The BioBlitz at Harry Bowey Reserve was held as part of National Science Week on the 22nd and 23rd of August, 2014. A BioBlitz involves a team of scientists working with the public to discover and record the life of a park or reserve: everything from brightly-coloured beetles to seldom-seen bats, from cheeky possums to wonderful water-bugs. Over 450 people joined us at Harry Bowey Reserve in the City of Salisbury.
The BioBlitz started in the morning on Friday 22nd with a series of activities for local school classes. These hands-on sessions teamed school students with expert presenters who ran local wildlife demonstrations with snakes, spiders and potoroos, conducted water-bug sampling from the Little Para River, created nature-art, and surveyed local birds and fungi.
From Friday afternoon through to Saturday afternoon, scientists worked with the public to survey the local biodiversity. Surveys were conducted for:
Frogs – looking for them and listening for their calls
Birds – in the evening and the morning
Mammals – tracks and traces during the day, and spotlighting at night
Ants – both nocturnal and diurnal
Bats – recording their echolocation with an AnaBat device
Water-bugs – netting in the Little Para River and inspecting them under microscopes
Insects – attracting them to a light trap
Native plants – mapping their locations
Weeds – spotting the nasties!
Fungi – finding wild fungi
Reptiles – looking under rocks and bark