FNCB iNaturalist's Journal

Our October field trip was held on the evening of Saturday 7th. We started with a talk by Ray Draper on the various frogs found in the Ballarat region, including photos and recordings of their calls. We then proceeded to the wetland to see what species of frogs we could identify.

Some people used the Australian Museum's FrogID app (http://www.frogid.net.au) to record frog calls, and a few iNaturalist observations of birds, plants and insects were made as well.

We have a project for observations at the wetlands, which you may be interested in joining:
FNCB - Mullawallah Wetland.
This project collects all observations made there, by anyone. There are currently 407 observations of 123 different species in the project. Five species of frog have been observed.

Here is a link to all observations made during our field trip: No frogs though!

The Great Southern BioBlitz will be held from Friday 24th to Monday 27th November.
The world-wide City Nature Challenge is held each year in the northern hemisphere spring and is hugely popular. But as that is autumn for us, some southern hemisphere naturalists got together and created the Great Southern BioBlitz so that we could record what happens in spring in our half of the world.
The GSB was first held in 2020, and we have participated every year.

The Ballarat Region Project for 2023 has been created, and you can join now to keep up to date with any announcements, and to see what observations are made once the BioBlitz starts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/great-southern-bioblitz-2023-ballarat-region
The project will automatically collect any observations, by anyone, made in our area during the BioBlitz, so joining the project is not essential for your observations to count.
You might notice that the Ballarat Region is a bit smaller this year. Castlemaine Field Naturalists have taken over the Hepburn East area (the area around Daylesford).

Last year we had a successful day BioBlitzing at Clarkesdale, although floods caused the cancellation of another planned group BioBlitz at Mt Erip. The late November timing this year, combined with possible El Niño weather, may make for less than ideal conditions of a different kind.
Whether participating in a group BioBlitz, or BioBlitzing your own backyard, you could find something you’ve never seen before. Happy observing!