Local events aplenty for Bird Week
Posted on 10 October, 2014 by Tanya Loos
Bird enthusiasts, from beginners to experienced, are encouraged to get involved in National Bird Week 2014.
This year, BirdLife Australia is holding its first ever Aussie Backyard Bird Count, and there are events locally to attend if you are keen to count some birds! You can also go online to www.aussiebirdcount.org.au to find out more. The Backyard Bird Count involves a twenty minute count from any local patch you like, whether it be your backyard bushland or favourite park. You can count once, or many times. In the spirit of the week, Connecting Country staff will post their observations as the week progresses on our website .
You can enter your observations on the Aussie Bird Count website but if you are a smartphone user you can download the Aussie Backyard Bird Count app.
Kick off bird week with the Bird Man Sean Dooley, editor of BirdLife Magazine, and author of The Big Twitch. Baynton-Sidonia Landcare are hosting Sean’s walk and talk on Sunday 19th October, Interested people are welcome to register for both the Bird Walk and the talk at the Baynton Hall, or for either session, by contacting Barbara on 0458590642 or emailing archiemcleod1@gmail.com by 17th October.
Local ecologist Geoff Park is also giving a talk in Bendigo as part of National Bird Week. It’s on Saturday 18th October (11am- 12.30pm) in the Bendigo Library Reading Room. Click here for details.
The Macedon Ranges Shire also has a bird week event, with a bird forum on the afternoon of Saturday 18th October. See the attached flyer for details (click here).
And Bird Week finishes locally with a bird monitoring outing, led by Connecting Country’s Habitat for Bush Birds coordinator Tanya Loos. The outing will be on Sunday 26th October, the final day of bird week, and we will be visiting properties in the Clydesdale area, specifically looking for the feathered five. All welcome, from beginners to experienced but numbers are limited. To book a place, contact Tanya Loos at tanya@connectingcountry.org.au, or call 5472 1594.
Some background info on the Habitat for Bush Birds project: helping the feathered five
This project is working to restore habitat for five local bush bird species; the Hooded Robin, Painted Button-quail, Jacky Winter, Brown Treecreeper and Diamond Firetail. Over two years, Connecting Country and participating landowners will carry out 300 ha of habitat restoration actions within 11 priority habitat zones. With the community’s help, we will also be scanning the Mount Alexander shire and immediate surrounds for the feathered five; as the more sightings we have, the better able we are to measure our success in helping these plucky yet threatened little birds. More information is available on our website (click here) and some new bird-watching activities will be announced soon. (The Habitat for Bush Birds project is supported by the Victorian Government through Communities for Nature funding.)
12 Oct 2014 Sunday picnic in the Sunday Morning Hills
Posted on 9 October, 2014 by Connecting Country
Wedderburn Conservation Management Network (CMN) and the Kooyoora Connections Project have have organised a free picnic to celebrate the permanent protection of a beautiful 300 ha property in the Sunday Morning Hills. The property is in Glenalbyn which is 60 km north west of Bendigo.
The days activities will include music celebrating cultural heritage, a talk by Jeroen van Veen, Bush Heritage Australia ranger, and a woodland birds’ walk led by Garry Cheers. Click here to see the flyer which includes a map. Bookings are essential and need to be made ASAP.
30 Oct 2014 – ‘Chicks in the Sticks’
Posted on 9 October, 2014 by Connecting Country
The North Central CMA has organised the second ‘Chicks in the Sticks’ event for 30 October. It will take place in the Boort Sailing Clubrooms, Ring Road, Boort on Thursday 30 October between 5.30 pm to 9.30 pm. Boort is just over 100 km from Bendigo. The event is to celebrate and acknowledge the achievements of women in agriculture and the environment.
The evening is free and will include a tour of the foreshore of Little Lake Boort, a 2 course dinner and a presentation from life performance coach, lecturer and author, Carol Fox. Further information can be found here.
14 Oct 2014 – Connecting Country Annual General Meeting
Posted on 23 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
Both members and visitors are warmly invited to attend Connecting Country’s Annual General Meeting for 2014. It is to be held from 7pm on Tuesday 14th October 2014 at the Campbells Creek Community Centre (see attached map).
