March 2024
A summary of cool things that happened in March 2024…
A family of White-winged Fairywrens turned up in our garden. Once known as the most elusive of the Fairywrens, these ones were happy to pose for photos. For years now I've been cultivating a casual saltbush sprawl in my front garden. My family says it's messy. I say, I don't care, the Fairywrens like it.
And it's not just me who is a fan of this enigmatic bird. Check out the logo of our very own Red Cliffs Croquet Club!
We put out a call on social media: Can you help us find these ants? These Sugar Ants come out at night and they love wee. If you wee in the bush at night and these guys come to visit, can you snap a photo and send it to us? That’s true scientific research!
Mallee Conservation and Wildlife Unlimited are collecting these ants to help unravel a “species complex” - what is probably several species of ants all called 𝘊𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴. Samples of ants will be sent away for genetic analysis. This will reveal the identity of the very special Sugar Ant that hosts the very special Mallee Bronze Azure butterfly! The ant genetic research is jointly funded by the Victorian and Australian governments under Disaster Recovery Funding arrangements.
The story was picked up by our local ABC radio. You can have a listen here at me trying not to call them “Piss Ants”!
Our amazing volunteers, Judy and Phil, shared their secret project. Unbeknown to me, Judy has been curating a herbarium of plants found on Raakajlim. SO grateful. Clearly I still have some work to do learning how to caption videos …
For International Women’s Day and I was pleased to present to the crew at Mallee Catchment Management Authority. I shared the story of Eileen Ramsey, the incredible Mallee botanist.
Eileen Ramsay (right), once described as “without doubt, the finest botanist in the north west [who] established quite a number of new records for the Mallee and Victoria”. Thanks to Christine Johnson (artist) for diving deep into Eileen’s story.