2012 planting weekends
	11 - 12 August 2012
	25 - 26 August 2012
	08 - 09 September 2012
	22 - 23 September 2012

Autumn 2011 Update

The Regent Honeyeater Project must seem pretty quiet lately, but we are really steaming ahead behind the scenes getting everything ready for the coming planting season.

The nursery is looking fabulous, with over 40,000 seedlings growing very healthily. They have been very carefully tended by Andie, Dale and our 2 new locals Chris and Helen. It has involved individual fertiliser and watering regimes for lots of dry hill country plants that really hate having too much nutrient and moisture. Clever nursery work indeed!! Andie and Dale have also worked methodically through the long list of nest box repairs and replacements, as well as removing feral bees from around 70 boxes.

It has been very rewarding to see the successful outcomes of many careful box relocations that we did last year. We moved many boxes to different trees nearby to give the animals better shade and cooler conditions in summer. In every case I've seen animals move in where they simply couldn't survive before. So we are being even more careful about nest box placements now, shifting any that have poor protection from the sun.

I've been busy getting this year's 25-30 planting sites accurately measured and mapped, grants organised for farmers to cover the fencing, contractors organised to help with slashing, ripping, spraying, fencing, woody weed removal, post ramming, installing culverts in a creek line for a stock crossing, mistletoe removal, building an extra hot house for our nursery, building more nest boxes with a school, arranging a lecture for Deakin Univ Dip Ed course, excursions and presentations for 2 primary schools and a secondary school, applying for small equipment grants to make the nursery work easier on our volunteer helpers, ordering tree guards, getting the Hume Freeway Squirrel Glider crossing underway, teaching people how to deal with rabbit plagues on their planting sites, etc etc.....

I guess that's why there has been no time to write and fill you all in!!

Happy times until we see you in the planting season.

Ray Thomas,

Regent Honeyeater Co-ordinator.

26 May 2011