The AGM will be followed by the launch of the 2014-2024 Strategic Plan for Connecting Country (the draft plan is open for comment until Sunday 28th Sept – click here for more info). We will then be screening a recently launched documentary film called Rediscovering the Country – A Journey Into Landscape Restoration (~30 min), which will be followed by the Q & A session with some of the film-makers and interviewees from the film. To finish the evening, there will then be refreshments (drinks and desserts), and an opportunity to mingle and chat with the Connecting Country staff, committee, members and supporters. We hope that you can make it.
For the AGM itself:
* A draft AGM agenda can be viewed by clicking here.
* A committee of management nomination form can be downloaded by clicking here. Nominations must be received by the Secretary at least 7 days before the AGM. If you would like to know more about being a committee member, contact the current Connecting Country president (president@connectingcountry.org.au).
* Contact Naomi if you are unsure if you are currently a member of CC (naomi@connectingcountry.org.au or call 03 5472 1594).
* A proxy voting form is available (click here) for those members who are unable to make it to the AGM – but still wish to contribute their vote if there are any elections
From the makers of Rediscovering the Country – A Journey Into Landscape Restoration (Ballarat Tree Growers and Sheoak Films) – The film is aimed at people interested in landscape rehabilitation through revegetation, and who want to learn more about how such projects can be made successful and deliver desired environmental and social benefits. It presents several community-led revegetation projects in Australia (including Connecting Country) to see how they are working to improve the land, wildlife habitat and human communities. These projects have locally developed objectives, such as returning rare animal species, helping local farmers, linking remnant vegetation, repairing degraded land, and they all were generated out of action by concerned and committed community groups or individuals. The film also shows how community activism in Sri Lanka uses the analogue forestry/regenerative agriculture technique to mimic the original forest structure and return a forest cover that produces food, natural resources and an economic income for small farmers.
28 Sept 2014 – Cactus Control Field Day
Posted on 23 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
The next Cactus Control Field Day will take place on 28 September on a property on the eastern side of Cairn Curran. Entry to the site will be via Cairn Curran Road. Click here for directions and a map.
The Tarrangower Cactus Control Group have had a great year so far so come along and help make this a record year in the War on Cactus.
24 Sept 2014 – Local history talk by Eliza Tree
Posted on 22 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
If you missed Eliza Tree’s recent Harcourt talk, here’s another chance. Her topic is
Australia Felix, or Indigenous Cultural Landscape, Jaara country, before the Goldrush
and
William von Blandowski Insights from an Outsider – Visions of Aboriginal Australia.
The presentation will take place at 3 pm & 7.30 pm on Wednesday 24th September in the Ray Bradfield Rooms (beside Market Building) Mostyn Street, Castlemaine. Click here to view our earlier post about Eliza’s presentation and here to view a flyer for this one.
14 & 15 Oct 2014 – NCCMA Workshop on Pasture Cropping & Grazing Management
Posted on 14 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
The North Central CMA is hosting a two day intensive workshop on Pasture Cropping and Grazing Management, which will take place in Newstead (at the football clubrooms) on 14 & 15 October 2014. An on-farm visit will be included in the workshop.
The workshop will feature industry specialists Colin Seis and Graeme Hand. Graeme Hand was a presenter at a Connecting Country workshop held in Yandoit in 2012. The aim of this workshop is to provide commercial farmers with a ‘how-to of Pasture Cropping and Grazing Management’. Continue Reading »
23 Sept 2014 – School Holiday Landcare Activity
Posted on 12 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
The Barkers Creek Landcare Network has organised a fun family day with games and activities on Barkers Creek during the upcoming school holidays. You can contact Mandy (p:0409866279 or e:mandchilcott@gmail.com) to find out more. Click on the flyer at left to enlarge.
15 Sept 2014 – Update on children’s play about Forest Creek
Posted on 11 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
‘Still Waters‘, is a play about the story of Forest Creek developed by local landcarer Thais Sansom in conjunction with local primary school children. It will be performed NEXT MONDAY, 15th September at 6.30pm at The Capital Theatre, 50 View Street. Bendigo. Some details of this venture were covered in an earlier post.
