window: birds will be with you. Now is a great time to deepen your knowledge and appreciation with resources like these:

• The free Merlin Bird ID app helps you identify more than 6,000 bird species on six continents. Answer five simple questions to get a short list of likely birds near you. And if you already have Merlin, don’t miss these five advanced tips, including amazing Photo ID.
• Practice the Four Keys to Bird Identification. Put names to the birds you see by focusing on Size & Shape, Color Pattern, Behavior, and Habitat. Learn from experts through their Inside Birding videos.
• Play Bird Song Hero and brush up on birding by ear so you’re ready for the sweet songs of spring.
• If you do Project FeederWatch, they’re extending the season through the end of April so you can keep right on counting. And now’s the time to set up nest boxes—NestWatch has amazing resources at All About Birdhouses.
• Take a free eBird Essentials course to get the most fun from your outings, save your birding memories, and contribute to science.

Click on the the above links and following images to access these resources.

Backyards: Still The Best Places To Go Bird Watching

Get More From Merlin Bird ID With These Powerful Features

Inside Birding: How-To Videos For Learning Bird Identification

Bird ID Skills: How To Learn Bird Songs And Calls

Connecting Country calendar competition: entry highlights so far

Posted on 23 April, 2020 by Ivan

Last week we announced our inaugural Connecting Country calendar competition and so far the entries have been flowing in steadily all week. 

Our theme is woodland birds and this photo competition is open to all Connecting Country members and people of the Mount Alexander region. The aim of the competition is to highlight our special woodland bird community and share the passion and skills of our passionate local photographers, as well as produce a beautifully printed calendar for the year 2021.

The calendar will be available to purchase and will feature the top 12 photographs, as selected by the Connecting Country team. There is a limit of two entries per photographer, and the competition opened on Monday 20 April and will close at 5 pm on Monday 18 May 2020. Both experienced and amateur photographers are encouraged to participate. Simply email your chosen images to ivan@connectingcountry.org.au by 5 pm on 18 May 2020.

We have been extremely impressed with the entries so far and thought we would share the highlights this week in a gallery below.

Thank you to everyone who’s contributed so far! Keep the entries coming until Monday 18 May 2020.

White-eared Honeyeater by James Bowden

Eastern Yellow Robin by Peter Boekel

Varied Sittella by Mick Evans

Square-tailed Kite by Damian Kelly

Calendar competition details:

• Photos must be relevant to the theme of woodland birds and taken in the Mount Alexander region in central Victoria.
• There is a maximum of two photo entries per photographer.
• Entries must be submitted by email to ivan@connectingcountry.org.au, including the location, date and subject of the photo.
• Original photos must be at least 3 MB for image quality, but to enter please email files under 1 MB.
• Entries close on Monday 18 May 2020.
• Winning images will be selected by Connecting Country and published in a 2021 woodland birds calendar.
• There will be no commission paid to competition winners, but full recognition of your work will be featured and acknowledged.

Further details on the competition format and conditions are provided on our website: click here

Announcing our new woodland birds photography competition!

Posted on 16 April, 2020 by Frances

We are super excited to announce the inaugural Connecting Country calendar competition ….. drum-roll please!

Our theme is woodland birds and this photo competition is open to all Connecting Country members and people of the Mount Alexander region. The aim of the competition is to highlight our special woodland bird community and share the passion and skills of our passionate local photographers, as well as produce a beautiful printed calendar for the year 2021.

The calendar will be available to purchase and will feature the top 12 photographs, as selected by the Connecting Country team. There will be a limit of two entries per photographer, and the competition opens on Monday 20 April and will close at 5 pm on Monday 18 May 2020. Both experienced and amateur photographers are encouraged to participate. Simply email your chosen images to ivan@connectingcountry.org.au by 5 pm on 18 May 2020.

This stunning image of a Diamond Firetail is one of our most treasured photographs from over the years (Photo: Geoff Park)

Calendar competition details:

• Photos must be relevant to the theme of woodland birds and taken in the Mount Alexander region in central Victoria.
• There is a maximum of two photo entries per photographer.
• Entries must be submitted by email to ivan@connectingcountry.org.au, including the location, date and subject of the photo.
• Original photos must be at least 3 MB for image quality, but to enter please email files under 1 MB.
• Entries close on Monday 18 May 2020.
• Winning images will be selected by Connecting Country and published in a 2021 woodland birds calendar.
• There will be no commission paid to competition winners, but full recognition of your work will be featured and acknowledged.

