NGT Out and About – Photos from the field in May

Scott from NGT met up with local TAFE students studying conservation and ecosystem management to learn how to use fyke and seine nets to survey threatened small-bodied fish at the Ornamental Lake in Mildura. We detected Southern Purple-spotted Gudgeons in both seine net hauls and in fyke nets ranging from young of year juveniles to adults and a size class in between.

Below left, Bill Weatherly from Friends of the Forgotten Woodlands visted Long Point as part of a field day, to see the plantings and seed orchards of Banksia, Sheoak & Bursaria that they have established over the past few years.

Below centre, NGT’s Ayesha catching water bugs early in the morning at Walker Swamp, ready for the field visit by Monivae College. Below right is the view from the bird tower looking down on Monivae students as they learn how to take water samples to test.

At Walker Swamp recently, Greg spoke to students from Daylesford’s Dharma School about the geology and the incredible timeframes involved – so long they are nearly unimaginable! Greg said he’d always had a vision of being able to talk to students right there under a shady tree, before they went off on their activities, and it’s now a reality.

Later the same day Elia Pirtle from Project Platypus set up her gear right next to Tom’s re-vegetation area, and the kids collected so many different species of insects, feathers, bones and more for Elia to identify for them. What a fantastic day of nature education.

Finally, NGT’s Jess captured the amazing aurora australis during the recent geomagnetic storm at the Glenelg River Estuary in Nelson Victoria and at Simpson’s Landing. “…we were sitting around the camp fire and looked up to see pink above the tree line just above hour heads.”