International flippin' Rock-flipping Day

When I started this blog 10 months ago, I looked at overseas models and found some excellent ones. I wanted a vehicle to record my natural history and other adventures, with photos, to share with my friends and interested others (who might become friends). And to find like-minded individuals and get help with identification of creatures. I’d been keeping a natural history field note book for years, and a blog seemed a natural extension of that.

I found that the blogging community is huge. In general, bloggers are very supportive of each other. I discovered such things as blog carnivals, where one blog collates the posts of others on a particular topic. It’s always fun to see what people overseas come up with.

Natural history blog carnivals that I am aware of are Festival of the Trees (for tree lovers), Circus of the Spineless (for insect and other crawly/fluttery critter enthusiasts) and International Rock-flipping Day (no prizes for guessing what that involves). I’m sure there are others. Some are regular, some irregular.

This is the list of blogs that participated in this year’s IRFD on 11 September. It was hosted this year (the fifth) by Wanderin’ Weeta on the west coast of Canada.

http://bit.ly/qJCU4D
A Roving I will Go

http://bit.ly/r3miZE
Outside my Window

http://bit.ly/p76Jdc
Rebecca in the Woods

http://fertanish.net/wp2011/?p=121
Fertanish Chatter

http://bit.ly/nAinPh
Bug Safari

http://bit.ly/qpxEFd
Growing with Science Blog

http://bit.ly/nJXPHa
Wild About Ants

http://bit.ly/pDtpWl
Powell River Books Blog

http://bit.ly/p2vQhc
Meandering Washington

http://bit.ly/nYnjWm
Cicero Sings

http://bit.ly/odH0Yf
Via Negativa

http://bit.ly/n6Q6v9
Mainly Mongoose

http://bit.ly/qbf9iI
Chicken Spaghetti

http://bit.ly/owdJev
Wanderin’ Weeta

http://bit.ly/qQjEVI
Rock, Paper, Lizard

http://bit.ly/qx1Be5
Cabin Girl

From Twitter:

http://yfrog.com/kjnd9exj
At Rattan Creek ff. From @gjesse on Twitter

And the
http://bit.ly/rftHSR
Flickr group.

The more delving I’ve done, the more I realise there really are an awful lot of Aussie nature bloggers. Hooray!

In no particular order, but starting locally, there’s Mary Gardner’s Tangle of Life. Mary writes for the Byron Shire Echo, among other things.

Talking nature is about “the ecology of the Australasian landscape and the conservation efforts being made to maintain it”.

Further south we have, at Robertson in the Southern Highlands south of Sydney, The nature of Robertson. Denis has a big blogroll of Aussie nature blogs on the right-hand side of his page. While I would like to list all 44 (!), he does a better job than I, so head on over and check out any that take your fancy.

One not on Denis’s list is Robert Rath, a photographer and diver in South Australia. I look in on him from time to time as South Australia is one of my old stamping grounds, and I have dived in some of the same places he has, but without a camera. Some fine underwater shots there.

Some I haven’t had time to investigate yet: Nature Web lists many Australian nature blogs, with an update here. Kathie’s photos has Kathie Thomas’s excellent Australian wildlife and landscape photos, and there are more photos and commentary at Mark David’s blog. There’s also Garden guests at Kuranda in far north Queensland.

Apologies to the many others I haven’t found yet – would love to find more.

These folks are from all over Australia, and a fine job they are doing to share information with like-minded souls. Keep up the good work, folks!

Aussie blogger hard at work gathering material for her blog