Further details on the competition format and conditions are provided on our website: click here

Checking the health of our habitat: project update

Posted on 16 April, 2020 by Ivan

In 2009, Connecting Country created a Biodiversity Blueprint with the help of the community and our partners. From the outset, scientific monitoring has been a high priority at Connecting Country. Monitoring allows us to observe changes in biodiversity over time, which gives us valuable information for ecological decision-making.

One of our monitoring priorities is the Brush-tailed Phascogale (photo by Jess Lawton)

We’ve been fortunate to have a world-class landscape ecologist, Professor Andrew Bennett, assist in creating our monitoring programs for woodland birds and the brush-tailed phascogale.

After the success of our ‘Stewards for Woodland Birds’ project, in 2018 we were delighted to announce we obtained funding from the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust to support the review and transition of our monitoring programs. Habitat ‘Health Check: empowering citizen scientists to monitor habitat health in Central Victoria’ has been the project we required to transition to a citizen science model, with volunteers managed and supported by a paid Monitoring Coordinator.

Project achievements

After two years, Habitat Health Check is nearing completion. Our aim was to create a collaborative, robust, citizen science project that monitors native animals and plants in the Mount Alexander region. The project involved reviewing our four existing long-term monitoring programs: birds, nest boxes, plants, and frogs and reptiles. We then developed a new community-driven model that empowers our enthusiastic and skilled volunteers, maintains scientific rigor, and promotes online data sharing. We’re now sharing our valuable data with the community via the Visualising Victoria’s Biodiversity online portal and the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas.

During Habitat Health Check, our hardworking volunteers collected 2,280 new bird records, bringing our total bird records to over 26,000 individual bird records, and 541 records for our nest box monitoring. This is an amazing effort from our volunteers and a huge achievement for our Monitoring Coordinator. After reviewing our existing monitoring programs and running a series of community workshops, we have focused our resources and volunteer base, ensuring we have a sustainable monitoring program for the future.

Connecting Country’s Monitoring Coordinator, Jess Lawton, said: ‘We have held many workshops and meetings over the past two years to review and refine our monitoring program to ensure we make the best use of community resources, and that our work is congruent with both Connecting Country’s goals and areas of interest in the community. We value our volunteers and have included them in every stage of the development of our monitoring programs. I believe we now have a stronger and more focused program, after careful consideration of feedback from the community, volunteers and other stakeholders’.

Latest monitoring reports

Here are the most recent reports on our nest box and woodland bird monitoring:

It is a joy to get out and monitor birds such as the lovely Spotted Pardalote (photo by Patrick Kavanagh)

Still time to get involved

We are still open to more volunteers for our bird and nest box monitoring programs, if you are keen to be involved in our ongoing monitoring for ecological change. Bird monitoring is conducted each winter and spring, and nest box monitoring is conducted in autumn. We’re closely monitoring the COVID-19 restrictions and will adjust our activities as required to keep everyone safe. For more details, please contact our monitoring coordinator Jess Lawton (jess@connectingcountry.org.au).

Listening Earth: morning bushwalks online

Posted on 16 April, 2020 by Ivan

Each week we are discovering more and more unique projects that are being delivered online and to your desk from a variety of scientists, institutions and other clever folk. One local project to watch and interact with each morning is Listening Earth’s daily morning bushwalks, delivered through the Facebook platform.

The beauty of the Listening Earth morning walks is the commentary from Newstead local soundscape guru Andrew Skeoch, who gives an entertaining and informative insight into the forest ecology and birds present in the morning chorus. Many of you will be familiar with Andrew, who spoke at Connecting Country’s 2019 Annual General Meeting. Andrew has an amazing personal collection of sonic and natural landscapes that transport you to wild places and remind us to tune into nature. To revisit our blog on Andrew’s talk at our 2019 AGM – click here.

The daily nature walks take place on Andrew’s property near Newstead in central Victoria, and have unearthed many treasures to date, including the sounds of the morning bird chorus and some unexpected guests. We also enjoy the insights he has into our local ecology and his connection to this land. Click on the video below to watch the nature walk, or visit his Facebook page – click here

https://www.facebook.com/listeningearth/videos/310664423232330/

Andrew also has an excellent series of talks and presentations, which can be viewed by clicking on the image below. In nearly 20 years of recording in remote locations, he has been fascinated by the diverse, wondrous and delicate sounds of our natural world.