Tickets ($10 adults, $5 primary age kids) can be purchased at the Capital Theatre, over the phone on 5434 6100 or online .
An Afternoon Spent in an Aboriginal Landscape
Posted on 9 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
This article is about the Baynton Sidonia Landcare group’s Aboriginal Landscapes seminar that took place on Sunday 24th August 2014.
Rodney Monk talks to Baynton Sidonia Landcare president John Baulch.
Sixty-five lucky people (as half that number again had to be turned away) spent six hours immersed in Aboriginal life as it was practiced in the Baynton Sidonia area up until just 180 years ago.
The seminar began with Trish Terry of the Taungurung Clans Association welcoming participants to Country and explaining why she is qualified to welcome us to Country and what the welcome means.
Participants then experienced two outdoors workshops. In one, Tandy Annusheit told Dreamtime stories in the Taungurung language to a rapt audience, with Waa (the Raven) joining in occasionally in real time. It was extraordinarily moving to hear the mellifluous sounds of the language being spoken, probably for the first time in almost two centuries, at that spot.
The other workshop was led by Rodney Monk who is passionate about the preservation of local artifacts including clay heat balls and ovens to scar trees and rock quarry sites. He entertained and educated his audience so they gained a much wider appreciation of the kind of artifacts that still await “discovery” and preservation. He both thrilled and challenged his audience by saying to them that his culture is now the wider Australian community’s culture and as such requires effort, commitment and resources for conservation.
Trish Terry led a session titled “Cultural Landscapes” and in a very short time gave participants several new perspectives. One of these was that the landscape is culture: landscape does not just happen to be the way it is now. It was shaped by Aboriginal people, and that shaping, almost two centuries on, is still clearly visible and used by us today.
28 Sept 2014 – Landcare Golf Day
Posted on 4 September, 2014 by Connecting Country
Members of all Landcare and Friends groups across the Shire are invited to a Landcare Golf Day on 28 September to celebrate Landcare. The day has been organised by Muckleford Catchment Landcare Group, and is being held at the Castlemaine Golf Club in Muckleford.
The 9 hole game will be followed by a light lunch and drinks in the clubhouse. There will also be activities for children, talks from bird experts during the game and weeding activities along Bassett Creek after lunch.
You can find further details by clicking on the flyer to the left. Bookings are essential.
Birdwatchers aplenty at the Castlemaine Botanic Gardens
Posted on 26 August, 2014 by Tanya Loos
The Castlemaine Botanic Gardens has been all aflutter with burgeoning birdwatchers this month! A Beginners Workshop was held on the 2nd August 2014, followed by an Intermediate Birdwatching Skills Workshop on the 16th.
The workshops were presented by Tanya Loos, Habitat for Bush Birds Project Coordinator and Geoff Park, bird photographer and naturalist from the Natural Newstead blog. Both keen birders, it was interesting to note that the key messages of both workshops were quite similar!
- Get yourself at least one field guide to the Birds of Australia (The ‘Pizzey and Knight’ was the preference of the presenters, but they also acknowledged that the others were also very useful – Simpson and Day; Slater; Morcombe).
- Use the field guide and observations in your local area to get to know the features of the main woodland bird families (groupings) such as thornbills, whistlers and robins.
- Use your field guide to nut out key features such as field marks and behaviour. Field marks are the particular feather patterns, coloration, size, shape, bill structure, etc that help us distinguish closely related groups of birds.
- Knowing what are our typical local species also helps. It narrows down the range of possibilities for a new unknown bird that you have seen or heard.
Write-ups and photos of the workshops, and a list of resources are available: Beginners Birdwatching and Intermediate Skills.
It was really inspiring and heartwarming to see how everyone is keen as mustard to get out in the field and enjoy birdwatching, and bird monitoring. To this end, a Community Bird Monitoring Kit is in preparation. This kit will have a list of local bird species and families, a how-to guide on bird monitoring, an Excel data-recording template for those of you who are computer-orientated, and hard copy data-sheets as well. Coming soon!
