Category: Projects

Thank you to everyone who turned up yesterday to help out with the habitat corridor on the Driscoll property. We had a great crew of young people, new members, new landholders in the area joining us for the first time, some visitors from Maldon, and some Muckleford Landcare members whose faces we hadn’t seen for a while due to Covid.

Thanks to the Driscoll family for coming out in force to join the Landcare group in guarding the plants, and with the dinner. It was lovely to work with such engaged landholders.

Our trusty contractors worked all day Saturday and half the day Sunday to put in 3,000 plants. Contractors, Dave and Nioka then stayed on to help with the guarding of the plants on Sunday afternoon. Now it’s up to the Driscolls to make sure those plants get a drink while we’re waiting on the rain!

This project was funded by DELWP Community Volunteer Action Grants for on-ground biodiversity.

The contractors are out there today planting our habitat corridor. Join us tomorrow (Sunday 6th February) starting at 3pm to guard the plants. All the guards have been made so tomorrow we just have to get them onto the plants. All drinks and food will be supplied including a gourmet vegetarian feast for dinner. Please bring gloves and ‘sock savers’.

We will be on the Muckleford-School Road, down towards the Maldon-Castlemaine Road end. Please ring Beth on 0431219980 if you have any questions.

MUCKLEFORD LANDCARE HABITAT CORRIDOR PROJECT as funded by the Victorian State Government, Community Volunteer Action Grants 2021

The Landcare community day will be Sunday 6th February, starting at 3pm. A vegetarian BBQ will be provided for dinner, as I’m hoping we can work until dusk. We would love to see as many of our Landcare members as possible come out. We will have free booklets and guides available at our information table, and food and drinks will be provided. Meet the landowners and take part in our project recording. Entry to the property is along the Muckleford School Road, opposite the Muckleford Bushland Reserve. Please RSVP for catering purposes.

Muckleford Catchment Landcare Group members, Eleanor and Albi, have taken the final set of photos as part of the Photopoint monitoring for the Bassett Creek planting. Have a look at how much the trees have grown by clicking on the files below.

Here are the three years of photos:

It was a beautiful sunny Autumn day in which we found ourselves checking the nest boxes on the Walmer South Nature Conservation Reserve. Six of us got the job done in just under three hours. We have a total of 89 boxes but only 77 are for mammals, including bats. The other boxes are for pardalotes and owlet nightjars which are not a part of our monitoring program.

The number of critters seen were down on last year, with a total of 25 – 4 x Brush-tailed Possums, 12 x Sugargliders, and 9 x bats. Although we didn’t see any Brush-tailed Phascogales, there were 7 fresh nests in the boxes giving us an indication of occupation this season.

Muckleford Catchment Landcare Group will carry out its annual nest box monitoring at the Walmer South Nature Conservation Reserve (Muckleford-Walmer Road) on SUNDAY 23RD MAY 2021, 10am start.

Join us to monitor our 88 boxes, and wander around the reserve. The event will be cancelled in bad weather and no food or drink will be supplied. Wear sturdy footwear and bring your own drink bottle.

Call Beth if required 0431219980.

Well done Muckleford Landcare members and new friends who turned up on Clean Up Australia Day at the Muckleford Bushland Reserve on the Muckleford School Road. We ended up with a trailer load of barbed wire, and around 16 bags of rubbish and recycling. Let’s hope people stop dumping their rubbish on this site. Our next event is on Sunday 18th April, 10am to 11.30am when we go for a quick walk to look for Autumn Greenhoods. Details to follow.

Join us for Clean Up Australia Day on SUNDAY 7th MARCH, 10am to 1pm, at the Muckleford Bushland Reserve, Muckleford School Road, Muckleford. We will be holding an activity to clean up rubbish from the reserve and have some lunch together. Bring your own gloves but everything else will be provided, including lunch (at this stage, there are no restrictions for this event, but we are ‘at the ready’ for a cancellation, so maybe pencil in your diaries).

You need to register (and pay a small donation to Clean Up Australia Day) by going to the site https://www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/fundraisers/bethmellick/muckleford-bushland-reserve

The Muckleford Landcare committee is taking ‘shifts’ to clean up the Bassett Creek planting. People are going in twos to take off the guards from our last community planting, as funded by the NCCMA. Plants are doing really well and will hopefully take the form of a corridor with the previous plantings from 16 years ago.

 

Dear Members, we have carried out the annual monitoring of the Walmer Conservation Reserve. We did this in small groups – Beth, Nev, Theo and Eleanor in the morning; and Beth, Nev, Theo and Dave in the afternoon. We’re sorry we couldn’t extend the invitation to more members, but we didn’t want to break any Covid-19 restrictions.

Here are our results for 2020:

-we checked 88 boxes on the day
-10 x Brush-tailed Possums; 1 x Brush-tailed Phascogale; 13 x Sugar Gliders; 11 x bats
-20 of the boxes contained a critter: 6 had sugar gliders, 10 had possums, 1 had a phascogale, and 3 contained bats (bat species unverified at this point)
-7 of the boxes had evidence of phascogales using them (fresh nests)
-8 of the total boxes were for pardalotes (so no activity this time of year or evidence of use)
-35 critters in total
-2 boxes had bees