A mountain of monitoring data added to Visualising Victoria’s Biodiversity

Posted on 16 April, 2020 by Ivan

Connecting Country has partnered with Federation University to incorporate our monitoring data into the State Wide Integrated Flora and Fauna Teams (SWIFFT) ‘Visualising Victoria’s Biodiversity’ project, an online data portal. This will give the community, landholders and our stakeholders a chance to see how our data looks across the landscape, and will allow for easy access to the data for anyone who is interested.

With coordination by Connecting Country’s Monitoring Coordinator, Jess Lawton, the data has been submitted to SWIFFT and is expected to be available for access later this year. ‘We will be very excited to see our mountains of monitoring data on a visual platform such as VVB and we believe this will make it much easier for the community to visualise the valuable work they have been involved with for over a decade,’ said Ms Lawton.

Many beautiful birds in our region are now well documented in online databases (Yellow-tufted Honeyeater photo by Jane Rusden)

Sharing our data with SWIFFT is part of our Habitat Health Check project, funded by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust to empower citizen scientists to monitor habitat health in central Victoria. The project is nearing completion in June 2020 and has enabled Connecting Country to review our existing biodiversity monitoring programs and transition to a sustainable model for future monitoring.

Visualising Victoria’s Biodiversity (VVB) is a place to discover and share spatial information on Victoria’s environmental values, conservation activities and research. VVB is a community resource and welcomes your feedback, input and contribution. VVB brings together existing environmental data sets and information created and managed by government agencies, organisations, community groups and individuals.

VVB allows users to create maps and view projects (image by VVB)

Connecting Country is excited by the potential to represent over a decade of biodiversity monitoring data in a simple visual format. We encourage anyone wishing to share spatial information on biodiversity values from anywhere in Victoria to contact VVB to explore options for visualising your data on VVB.

The VVB provides tools to:

• Generate a report with lists of environmental features, such as flora and fauna records, for a selected area of interest
• view map layers of environmental features and observations in any area of Victoria.
• Share information about your environmental project or research.

For further information on the Visualising Victoria’s Biodiversity project – click here.

All our Connecting Country monitoring sites will be added to the visual database (image by VVB)

Online training in wildlife acoustics

Posted on 9 April, 2020 by Ivan

Self-isolating? Unable to get out in the field or to the office as usual? Why not take advantage of this time to brush up on your recording and analysis skills? (and get some grown-up conversation if you’ve got kids at home!)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, US Company Wildlife Acoustics will be running a program of online events to help keep you sane. They are starting with some free training courses and drop-in sessions. Wildlife Acoustics create wildlife acoustic monitoring tools, specially designed to help scientists make impactful discoveries that expand our understanding of this biologically diverse planet. They are also keen to engage with the global monitoring community and ensure we can chat online, compare projects and listen to experts in their field.

Wildlife Acoustics has a full list of courses available for free online – click here. Popular courses book out quickly, but new courses are being added all the time. One of the most relevant ones for Connecting Country and our community is the following training session on Kaleidocope Pro, a suite of software tools that let you cluster, visualise and analyse wildlife recordings, and automatically identify species.

From Wildlife Acoustics:

Introduction to Kaleidoscope Pro for Birds and Land Animals

Date: Tuesday 14 April 2020

Time: 6-8 am Pacific US time, 9 am-11 am Eastern US time, 2-4 pm UK time, 3-5 pm Western European time – by our calculation this corresponds to 11 pm to 1 am in Victoria, Australia.

Are you interested in checking out Kaleidoscope Pro software for your acoustic file analysis? Have you just started to work with Kaleidoscope Pro and would like an in-depth primer on the basics of the software? Even if you are a power user of Kaleidoscope Pro there’s a good chance you’ll pick up a few new tips in this webinar. We’ll cover the basic functions of the Control Panel window. We’ll then spend time examining audio files and going through all the details of what the Viewer window has to offer. This webinar is an excellent foundation for more advanced topics such as cluster analysis and building classifiers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWjTWUJXGzw

Live cams bring the birds to you

Posted on 9 April, 2020 by Ivan

As we look out the home office window today, it is a picture-perfect autumn day: windless, colourful, mild, and particularly vibrant and green due to the recent rains. In many ways, it is the perfect day to go bird watching, even from the comfort of your home. Most of us are already craving interaction with nature, walks, rides and group gatherings, but for now we will be isolating in the nature of our homes.

