Fryers Ridge Nature Conservation Reserve

After the long dry summer, Frances Cincotta got lucky with the weather for the first FOBIF walk of 2025.  The group enjoyed seeing the bush soak up the cool air and gentle rain in a 5 km circuit along the Fryers Ridge Road and Antonios Track through the Fryers Forest.

 

Although the diverse shrub layer was showing all the stresses of the last few weeks, the rapidly responding mosses and lichens were a highlight, almost visibly expanding to absorb the welcome showers.

 

We saw a large flock of Whitebrowed Wood Swallows, and dense clouds of swarming termites along the track nearby. The rain may have provoked both events. According to Simpson and Day, flying insects are the swallows’ main diet and the birds cluster and roost closely together after a marked fall in temperature such as we saw on Sunday.

Deirdre Slattery