I hope so, because I’m now working full-time. I recently started a new job. My career till now has focussed largely on threatened species conservation, mostly in rural, rural-residential, and bushland environments. But I’ve become increasingly passionate about urban nature. I believe that a love of nature is what drives us to care about our environment (and alternatively, that a disconnection with nature is what causes people to not care about their impact on the environment). The only way people are going to love and connect with nature is if they encounter her often. Given that most of us live... Read more →

We had a visitor to our backyard this week... A turtle. He was a surprise visitor given that we live kilometers away from the nearest waterway. I know absolutely nothing about turtles, but managed to work out what sort of turtle he was was by searching the NSW Wildlife Atlas for reptiles in the Newcastle local government area. The results revealed only one turtle, the Eastern Snake-Necked Turtle. I checked a few images, and yep, thats him, commonly known as a 'Stinker' (i'm so glad we didn't experience the reason for this common name). We learnt heaps about these common... Read more →

Little Eco and I were delighted to be greeted by this sweet little face when we investigated some rustling in our Banana plants this afternoon. How can I be annoyed that almost all our bananas have been gobbled up when the thief is this cute? It's a threatened Grey-Headed Flying-fox. As you can see, she (or he?) is sadly a little injured. Flying-foxes are social animals and they roost together. It was still daylight and she was alone - not a good sign. After looking closer at the photograph and seeing the injuries I went back out to take a... Read more →

Monday is usually our urban adventure day. But today was busy - so instead we took a moment to wander around nearby streets looking for signs of urban nature. The concept of 'nature' is a little beyond a three year old, so I told Little Eco we were searching for bugs. I love that nature is never too far away, no matter where you are. Yes, I stole some violets out of someones garden. Anyone else willing to fess-up to collecting plants from neighbours gardens? If you're wondering what Little Eco is wearing or what that blonde hair is in... Read more →

I was being a tad unrealistic thinking we could do 24 parks in 24 days. It didn't take me long to realise racing off to a different park each afternoon was just adding another scheduled activity to an already busy scheduled day. So I've backed off to a more realistic rate of exploration. We've been having a lot of fun and have found some great (and not-so great) parks. My favourites this week were: Dip-netting for water bugs at Eucalyptus Circuit Reserve, Warabrook: We were pretty impressed with the freshwater shrimp we found and after having so much fun are... Read more →