Fortunately there are many online resources that can keep us connected to nature, such as numerous nature-based identification exercises, skill testing, live cameras, videos and online quizzes. While these are never as exciting as seeing or touching the real thing, we are very impressed with the list of activities put together by the experts at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Below is a summary of their suggestions for live cameras that can be viewed from the comfort of your home. You can watch the action live on the webcams setup all over the world – allowing for time zone differences. We particularly like the very lively and colourful tiny toucans in Panama.

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

Stream one of our Bird Cams for peace, beauty and intimacy with wild creatures. Many of our users keep a cam streaming all day long just for the calming outdoor sounds that filter in.

• Bring nesting owls, hawks, and ospreys into your home

Or watch a rotating cast of birds at our feeder cams:

• Ruffed Grouse and Evening Grosbeaks in snowy Ontario
• Blue Jays and Northern Cardinals at our offices in Ithaca, New York
• Tanagers and tiny toucans  (called aracaris) in tropical Panama

Backyard science cures for boredom

Posted on 2 April, 2020 by Ivan

No doubt you have seen some great ideas of how to remain engaged and occupied during the isolation phase of the COVID-19 outbreak. It’s a very challenging time and impacts continue to spread across the globe. Connecting Country is adapting our community engagement model, to deliver some events to our audience, community and stakeholders in the comfort of their own home. Stay tuned for when we advertise these events in the coming months. We also hope to produce some videos down the track to keep everyone engaged.

We have discovered some excellent activities you can do from the safety of your own backyard and still contribute to science.  ‘The Conservation’ recently published an inspiring article. Please enjoy the following extract highlighting many useful activities and ideas to contribute to backyard science. To view the full article  –  click here.

Environmental projects need your support too

The yellow-footed antechinus (Antechinus flavipes) is a curious little marsupial (photo by Jane Rusden)

If you’d like to get your mind off COVID-19, there’s a plethora of other options for citizen scientists. You can contribute to conservation and nature recovery efforts – a task many took to after the recent bushfires. Some sites ask volunteers to digitise data from ongoing environmental monitoring programs. Contributors need no prior experience, and interpret photos taken with remote digital cameras using online guides. One example is Western Australia’s Western Shield Camera Watch, available through Zooniverse.

Other sites crowdsource volunteers to transcribe data from natural history collections (DigiVol), historical logbooks from explorers, and weather observation stations (Southern Weather Discovery).

Citizen science programs such as eBird, BirdLife Australia’s Birdata, the Australian Museum’s FrogID, ClimateWatch, QuestaGame, NatureMapr, and the Urban Wildlife App, all have freely available mobile applications that let you contribute to ‘big’ databases on urban and rural wildlife.

Nature watching is a great self-isolation activity because you can do it anywhere, including at home. Questagame runs a series of ‘bioquests’ where people of all ages and experience levels can photograph animals and plants they encounter.

In April, we’ll also have the national Wild Pollinator Count. This project invites participants to watch any flowering plant for just ten minutes, and record insects that visit the flowers. The aim is to boost knowledge on wild pollinator activity.

The data collected through citizen science apps are used by researchers to explore animal migration, understand ranges of species, and determine how changes in climate, air quality and habitat affect animal behaviour.

This year for the first time, several Australian cities are participating in iNaturalist’s City Nature Challenge. The organisers have adapted planned events with COVID-19 in mind, and suggest ways to document nature while maintaining social distancing. You can simply capture what you can see in your backyard, or when taking a walk, or put a moth light out at night to see what it attracts.

For those at home with children, there are a variety of projects aimed at younger audiences.

From surveying galaxies to the Bird Academy Play Lab’s Games Powered By Birds – starting young can encourage a lifetime of learning.

If you’re talented at writing or drawing, why not keep a nature diary, and share your observations through a blog.

By contributing to research through digital platforms, citizen scientists offer a repository of data experts might not otherwise have access to. The Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA) website has details on current projects you can join, or how to start your own.

Apart from being a valuable way to pass time while self-isolating, citizen science reminds us of the importance of community and collaboration at a time it’s desperately needed.

Take a guess….how many Eltham Copper Butterflies did we see last summer?

Posted on 2 April, 2020 by Ivan

The Eltham Copper Butterfly (ECB) is one of our most treasured and interesting threatened species, and we are fortunate enough to have the largest population in the world right here in the Mount Alexander region of central Victoria. In the past 12 months, the special little butterfly has attracted much-needed attention, attracting funding for three separate projects in our region.

