Spiders in the sky and birds in the hand

As John and I cruised through the northern section on a search-and-destroy mission for veldgrass, we came across (and quickly dispatched) some geraldton carnation weeds and a japanese pepper tree.
It was a bit unnerving to come eye-ball to eye-ball with a spider - though it was a very pretty one.


We enjoyed meeting up with Rob Davis (Birds Australia / UWA) doing some bird banding in the bushland this morning. Rob ended up banding about 18 birds in his 4 hour stint in the bushland. They were mostly young ones that hadn't been banded before.

View live map Click here to download the GPX data for this map. Note, this data is an XML file - change the name to .GPX to upload to your GPS.

How can we make this bushland more resilient?

As John and I moved through the bushland, chatting (as you do!) about life, the universe, we pondered how we might make this bushland more resilient in the face of climate change (I had just been reading about the work of Brian Walker, CSIRO, on resilient ecosystems).
It seems that everytime we pull a weed out, we are making the weeds in our bushland more resilient; more capable of avoiding our weeding hands, and simultaneously making the bushland less resilient, and more dependent on our weeding hands.
How can we turn this around?

View live map Click here to download the GPX data for this map. Note, this data is an XML file - change the name to .GPX to upload to your GPS.

Amazing weather

The amazing weather continues ... a week to summer and it feels like autumn. The bushland was beautiful with the sparkling droplets of recent rain. The Geraldton Carnation Weed and Veldgrass weeds love this weather, so we go after them to stop them producing more seed.
Geraldton Carnation Weed is no problem to remove - its slender stem is easily removed with little disturbance.
The difficulty with Veldgrass is that it is hard to remove without causing some disturbance. If we leave the plant and just remove the flowering heads, we will have to come back within two weeks and do it again. Our approach is to remove isolated plants where the disturbance is less of a problem than ongoing seed production. We leave patches where there is lots of grass.

View live map Click here to download the GPX data for this map. Note, this data is an XML file - change the name to .GPX to upload to your GPS.

On the edge of the barrens

We returned to the area adjacent to the barrens where we had pulled Geraldton Carnation Weed over past couple of weeks - and took out the remnants - which keep on appearing.

Had this idea that we could get a collaborative research project going with one of the universities to explore ways of looking after the barrens area.

We cut down the Flinders Ranges Wattle we came across last weekend - collected as much as possible of the seed that has already set - it is a very prolific seeder.

Came across a bare area with lots of glass - we picked up the glass to make it a bit safer.

View live map Click here to download the GPX data for this map. Note, this data is an XML file - change the name to .GPX to upload to your GPS.

Global warming and bushland

It was nice to see a reasonable crowd come to Cottesloe beach to urge the Government to do something about global warming.
I sometimes wonder what is going to happen to Shenton Bushland (and other bushlands as well) if we have severe global warming - how will the plants, insects, birds and reptiles adapt to the changing weather? It is quite disturbing really.
It was even more disturbing to hear government ministers lie to us about how concerned they were about global warming - while at the same time undermining any attempt to do something serious.

The more it rains ...

Last year we had rain showers right up to XMas, and the Geraldton Carnation Weed loved it - and kept germinating - and we kept pulling it out as best we could before it went to seed. It looks like it is going to be similar this year ...
John and I worked in the health department area near Selby Lodge, mainly pulling out Geraldton Carnation Weeds, and any other weeds we came across (mainly pelargonium). There is a big patch of Pelargonium near Selby Lodge. We also came across a Flinders Ranges Wattle that was too big to pull out - will cut it down next weekend.

	View live map Click here to download the GPX data for this map. Note, this data is an XML file - change the name to .GPX to upload to your GPS.

They just keep on coming ...

We have had over 100mm of rain in the past 2 months - and the Geraldton Carnation Weed just love it - they keep on coming up long after the other weeds have died off. So we have to keep on going after them.
John and I also went through the Watsonia patch to pull out any remnants that we missed in winter.

View live map Click here to download the GPX data for this map. Note, this data is an XML file - change the name to .GPX to upload to your GPS.