Media Release Friends of Sherwood Arboretum   (The Local Bulletin February 2021)

Recording mother nature!

Sherwood Arboretum, our city’s third botanic gardens, is an ideal place both to discover and to record mother nature.

In addition to its valued collection of some 1100 Australian native specimen trees, the Arboretum has so much more to offer visitors keen to enjoy an authentic nature experience.

Sherwood Arboretum is a valued home for bush, water and wading birds and a variety of other native wildlife from insect-eating micro bats and eastern short-necked turtles to striped marsh frogs and echidnas.

While the freshwater wetlands are an excellent location for wildlife, the Arboretum also has a rainforest boardwalk leading to the banks of the Brisbane River, home to estuarine mangroves providing habitat and nursery areas for fish, crabs and birdlife.

No one appreciates the Arboretum’s rich birdlife more than Professor Hugh Possingham, Queensland’s new Chief Scientist and Patron of the Friends of Sherwood Arboretum.

Hugh traces his lifetime passion for birdwatching to trips as an eight-year-old with his Dad into the South Australian desert where his first interest in make-believe ‘ant wars’ with plastic soldiers gave way to an overwhelming curiosity in finding out what birds lived where.

In keeping with the invaluable role of citizen science in improving conservation management and education, Hugh and fellow birdwatchers record their Arboretum bird sightings on eBird, an international database at Cornell University in the U.S.  https://ebird.org/hotspot/L1007610/activity

Incidentally, if you would like to explore the possibilities of being a citizen science volunteer, a good place to start is the Queensland pages on the Australian Citizen Science Project Finder                                      

‘The Arboretum today certainly attracts lots of visitors keen to explore nature because it’s such an easy place to see interesting birdlife and other wildlife,’ Hugh said.

‘It’s really no surprise that some 170 species of birds have been recorded in the Arboretum over the past 20 years.’

For more information, please visit the Sherwood Arboretum website http://sherwoodarboretum.com.au

image captions

Professor Hugh Possingham records his bird sightings on an international database.

A Red-backed Fairywren, a stunning bush bird

An expert fisherman, the Australasian Darter