Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The locally endemic Fryerstown Grevillea (Grevillea obtecta). is common in small areas of our region, but it’s not widespread and is subject to threats. This week the Castlemaine Field Naturalists are running two sessions encouraging citizens to participate in programs to monitor the plant, helping biologists to assess its true status and the need for recovery actions to enable it to persist in the wild.

First, at the Club’s monthly meeting, ecologist Georgie Custance will talk on monitoring the plant using the Proofsafe monitoring app. The meeting is at 7.30 this Friday the 14th, at the Uniting Church Fellowship room in Lyttleton Street Castlemaine. Want to check out the app first? Check here.

Second, Georgie Custance will lead a walk in the bush to visit some local populations of this wonderful species as well as the many other native plants that are flowering at the moment. During the walk Georgie will demonstrate how to use ProofSafe to record your sightings of Fryerstown Grevillea so that people can practice what they learnt at the meeting.  Location to be confirmed but either Fryers Ridge or Porcupine Ridge.

Meet: 1.30 pm at the Octopus (Duke St, opposite the Castle Motel). Bring:  Water, afternoon tea, sturdy shoes, hat and if possible, your mobile phone or tablet with the ProofSafe app. loaded. Enquiries: castlemainefnc@hotmail.com

Alex Panelli will lead our last walk for the year in the Fryers Ridge area on Sunday 16 October. Details about this walk can be found here and Alex will post further information in a later on this site.

The FOBIF Committee has drawn up a set of commonsense guidelines for all our walks. You can view them here.

Pam Connell has just sent us these two terrific photos of the last walk in the Muckleford Nature Conservation Reserve.

Nodding Greenhood, Muckleford. Photo Pam Connell

The group on the last leg of the walk after the rain had set in.

A strong turnout at FOBIF’s AGM last Monday heard a tantalising talk and photo presentation by Patrick Kavanagh  on things you can see through macro photography. The spectacular images of tiny creatures inhabiting our flora—and each other—underlined the importance to our ecosystem of forms of life most of us know nothing about, and some of which are completely unknown to science. These tiny creatures are the foundation food of much of our more visible natural world: if ever you’ve wondered what those small birds are doing fussing around a wattle bud, Patrick’s photos gave a very strong clue. And if you’ve been frustrated by the ability of a house fly to veer miraculously fast away from your attempted swat, the photos revealed all!

Midge fossiking on a Wattle bud…There are epics going on in tiny places. Photo by Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick’s presentation recalled memories of Sarah Lloyd’s amazing talk on slime moulds at the 2015 AGM: in both cases, the audience was introduced into a mysterious world which we share, most of the time completely unaware of it.

Here are a few more glimpses into that world:

Praying Mantis nymph: photo by Patrick Kavanagh

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