The autumn 2018 Wild Pollinator Count has now finished. Please submit any observations made during the count period by the 22nd of April.
For your diary: the spring 2018 Wild Pollinator Count runs November 11-18th.
Australia has lots of wild pollinator insects that are often overlooked. European honey bees get a lot of attention because they are an adaptable, generalist forager, which means they are happy to visit almost any flower, in most climate zones. They are also a social species, so their hives are easy to domesticate and manage.
However, many native insects also contribute to pollination in crops and gardens all around the country. We still need to do a lot of research to identify all our pollinator insect species, understand their ecology and how they are affected by human activities. So far, we know that Australia has around 2,000 native bee species, all of which are important pollinators. We also know there are a couple of thousand butterfly, wasp, fly, moth, beetle, thrips and ant species, some of which are documented pollinators. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of information on the ecology of many of these insects, what flowers they pollinate, or where they are found.
The Wild Pollinator Count gives you an opportunity to contribute to wild pollinator insect conservation in Australia. We invite you to count wild pollinators in your local environment and help us build a database on wild pollinator activity.
You can join in by watching any flowering plant for just ten minutes sometime in our count week.
- You don’t need to be an insect expert.
- You don’t need fancy gear.
- You may be surprised by what you see!
Find out how to count pollinators, identify the insects you see and submit your observations through the links at the top of the page. You can also download our Run Your Own Count kit and organise to count with a group.
If you have any questions or comments about the count, please email us at wildpollinatorcount@gmail.com.
Thank you!
GREAT IDEA!!
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We have a great resource for Tasmanian Insects here – https://sites.google.com/site/insectsoftasmania/home
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I had these little guys on my tomatoes they cute little things and they only hit the tomatoes
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Excellent sie you’ve got here.. It’s difficult to finnd quality writing like yours nowadays.
I truly appreciate people like you! Take care!!
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The University of Canberra Environmental Science Society will be doing counts for the next 3 days! Hopefully we find some interesting pollinators on campus.
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What a fabulous idea, I’m definitely doing this.
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Please confirm 2017 Spring Wild pollinator count dates
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Hi Katrina, the spring 2017 count period will run Sun 12th to Sun 19th of November. And we much appreciated the shout-out in your recent newsletter! Cheers, Karen
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Happy spotting these school holidays to all my Year 7 Timber Technology students and their parents in Wodonga.
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This is a much needed, ground-up program that could benefit society as a whole. May I suggest that with the introduction to the program, perhaps the ppl in charge of this important initiative should talk a bit about what harms these pollinators and what every household could do to minimise the harm? Perhaps get ppl to switch to more organic way of growing things? Just a suggestion…. happy to contribute in any way possible… 😊
TJ
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I am organising a WildPollinator lunch in my garden on the 18th. All invitees have RSVP and are looking forward to the day.
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I have Bumble bees, Honey Bees, & Hover flies feeding in cream flowered Melaleuca as I write this. Insects are amazing & great idea to do a count! Joan 😊
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Forgot to say I’m on East Coast Tassie Joan 😊
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Terrific Joan, sounds like you’ll be boosting the “spotted in Tassie” records. We look forward to seeing your submission/s!
They sure are amazing!
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Hi Folks, Love the Project’s aims & concept. I just downloaded the kit pdf, and the 1st 2 pages are unreadable because of a very large butterfly image that overlays the text. It doesn’t show on my screen when I look at your site’s images of the pages, but it does in both the kit download and the individual page downloads.
Pls let me know when the problems resolved so I can re-download.
Thanks,
Mazza V
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Thanks for the heads up Mazza!
I guess it’s a PDF issue, as I can’t seem to replicate it here. I have updated the kit (the link was to an older version, maybe the current one overcomes this problem?).
Alternatively, I’ve also removed the butterfly watermark from the stand-alone file. Please see if either/both work for you.
Cheers, Karen
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Thanks for that Karen.
So far it hasn’t worked this end ~ Tried opening the individual pdf (‘Plan & Run’), and got a 404 msg. Then tried ‘Save Target as’ and Msg was ” ‘Plan & Count …..’ couldn’t be downloaded.”
I’m getting on with it anyway, but imagine you’d want to know.
Regards,
Mazza
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Sorry Mazza – have been busy with Count events so didn’t let you know, this should be ok now (take 2)! I’ll email it too. All good – this kit is aimed at groups and organisations wanting to run their own event, rather than individuals. 🙂 Hope you’ve had some fun with a count or two.
Cheers, Karen
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Great idea and happy to be involved.
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Looking forward to updates as my bee hotel is vacant.
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Looks cool. I plant veges/flowers in spring. Will look out for pollinators. S.E. Qld
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I am running a session with our local primary school this afternoon! It is a small school of only 11 students.
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Fantastic – thanks for joining in, and for those submissions from your students!
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