11 August 2014 – FOBIF AGM
Posted on 5 August, 2014 by Connecting Country
A foggy morning in 2013 on the Mount. Photo by Bernard Slattery
The Friends of the Box-Ironbark AGM will take place on at 7.30pm on Monday August 11 in the Continuing Education Building, Templeton St, Castlemaine . At the end of a short business meeting, guest speaker George Milford will talk about the history of Mount Alexander. Visitors are welcome to attend.
You can download this flyer or check out the FOBIF site for more details.
Creativity, Innovation and Problem Solving Workshop in North Harcourt
Posted on 31 July, 2014 by Connecting Country
The North Harcourt/Sedgwick Landcare Landcare group has engaged an Innovation Facilitator to help them, and others in the community, to create new, innovative ideas to activate their membership.
The facilitators “Minds at Work” are highly acclaimed – and also fellow Landcarers.
Anybody interested in Landcare or community work can attend. The workshop will be loosely based on Landcare activities; however, as principles of engagement are universal, representatives of any community group or organisation are most welcome to attend.
Workshop 1 -Rebooting your brain + Scheming for a better way will take place on Sunday 17th August 2014 and Workshop 2 – Making great decisions will be on Thursday 4th September 2014.
Both workshops will be held at North Harcourt Hall, McIvor Rd, Harcourt.
Registration is essential, places are limited. Please register by Wednesday, 13 August 2014 via email to kklein7@bigpond.com or phone 0427 417 498.
Good food will be provided during all workshops, please nominate any dietary requirements.
This is a free workshop series sponsored by the NCCMA – Victorian Landcare Grants and the North Harcourt/Sedgwick Landcare Group.
You can download a flyer for the workshops by clicking Here.
Visit the Minds at Work website here: http://www.mindsatwork.com.au/
Community Planting – Connecting People with Place
Posted on 20 June, 2014 by Connecting Country
Twenty people banded together happily on Sunday morning (15 June 2014) to help a local Taradale landholder to realise his on-ground works with Connecting Country.
Roughly five hundred local indigenous plants were planted at two sites on the beautiful property over the course of the morning, which will extend and enhance the wildlife habitat corridor which follows the Coliban River. It was a day for Connecting Country volunteers, members and staff to come together and experience firsthand the restoration work that local landholders and our works crew do in the shire. And also to make new friends and swap stories over a lunch of sausages, burgers, muffins and hot drinks. Continue Reading »
13 June 2014 – CFNC Talk on Moss
Posted on 10 June, 2014 by Connecting Country
This Friday (13 June), there will be a special Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club (CFNC) general meeting. Local resident and amateur bryologist Bernard Slattery will be talking about local mosses. Bernard, and another local Cassia Read, launched the FOBIF publication, Mosses of the dry forests in south eastern Australia, to great fanfare two weeks ago.
Bernard writes,
I spent about 65 years not really noticing moss, except as a vaguely dank winter thing. How can a person be so blind? The discovery that things are quite spectacular down there on the ground came by accident, while I was looking for something else, and the experience has taught me that the way we see things, or don’t see them, can be quite mysterious. Maybe it has something to do with an idea Shakespeare was getting at when he talked of the man ‘ who will not see because he does not feel’…in any case, I’ll try to explain how it happened in my case. In the process, I’ll show a few pictures of what happens in the moss world when there’s a fire…the transitions are amazing.
The evening commences at 7.30pm at the Uniting Church Hall, Castlemaine – members and visitors welcome. The book will be available for sale on the night. You can also order it on the FOBIF website. A report about the launch which includes a transcript of the speech Frances Cincotta gave to launch the book is included on the website.
Looking for that special moss species.
Breutelia and triquetrella. Photo by Bernard Slattery. White Gum Track, 31 August 2012
15 June 2014 – Community Planting Day with Connecting Country
Posted on 2 June, 2014 by Connecting Country
Connecting Country is running two Community Planting Days over the coming months as part of our Connecting Landscapes program. The plantings are being done at strategically important locations, where the new vegetation will create valuable habitat linkages for native wildlife such as the threatened Brush-tailed Phascogale to move across the local landscape.
