NGT out and about – Photos from the field in August

We’ve had many wonderful visitors to our reserves and out and about lately:

Firstly (below top left),
a group from Hamilton Field Naturalists Club and our SW volunteer group out at Walker Swamp for tree planting, but it was too wet & windy!  NGT’s Ayesha was there to talk about water bugs and ecosystems.  A cold but great day!

Top right – Saundra LeClair of Birdlife Australia sampling water quality for the bittern project in South Western Victoria.

Bottom Left – Hamilton Art Gallery’s Joshua White, Maddi Whyte & artist Emma Stuart, with local historian, ecologist & Friends of Forgotten Woodlands champion Bill Weatherly visiting Long Point. Artist Emma Stuart will be painting the view a 21st Century vision of Chevallier’s famous paintings of the late 19th Century (around 1880’s). We look forward to seeing the end result!

Bottom right – Brianna Speight has been volunteering her time and skills to NGT. She is visiting Walker Swamp (and other NGT reserves) to take photos with the aim of including them on the NGT website.

Birds birds birds!
Spring is nearly upon us (or has come a little early this year in some places).

Below Left – Melissa Herpich captured this pair of  Brolga at Piccaninnie Ponds Conservation Park (SA).

Below Right – Last month we published a photo of a nest of beautiful speckled Masked lapwing eggs at our Mount Vandyke Reserve – Well, they’ve hatched! John managed to get a photo before they left the ‘nest’. Isn’t their camouflage spectacular?

And lucky last, a yacca!
And not just any yacca… this is a Xanthorrhoea minor which we planted in a Mt Gambier City Council tourist stop/car park in 2022. It’s only 2 years old and already beginning to flower! It is exciting to think that it can only take a couple of short years for a yacca to flower, as they are generally very slow-growing plants. This is a threatened species in SA and in the Limestone Coast region.

Two year old Xanthorrhoea minor in flower in Mt Gambier. Photo by Bryan Haywood
Tessa Roberts