Connecting Country obtained funding from the Mount Alexander Shire Council to increase community awareness and education regarding the butterfly, and to support citizen science monitoring in key locations to learn more about the local populations. We worked closely with local ecologists Elaine Bayes and Karl Just, who with support from Wettenhall Environment Trust continued their vital work on mapping local Eltham Copper Butterfly habitat and distribution. We also joined in the excellent Butterfly Celebration Day held in Castlemaine Botanical Gardens in November 2019. Our hope is that all Castlemaine residents now know about this amazing threatened species living on their doorstep!

Connecting Country delivered a popular community education workshop, and worked with ecologists Elaine and Karl to promote and coordinate four community monitoring sessions for Eltham Copper Butterfly around Castlemaine VIC over November 2019 to January 2020, when the adult butterflies were out and about (for details – click here). These events attracted excellent numbers of people keen to learn more about the life cycle of this butterfly and to participate in butterfly monitoring within local butterfly habitat. The aim was to support interested community members to learn how to monitor with expert guidance, providing skills for them to become citizen scientists, conduct more monitoring and (potentially) discover new populations.

photo by Connecting Country

Photo: Connecting country

Photo: Elaine Bayes

The Eltham Copper Butterfly is a small and attractive butterfly with bright copper coloring on the tops of its wings visible during the summer flight season (photo: Elaine Bayes)

Well, the results are in, the numbers crunched and the maps produced! We now have some great insight our local Eltham Copper Butterfly populations, including previously unexplored areas of potential butterfly habitat. In total 113 individual Eltham Copper Butterflies were observed in the prime flying period between 15 November 2019 and the 3 January 2020.

Monitoring results

Our monitoring experts, Elaine Bayes and Karl Just, provided the following summary of the results, accompanied by a very detailed and useful map of the areas they visited:

• The monitoring team searched, ranked and mapped all of Kalimna Park (170 hectares) for butterfly habitat in November 2019. Time spent to carry out rapid assessment was 48 hours.
• This work determined that out of 170 ha of Kalimna Park, 73.25 ha was classified as prime potential Eltham Copper Butterfly habitat (i.e., medium or high quality Sweet Bursaria habitat).
• Using Eltham Copper Butterfly habitat mapping, the team searched areas that were determined to have good butterfly habitat potential. Using this method the group located five new Eltham Copper Butterfly sub-populations and extended the area of known Eltham Copper Butterfly occupancy from 3 ha to 8 ha.
• In total 113 individual Eltham Copper Butterflies were observed in the prime flying period between 15 November 2019 and the 3 January 2020 (some of which may have been double-counted from resurveying same area).
• The total survey effort or time spent searching for butterflies in this period was 187 hours.

More about wonderful Eltham Copper Butterfly

Castlemaine’s Kalimna Park is home to the largest remaining population of the threatened Eltham Copper Butterfly in the world. To learn more about this fascinating little butterfly, including ecology, distribution and information on how to identify this species from similar look-alike butterflies – click here. Please enjoy the video below, courtesy of the N-danger-D Youtube Channel, that has some excellent footage of this wonderful butterfly and symbiotic ant species.

We would like to thank the Mount Alexander Shire Council and Wettenhall Environment Trust for providing the funding for these projects. We hope to continue to monitor Eltham Copper Butterfly and implement management actions to help our local butterfly populations thrive over the next decade and beyond. 

Frogging on

Posted on 31 March, 2020 by Frances

Autumn is a great time for frogs and recording frogs using the excellent FrogID app developed by the Australian Museum. The Mount Alexander region is home to around ten native frog species. Perhaps you have some frogs in your backyard, property or local dam that you can visit safely while adhering to current safety isolation requirements.

We know that the reduction of permitted leisure activities is presenting challenges – so here are some froggy suggestions from the FrogID team to help make the most of your time at home:

• Record frogs in your back yard: if you already have frogs in your garden or property then we want you to record them daily if they are calling. Send those records in, our validation team are working from home and are keen to hear your submissions. If government advice has not changed, record frogs on your daily walk, whilst maintaining physical distance from others.
• Download an activity sheet: if you have children looking for a fun activity, we have a fantastic activity sheet you can download – click here. There is a quiz, colouring in, and other cool activities. It’s all set up for you to print from home!
• Explore the FrogID app or website: the FrogID app and website have hundreds of species profiles for all of Australia’s frogs, you can play their calls, view pictures and learn all about where they live and how they breed.
• Build a frog habitat in your garden: for those who want to get your hands dirty and don’t yet have a frog pond, this could be a good time to start. Upcycle that old bathtub, recycle some old downpipes, create an oasis for your froggy friends. Don’t forget to record any frogs once they arrive, and send in pictures of your garden with your submissions on the FrogID app.