The first planting day is coming up very soon, being on Sunday 15th June in Elphinstone. We’d love for you to come and join us. We will be providing a free bus ride to site and are meeting in Castlemaine outside the Ray Bradfield room in the Maxi IGA car-park at 9am for a 9:15am departure. This is a great opportunity for people of all ages to get involved with our habitat restoration activities first-hand while meeting other Connecting Country members, volunteers and staff. After the planting and over a BBQ lunch, Tanya Loos – coordinator of the new Habitat for Bush Birds project – will give a talk about habitat structure for woodland birds. We will be returning to Castlemaine by bus at 1pm.
Please RSVP to bonnie@connectingcountry.org.au to secure a place on the bus, and for further details about the day.
All things great and small
Posted on 15 May, 2014 by Connecting Country
A gully at Baringhup, with remnant bulokes and other trees, provided us with shelter from the biting wind and a chilly autumn day for our second workshop session, “Biodiversity in the Paddock” on Sunday May 4th 2014. The spot also provided a more permanent home to an array of flora and fauna, all contributing to local biodiversity on the property.
Thanks to property holders Jacqui and Lachlan Brown for providing their farm as an ideal location to explore concepts around biodiversity, productivity and restoration.
Guided by Lachy, Jacqui and our expert ecologists we moved between scales; from the broader landscape, down to the property and paddock level and back, to identify what makes up ‘biodiversity’ and how we can improve and monitor the health of a landscape.
Cassia Read, Karl Just, Bonnie Humphreys and Chris Timewell led us through a hands-on foray for the obvious to the often overlooked – in this case plants, birds, mosses and lichens, ants.
Jim Radford takes us on a journey of species, genetics, processes
Karl, Bonnie, Cassia, Lachy, Jacqui and Chris
More information, photos and links from the session as well as Jules Walsh’s summary of the session, can be found here.
For more information: email (janet@connectingcountry.org.au) or call Janet on 5472 1594.
Registrations Open for Box-Ironbark Ecology Course 2014
Posted on 15 May, 2014 by Connecting Country
We have been informed by the organisers that registrations are open for the 17th Box-Ironbark Ecology Course. This five-day residential course in Nagambie commences on Monday 6th October and concludes on Friday 10th October, 2014.
The course is for those interested in gaining a general understanding of ecological processes and principles specific to Box-Ironbark Country, as is complementary to the workshops being run locally be Connecting Country.
The course involves five absorbing days of field studies and is taught by a number of expert ecologists including: Cathy Botta (soil), Andrea Canzano (insects), Garry Cheers (birds), Paul Foreman (plants), Lindy Lumsden (wildlife), David Meagher (mosses and liverworts) and Neville Rosengren (geology).
Have a look at their course flyer for more information on the location and topics. Note that this is not a Connecting Country event. Contact Kate Stothers (katelance1@gmail.com) if you are interested in attending.
This area of Box-Ironbark Forest has a Grey Box (Eucalyptus microcarpa) and Red Ironbark (Eucalyptus tricarpa) overstorey. Not all ‘Box-Ironbark’ forest contains these two eucalypt though.
2014 Workshop Program Launch this Weekend
Posted on 24 February, 2014 by Connecting Country
A reminder that Connecting Country will be launching it’s Improve Biodiversity on Your Property Workshop Program 2014 at the Newstead Community Centre this Sunday (2 March) with a talk by popular ecologist and author Ian Lunt.
This will be social event with a free BBQ dinner after the talk and it would be great to see as many Connecting Country members & friends there as possible.
Ian will be presenting a talk titled “Natural regeneration in central Victoria: the biggest positive change for conservation in south-east Australia”. Have a look at our previous post for more information.
The talk will begin at 4pm and dinner will be at 6pm. RSVPs are not essential, but are greatly preferred for catering purposes – max@connectingcountry.org.au, or phone 5472 1594
Please note, if you are planning on attending Vocal Nosh with Fay White in the adjacent Mechanics Hall that evening you can do both! Ian Lunt’s talk will finish just as Vocal Nosh is getting started.
Natural regeneration of Drooping Cassinia and Eucalyptus in a lightly stocked paddock near Metcalfe.