The Safari had the job of organising a bioblitz...a 24 hour ransacking of the local flora and fauna.
To that end we chose 10 locations around the refuge covering the main habitats. 100 pit fall traps for ground dwelling invertebrates were dug, sheets of tin were laid at each site as refugia for reptiles and amphibians, single ended tubes were baited with known quantities of wheat dog biscuits and mealworms to determine what type of animals might be present without catching them which we didn't have licence from DEC to do. At each spot we did a vegetation survey too. Also included in the bioblitz was an early morning bird walk/watch, an overnight moth trap, pond dipping at the dam and some sweeping and beating of the vegetation. We forgot to do the worm charming! Dohhh.
Unfortunately no-one told the weather we were doing the bioblitz and it turned cold and very wet overnight somewhat scuppering our chances of big finds. No one told the ants either and they took to the chicken neck reptile baits with much gusto, one of them a tiny red species had not been recorded at Maroo in the previous seven years.
Some of the littleies we encountered are featured below...if anyone has any idea what any of them are please let us know.
A crab spider beaten from the bushes 
And his even smaller little red friend also beaten from the bushes. We did set a size limit of nothing smaller than 5mm but these two spiders took our fancy.
A tortoise beetle also attracted to the moth trap
A teneral damselfly down at the dam - never did see what it looked like as a mature adult - damnable weather
Where to next? Might do some of the moths tomorrow.
In the meantime let us know what the bioblitz in your outback turned up.
No local wildlife news to report today - damnable weather!
No comments:
Post a Comment