G'day!

My day job is as the Natural Resource Manager for Booderee National Park, Jervis Bay Territory where I implement a number of biodiversity conservation programs. A fair proportion of the rest of my time is spent gathering records to upload on iNat which I accidently stumbled across in 2020 when trying to ID a plant at work.

I was instantly smitten with iNat and proceeded to upload about ten years worth of flora and fauna images that until then had been sitting idle in my hard drive. Many of these early records are from the Indian Ocean Territories where I lived previously.

My main focus nowadays is Lepidoptera, specifically moths, however, I started out with plants to learn the local flora for work and went through a pretty intense Orchidaceae phase.

After a time, new flora species became difficult to record until I realised that each morning I could search the office walls at work for moths resting from the night before. This boosted my species count pretty quickly and shortly thereafter, I purchased a black light and curtain and I now moth at home in the back yard pretty much every night.

If the weather is good, I like to hit the water and get records of fish, anemones, sponges and everything else I see underwater. I've been known to borrow bat detectors from work and deploy them when I travel around. Birding 24/7 goes without saying.

I believe I have become quite adept at searching for and identifying species for which there are reference images on iNat, however, I am an amateur and make plenty of errors. Sometimes I take a wild guess just to get the ball rolling.

Feel free to message me if you think I can assist with an ID or whatever. Happy to share local knowledge or obscured orchid locations for enthusiasts.

Happy hunting,
Dion