Be careful when walking along the gravel tracks on Red Hill this month in case you tread on flocks of tiny Common Grass Blue butterflies congregating on the damp gravel. Dr Suzi Bond says that these butterflies are ‘mud-puddling’, where butterflies aggregate to access minerals dissolved in the damp soil. There will be more fascinating insights from Suzi when she leads the Butterfly Walk on Red Hill on Sunday 22 January 2017.

Author Dr Suzi Bond launched the ‘ACT Butterflies Field Guide’ this week at a packed event held at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. Copies of the book can be purchased for $25 from the ANBG bookshop, National Arboretum, Namadgi and Tidbinbilla Visitors Centres and Dymocks Bookshop. It is highly recommended for anyone living in the ACT and with an interest in its butterflies.

Dr Bond was also interviewed on ABC about the book. More….  

The vehicle track between the Mugga Way car park and Brereton Street will be repaired between December 2016 and January 2017. The purpose of the repair is to ensure that bushfire access is maintained. See map here…

For our final activity on Red Hill for 2016, a determined dozen hard core Regenerators spent two hours of a hot, humid Sunday morning batting away bush flies with one hand, wiping sweat from the eyes with the other, while simultaneously removing a wide range of weeds, including blackberries, briar rose, privet, cotoneasta, pyracantha, thistles, verbascum, tree of heaven, nettle tree, cootamundra wattles and probably a few more, from the hillside above Curlewis Street. (more…)

The Red Hill Regenerators invite you to our AGM and last working bee of 2016 on Sunday 4 December 2016

Since our last working bee the St John’s Wort has exploded across Red Hill in a blaze of yellow. We have been advised that some contractor spraying is scheduled, but from the photo below, it looks like a mammoth task.  The good news is that the verbascum outbreaks are much less than last year, and could be a result of our concentrated efforts on rosette spraying and flower beheading.

This month we will move over to the ‘shadier’ west side of the hill where there is a good supply of woody weeds, some thistles and verbascum to work on.

We will work until 11am morning tea when we will hold our AGM.  Visit our website at http://redhillregenerators.org.au/?page_id=460 to view the Committee and volunteer positions available to any member who nominates to the Secretary before the meeting. At that page you will also find the AGM Agenda, Draft 2015 AGM Minutes, President’s and Treasurers reports. (more…)

Notes from the Wildflower Walk, including a list of plants observed.

The annual wildflower walk was held on Red Hill on a hot and humid Sunday 20 November 2016. Over 30 Friends of Red Hill spent a fascinating two hours with Dr Michael Mulvaney in the area of Red Hill currently included in the Federal Golf Club lease, hearing about the history, ecology and critical importance of returning this magnificent Yellow Box Red Gum Grassy Woodland to the Red Hill Nature Reserve.

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One of the historic red flowering plants, which were planted to a Walter Burley Griffin plan on Red Hill by Charles Weston in around 1920, is in full bloom and looking very healthy. It can be viewed by walking about 30m up the track from the Red Hill lookout towards the Optus mobile phone tower. Look under a small acacia bush on the right side of the track.

Swainsona galegifolia (Darling Pea)

A recent review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate (Roundup) by four independent expert panels concludes that glyphosate is ‘unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans’. More…