The song goes 'From little things big things grow ...' and gosh has our pollinator awareness project done some growing since the previous round.

This will be our third running of the Wild Pollinator Count and this time we've teamed up with the Slopes to Summit (S2S) partnership, which has enabled us to run some extra events locally and to produce new support materials.

We kick off today and would love you to join in!

As for previous counts, the idea is to watch a flowering plant for 10 minutes and report which pollinator insects you see. The goals are to raise awareness about pollinators as well as to record where they are being sighted. You don't need fancy gear nor to be an expert.

And you can participate from anywhere in Australia, anytime between the 15th and 22nd of November.

All the details are on the Wild Pollinator Count website (wildpollinatorcount.com) and to encourage you to click over there here are a few of the extra activities on offer locally: 

• Macro photography workshop at Burrumbuttock (Sun 15th Nov)
• Public counts and opportunity to learn about pollinator insects at the Albury Botanic Gardens (during the day, Wed 18th Nov)
• "It's amazing ... " Guest speaker Michael Batley from the Australian Museum on native bees and citizen science projects (7pm, Wed 18th Nov, Albury)
• S2S Bioblitz and Wild Pollinator Count schools' day (Thurs 19 Nov)
• Pollinator photo competition, with $1,000 in prizes up for grabs and it's not only about the "best" pollinator pics!

The full details for these can be found in our events listings.  

Plus we've created a glovebox guide to the common pollinators of our area, which can be accessed online. 

Plus there are also updated our resources for telling the difference between bees, flies and wasps; tips on how to run your own count event with other people; and you can download and print a tally sheet to keep track of what you see.

Whether you make it to any of the special events or not, we'd love you to find 10 mins on a sunny day during the week to add your observations about pollinator insects at your place!

For more information pop over to wildpollinatorcount.com and consider joining our email list to receive updates about the project. 

We're grateful to the Slopes to Summit partnership of the Great Eastern Ranges initiative with funding from the NSW Environmental Trust for their support that has enabled these events and resources.