These hidden images reveal what happens in a restored wetland when no one is looking

Last month we shared a photo of a brolga chick from one of our wildlife cameras at Walker Swamp. At the time we hadn’t actually seen the chick wandering around out there with its parents, so it was a bit of a surprise. But that’s the whole point of remote monitoring, it’s gives us the opportunity to see what is out there, when we aren’t.

We launched the New Tech Volunteering project, focussing on wetlands next to the Grampians about a year ago with this in mind. It has been tricky coordinating volunteers around Covid lockdowns but behind the scenes of all that, the cameras and audio recorders continued to record away. We have so many photos and soundscapes to get through and while we haven’t quite nailed down the most efficient way to do that job yet, we are continuing to chip away.

In the meantime, it seems a shame to not share some of the previously hidden perspectives captured at these various wetland restoration sites. I think they give us a very different perspective to the one we get when we visit these sites – after all, this is how wildlife quietly behaves when no one is looking!

The following are some of my favourites so far.

The “New Tech Volunteering: Novel citizen science for Grampians wetlands” is supported by the Victorian Government through the Volunteering Innovation Fund.