CNC - Taking up the challenge and keeping fit! -Marilyn Hewish
As usual I really enjoyed the CNC. Good for my fitness too. I didn’t count how many times I climbed into and out from the creek-valleys in Long Forest.
The mothing went well. I set up the light and sheet at home every night except Monday (wet, wet, wet), including turning on the moth light at midnight on Thursday. Usually I’d get up every few hours to check, but keeping in mind that I had to look for other things in the day, I limited the checks to 10 pm and 5.30 am. In Bacchus Marsh, I recorded 71 insect species, mainly moths with a wasp, a mantid and a lacewing included. On Sunday night Cathy Powers and I went to Steiglitz for mothing. It was warm and humid for a few hours and the sheet was really jumping. There was thunder and lightning all around but we had no rain. I'm told the moth people got washed out in Melbourne. I entered 30 of the species we found. Cathy would have entered more than that as she concentrates on the tiny moths that my camera can’t quite reach. She also ran her moth sheet from her home in the Brisbane Ranges. Then we had a blitz on identifications and entry into iNaturalist.
For my plant recording, I mainly focussed on Long Forest - as usual. Hardly any species were in flower. I know many plants by the leaves. With help from Chris Lindorff, Lorraine Phelan and Chris Clarke, most got over the line to Research Grade. I was thrilled to find one Brittle Greenhood Pterostylis truncata flower remaining from the several Cathy Powers and I had found eight days earlier.
On Monday, I decided I needed a walk in a new area without steep climbs. Cathy Powers recommended the Brisbane Ranges – the firebreak walk between Butchers Road and Furze Track. Dean and I remembered the area from when we were orchid fanatics (1980s). What a lovely walk. We found lots of flowers. For a few I knew the species, for some I knew the genus and for most I didn’t have a clue. I just enjoyed their beauty and the experience of lying on a soft bed of grass while photographing (rather than on the stones and hard ground of Long Forest). My favourite was Mitchell’s Wattle Acacia mitchelli in flower. Chris Lindorff told me that the Woolly Daisy-bush Olearia lanuginosa is in a disjunct population in the Brisbane Ranges (main range, Big and Little Deserts, Grampians). Then it started raining and continued for the rest of the afternoon and night.
I found the time frame for entering and confirming observations a bit short. I had little time during the event, because of plant-finding in the day and mothing at night. Many of us have hundreds of photos to organise and enter. For moths there are always many we don’t know and the research can be a long process. For those of us with expertise in a field, the confirmations of other records can take ages.
I didn’t do any shopping or housework for 10 days. The washing and kitchen situations were in crisis.
Regards, Marilyn
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