In June 2016, ten bird monitoring sites were established in the Greta Valley catchment with the assistance of Chris Tzaros from Bush, Birds and Beyond. These sites were established as part of a broader Swamps, Rivers and Ranges project funded by the Wettenhall Environment Trust that hopes to monitor 50 sites in the project area seasonally over a four year period. Further information about this long term monitoring program can be found here.
Sites were carefully selected in the Greta catchment to be representative of the quality and structure of vegetation across our landscape, including road reserves, scattered paddock trees, public reserves and remnant vegetation. The sites are clustered in locations around Glenrowan, Greta West, Greta, Hansonville and Myrrhee.
Five years later, and we have continued our program of monitoring these 10 sites every quarter. We are very thankful to our volunteer bird monitors – Fiona McCallum, Helen Champlin, Lorraine Griffiths and Matt Bolte, and to our previous monitors Cate Geard, Carole Kunert and Narelle Grantham.
In 2021, we added an additional two monitoring sites to increase our diversity of site types, by sampling two sites with substantial revegetation and enhancement of the understorey through ongoing planting.
The survey involves walking for 20 minutes along a transect approximately 200 m long and watching and listening for bird species and recording your observations during that time. Sites are surveyed quarterly, to provide for one survey period per season. Read more about the bird survey method or check out the field sheet for recording bird observations.
Please contact Matt Bolte, our Bird Monitoring Co-ordinator on 0422 702 309 or birdmonitoring@gretalandcare.org.au for more information or details on how to get involved with our bird monitoring program.