Bioblitz

The weekend of 24-27th October 2025 saw an event for nature lovers all over the Southern Hemishphere of our planet called the Great Southern Bioblitz and as part of it, a project was launched by Michael Cincotta and Chris Cobern to see whether we could amass a large number of records for Murrundindi Shire. There were spotlighting walks, bird surveys, fungi walks and activities from Eildon to Kinglake, Molesworth to Kanumbra, including Yea and Alexandra. The one condition was that observations had to be actual physical records – either a recording or a photo – and uploaded to the international website iNaturalist.

At the time of writing – and some late entries may yet be uploaded – there have been 3,103 osbservations of 1,012 different species, which includes plants, insects, birds, reptiles and animals of all kinds.

It was a huge effort and credit and thanks are due to Michael and Chris. This kind of blitz provides good raw data for research. Personally, my favourite observation was a pair of Dollarbirds (Eurystomus orientalis) patrolling the Goulburn River at Molesworth in the dusk. This bird is a Summer visitor from New Guinea which migrates South to breed. Ian Hunt in Highlands has a pair that nest each year in a hollow high in a dead tree on his farm.

Other interesting photos I managed to take are shown here but they represent a very small proportion of the work done by many others. Michael Cincotta captured 804 species, many of them plants.

These are the ones I got. I wish I could show you ‘the ones that got away’. We were aware of cuckoos, flycatchers, a goshawk on a nest (I don’t think my photo of his tail counts), gerygones and zimming dragonflies and butterflies that wouldn’t perch for us. Better luck next year.