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Nandewar fieldwork gallery

The Bioregions of New South Wales.
The Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Research team in the field, just before the inaugural hat judging competition.
Digging a pitfall with an auger.  Often areas that have been selected for sampling have rock or rocky substrate underneath the topsoil, making installing the pitfalls difficult.
Each site has to be marked so that anyone intending to locate the site to collect the pitfalls can do so easily.  The easiest option is to use flagging tape, seen here being tied to trees.  The flagging tape is collected when the sampling is complete.
A pitfall and flagging tape installed and ready to trap.
Insects can use camouflage very effectively.  This photo shows a Praying Mantis on tree trunk.
Retrieving pitfalls in a mixed White Cypress and Tumbledown habitat.
To complement pitfall sampling we used techniques to capture arboreal insects.  Here, insects are being beaten into a beating net before being sucked into a collection vial.
A UFO or a giant space anemone?  Actually a particular cloud formation called a lenticular cloud.
All pitfalls require a lid in order to keep the rain out.  Here a lid is having pegs attached as legs before being placed over the top of the pitfall.
It's important to record as much information as possible about a sampling location. In the last few years this has also included the capture of digital photos of each site.
Helen Doherty standing in front of a mountain of tailings from the abandoned Woodsreef asbestos mine near Barraba.
At the end of each day's sampling it was time to collate and archive any samples that were collected.  Here plant material collected during beating is being placed in a plant press.
The view from the top of Mt Kaputar looking toward Narrabri.
A Tachinid fly on a tree trunk.  Tachinid larvae are almost all parasitic on other insects.

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