To learn more about the FrogID app see our previous post (click here) or download the FrogID app (click here).

Our Director, Frances recently spotted this handsome Spotted Marsh Frog.

Spotted Marsh Frog (photo by Frances Howe)

Tanya’s tawny tales: a good news story

Posted on 27 March, 2020 by Ivan

We were thrilled to receive a well-written story from our former superstar staff member, Tanya Loos, about the journey of a Tawny Frogmouth. Tawny Frogmouths are often confused with owls, but are actually more closely related to the nightjars. Tanya gives us a great insight into these magnificent creatures and the journey of a special Tawny’s road to recovery. Please enjoy the following words and photos from Tanya.

The question I am most frequently asked is ‘I have found a bird that seems to be hurt – what should I do?’ It is always the same answer – capture the bird using a tea towel or towel, and place into an appropriately sized cardboard box. Then pop the box in a quiet room away from pets and people – and call a wildlife rescue number for assistance.

Usually it is a friend or local person – but a couple of weeks ago I got ‘the question’ via text from my teenage nephew! Heart burst moment! Nephew and Mum had seen a bird on the road in Hepburn – an owl they thought, that wasn’t flying away.

The owl turned out to be a Tawny Frogmouth – a much loved night bird that is commonly found in local forests and gardens. Even though Tawnies are brownish grey in colour, like owls, with big round eyes, like owls, they are quite different , and in a completely different bird family.

Owls (Strigidae family) are predators who hunt and kill their prey with their huge fierce talons. Tawny Frogmouths capture their prey – mice, frogs, and insects with their beaks. Their feet are strangely weak, without big claws, and are used only for perching.

In Australia, we have three species of Frogmouth in the Podargidae family – the Tawny which is found all over the country, and the Papuan and Marbled Frogmouths which are found in Cape York and southeast Queensland.

Another difference between owls and Frogmouths is that Frogmouths are masters of camouflage, with finely patterned feathers, who adopt a special ‘broken stick’ posture, where the Frogmouths close their eyes and point their heads up to the sky. Owls never do this.

One of the golden rules of wildlife rescue is that if an animal survives and can be released, it must be released where it was found. Animals such as Tawny Frogmouth have specific territories or home ranges – where they know where the best places to find food are, the best sleeping (roosting) sites and nesting sites. This area is also where their mates or family members are! Our family Tawny was taken to a wildlife carer in Gisborne – and after a week or two, I travelled down to see if the bird was ready for release.

In the picture you can see the loving hands of Lynda the wildlife carer as she was checking whether Tawny’s wings were strong enough to fly. You can also see that the feathers are slightly brown – which means she is a female bird! The males are completely grey – a lovely ash colour, with the same fine patterning.

Tawny Frogmouths are often confused with owls, but are actually more closely related to the nightjars (photo by Tanya Loos)

Tawny wasn’t ready then, but yesterday Lynda texted me saying that Tawny has made a full recovery and is now ready to go back to her Hepburn forest.

The car collision must have been a mild one. Sadly this is the exception – as animal loving folks know – death by car is all too common. Driving slowly and carefully at night, dusk and dawn is the only solution.

To contact Wildlife Victoria phone: (03) 8400 7300 – and they will refer you to one of the many local wildlife carers in our region.

by Tanya Loos

Connecting Country still hard at work!

Posted on 25 March, 2020 by Frances

Koala at Moonlight Flat (photo by Frances Howe)

Here at Connecting Country we take our social responsibility seriously, and while there are landscapes and people needing our help, we continue to operate and support our community. However, it may be in a slightly different format to normal to reduce infection risk.

In the interests of health and safety, all our staff are working from home as much as possible. Therefore our office at the Hub is temporarily closed. However, you can still contact us via phone or email. If there’s no answer on the office phone, please leave a message and we’ll get back to you. Our operating hours are unchanged: 8.30 am to 4.30 pm Monday to Thursday.

We are reworking our planned community events, converting them to online workshop format or postponing to later in the year. We’re reviewing our other activities with the aim of continuing our important work where possible without risking the health of our staff or community. Although some tasks will not be possible, there is much we can still do.

We will be adaptable and stay focussed until we all come through the other side of this difficult time.

We appreciate your support in helping keep our community and environment healthy! Please enjoy our favourite video below, from Remember the Wild, about our Woodland Bird Program.