Just a quick reminder that the Official Wild Pollinator Count is still on hiatus! We’re busy with family commitments and we are taking some time to collate and analyse the seven years of data we collected during our official counts. All updates on the project, including when it’s time to count again, will be posted here on our website in due course.
Hope you are enjoying spring in your local patch!
Spring Wild Pollinator Count finishes this Sunday November 21, so it’s your last chance to do a count this weekend! Thank you to everyone who has contributed a count already.
As usual, we will leave the submission form open for one week, to allow you time to get your counts submitted. But remember, we can only accept counts that were done during the count week 14-21 November.
After submissions close on November 21, we will start collating the data and hope to have results posted by the end of the year.
Remember, we are taking a break after this count, so there will be no coordinated counts in 2022 – we hope you still enjoy looking out for wild pollinators wherever you go!
Thanks for joining in and happy pollinator counting!
Spring 2021 Wild Pollinator Count starts now – you can join in any time between Sunday 14 and Sunday 21 November.
If you’re new to the count, read this page to find out the standardised method you need to follow to do a count. It’s simple to do and only takes 10 minutes!
Once you’ve done a count, you can submit your observations here. You can do as many individual counts as you want within the count week, but each one should be submitted on a seperate form.
Check out our resources page for identification tips and resources, including an updated version of our Pollinator ID guide.
Happy counting!
It’s almost time to join in on a Wild Pollinator Count. The spring 2021 count runs from 14-21 November.
This will be the last chance to contribute to our count data! We are taking a break after this count to analyse the data so far and to focus on other commitments. We hope you continue looking out for wild pollinators in your backyard, even though we won’t be running coordinated counts for a while.
During the count week, you just need to take 10 minutes to watch a flowering plant and count the number of different flower visitors you see. Find out more about How to Count here. Remember, you should only watch a single flowering plant – we cannot accept observations that have observed multiple different plants at once within a garden.
Submit your observations via our easy online form here on the website.
You can connect with us on social media via our hashtag #WildPollinatorCount, or #Ozpollinators.
Happy counting!
Thank you to everyone who participated in our autumn count this year. The weather during the count week was less than ideal for pollinator spotting in many parts of the country, with our great continent living up to its diverse nature! This is a great example of how unpredictable field-based science can be – the best laid plans can be dashed at the last minute by bad weather.
We received just over 580 usable records this count from over 200 unique postcode locations (click on the image below to view interactively in Google Maps). Records came in from all states and territories.
Over 4,500 individual insects were observed in our count categories. Again, the European honey bee was the most commonly observed flower visitor, followed by our native bees.
| Count category | Number of individuals | Percentage of all categories |
| BEES – European honey bees | 2,284 | 50.6% |
| BEES – Blue-banded bees | 180 | 4.0% |
| BEES – Other bees | 778 | 17.2% |
| BEETLES – Ladybird beetles | 58 | 1.3% |
| BEETLES – Other beetles | 41 | 0.9% |
| BUTTERFLIES and MOTHS | 414 | 9.2% |
| FLIES – Hoverflies | 275 | 6.1% |
| FLIES – Other flies | 364 | 8.1% |
| WASPS – European wasps | 83 | 1.8% |
| WASPS – Other wasps | 35 | 0.8% |
Most of the flowering plants that were observed were exotic (67%), with the remainder being native (33%). Similar to other counts, this is likely because many people are doing counts in their gardens where we tend to find a higher proportion of exotic plants.
Only a few records were not able to be included in our data, as they didn’t meet the reporting requirements – the most common issues were counts that entered estimated numbers in the categories (e.g. ‘over 100’) instead of actual counts, and counts that observed multiple flowers or whole sections of a garden, rather than focusing on a single plant species.
Thank you again, we really appreciate you participating and hope you enjoyed counting as much as we did!
Check out the photo gallery from this count, with thanks to people who gave us permission to share their photos showcasing our diverse backyard pollinating insects. You can also find our project on iNaturalist as usual – and don’t forget you can continue adding your iNat pollinator observations to our project year round.
Look forward to seeing you again next count!
Autumn Wild Pollinator Count finishes this Sunday April 18, so it’s your last chance to do a count this weekend! Thank you to everyone who has contributed a count already.
As usual, we will leave the submission form open for one week, to allow you time to get your counts submitted. But remember, we can only accept counts that were done during the count week 11-18 April.
After submissions close on April 25, we will start collating the data and hope to have results posted by end of May.
Thanks for joining in and happy pollinator counting!
Autumn Wild Pollinator Count starts now – you can join in any time between Sunday 11 and Sunday 18 April.
If you’re new to the count, read this page to find out the standardised method you need to follow to do a count. It’s simple to do and only takes 10 minutes!
Once you’ve done a count, you can submit your observations here. You can do as many individual counts as you want within the count week, but each one should be submitted on a seperate form.
Check out our resources page for identification tips and resources, including an updated version of our Pollinator ID guide (thanks to Victorian Department of Environment Land Water and Planning).
Happy counting!
Wild Pollinator Count time has rolled around again. The autumn 2021 count runs from 11-18 April.
This has been another challenging summer in many parts of Australia, with fires on the west and floods on the east, so you may see a change in your local pollinators. Hope you are all safe.
During the count week, you just need to take 10 minutes to watch a flowering plant and count the numbers of different flower visitors you see. Find out more about How to Count here. Remember, you should only watch a single flowering plant – we cannot accept observations that have observed multiple different plants at once within a garden.
Submit your observations via our easy online form here on the website.
You can connect with us on social media via our hashtag #WildPollinatorCount, or #Ozpollinators.
Happy counting!
It took us a little longer than usual to collate results this year, for understandable reasons! It’s been a challenging year, and we hope you’re all keeping safe and well.
The spring count happened 8-15 November 2020. We received just over 1000 submitted observations (1028 usable records, 18 were removed for incomplete data) representing over 12,000 insects! This is a drop from our all-time submissions record in autumn 2020 (in the midst of the first COVID lockdowns!), but still well above last spring’s count. Thank you to all who participated during what has been a difficult year for all of us.
Continue reading “Spring 2020 results are here!”Thank you to everyone who participated in our biggest count yet! A total of 1959 valid observations were submitted this count. Our previous record was 736 observations, in spring 2019, so this is a huge increase! The autumn 2020 count coincided with COVID-19 lockdowns around the country, so we hope you enjoyed the opportunity to take some time with nature in your backyard.
We were so overwhelmed with the number of records, it has taken us much longer than usual to summarise the data! The huge number of submissions also caused some technical issues for our website, so we apologise if you received delayed confirmation of your submissions. We are working to fix these potential issues for future counts. For those new to Wild Pollinator Count, we are an unfunded project run by two people (Manu & Karen) and we thank everyone for their patience as we work through the responses. We really appreciate the many contributions and positive feedback we get at every count!
So, what were the results? Continue reading “Autumn 2020 count results”
Wild Pollinator Count 