BirdLife Castlemaine District End-of-Year Report 2025

Convenor’s Report

End-of-Year December 2025

 Birdlife Castlemaine regular program of events:

Monthly bird walks program is very well attended. We are grateful and thankful for all our volunteer walk leaders, we couldn’t put together an exciting and varied walk calendar without you. A big thank you to Bob who coordinates everything to do with walks. Bob also runs the mid week accessible bird walks every few months. A great opportunity for a sneaky bird watch on a Wednesday morning.

Monthly nature journaling slowly but surely gains popularity. A devoted core of regulars come along and usually a few new people each month. Our focus is on the birds of course, but also on their habitat so it’s akin to a field naturalist outing, with a science and art focus for recording what we see and hear around us.

The spring campout at Myrtleford was popular as always. Bob organised bird walk events coving three days and despite parts of the National Park being closed, a good time was had by all.

The autumn Nature journaling campout at Wedderburn on Doug Pococks Property turned out to be a beautiful weekend with a lovely group of nature journalers. I’d like to thank Doug for opening his stunning property to us, it was a treat.

Our inaugural Rainbow bird walk in June, booked out and was such a success, that we did another one. The winning format of an inclusive bird walk for those who identify as LGBTQ and their allies, our wonderful bird life along the Campbells Creek trail, thanks to the decades of hard work by Friends of Campbells Creek, and a delicious morning tea by Stak’s cafe to finish, is hard to beat. So we ran another one with the same wonderful partners, for Seniors Festival in November, engaging older members of the LGBTQ community.

Our annual joint Field Naturalist and BirdlLife Castlemaine talk was on eBird, delivered by Richard Alcorn. I was facinating and gave great insight into online bird surveys, citizen science and what sort of information can be gleaned from the online database. A big thank you to Jenny Roland and Euan Moore for organising the event.

Planning for 2026 Feathery Festival continues with Connecting Country. We have an exciting program planned, but I’m keeping it a secret for now … However I can tell you, that  the new Bird of the Month book is to be launched at the Feathery Festival. Damian and I have been writing Bird of the Month for about 5 years and at Lynne Kellys urging, we are turning the 55 articles we’ve written into a coffee table book, with real information in it about our local birds. It will be a beautiful book to flick through enjoying the photos of birds, or curl up on the couch and enjoy a good read.

Around the Birding Community:

I was asked to write an article on Nature Journaling for the Cape to Cape Bird Group, BirdLife WA. So now we have a beautiful connection to the other side of our enormous and amazing country.

We get asked all sorts of bird related questions, often about distressed birds. Whilst not at the core of what we do and often outside our expertise, we answer them to the best of our ability, often referring people to more useful resources than ourselves.

Once again this year we were asked by a community member to look out for our local birds, as a mine threatened to impact a local bird hotspot. I was able to refer the issue on to the BirdLife Australia Swift Parrot team, who have much better knowledge, experience and resources for tackling the issue.

BirdLife Castlemaine District has featured in the BirLife Australia’s popular magazine several times this year in short articles about what we get up to. There’s been great articles on the Rainbow walks for example, written by Anna Senior.

Our partners, whom we warmly thank:
Castlemaine Field Naturalists
Connecting Country
Castlemaine Pride
The Good Op shop
Stak’s Cafe
Dhelkaya Health

Sincere thanks and deep gratitude go to the BirdLife Castlemaine Committee. BirdLife Castlemaine is a team effort. We all lead demanding lives but feel passionately about our local birds and are willing to volunteer our time and effort for them, and importantly, our community. I would like to personally thank the team, they are a wonderful group of people and I’m honoured to be working with them and count them as my friends.

Jane Rusden
BirdLife Castlemaine District Convenor.