The Great Southern Bioblitz is on Friday 28th - Monday 31st October
Have fun, get out in the bush or wander around your garden and see what you can find.
Take photos or sound recordings and load these observations into iNaturalist. When loading a sighting you should identify what you have seen to the best of your ability. Your identification need only be at the level of ‘plant’ or ‘insect’ but it is, of course, much better to provide a more accurate identification if you can. If your camera does not record the location you can show the location of your sighting by dropping a pin on the map. You may mark the location as ‘obscured’ if it is a rare species or on private property. It will still count towards the bioblitz. All observations in our area will automatically be included in our bioblitz project.
You may also take part using the iNaturalist App on your phone and load observations directly from your phone.
Your records will make a difference to our knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Castlemaine region.
This year we will be looking for the rare, unusual and unexpected amongst the sightings. This will include rare and threatened species, first records on iNaturalist and species, either common or rare, that may not have been recorded in our region before.
An example of what to look out for is Hairy Swainson-pea (Swainsona behriana), once common in the area but now possibly locally extinct.
However, please do not restrict yourself to native plants or animals or things that are uncommon. All observations contribute to our bioblitz.
If you are taking part the important thing is to record your sighting during the four days over the weekend. You will have the next 14 days to upload your sightings to iNaturalist and to add identifications. Adding or confirming identifications to other people’s sightings is a good way to improve your natural history identification skills.
The other challenge is to beat our performance last year. Can we do it?
Last year our top observer was Habitatearth with 320 observations. Overall we had 1826 observations and 569 species so there is your target. You can monitor our progress here.
Go For It!