A female Powerful Owl has been spotted with a Common ring-tail possum in her claws, not far from the Merri Parklands. Craig Lupton, Senior Biodiversity Officer, at Yarra City Council, photographed the bird near the Yarra River in  Fairfield on 16 April 2020. Craig said: "She’ll sit on it [the possum] until dusk, devour it, then fly off into the night to continue looking for a mate and foraging."  

As an apex predator, this urban Powerful Owl commonly feeds on Ring-tail possums, young Brush-tail possums, and quite possibly Grey-headed flying foxes and some species of day birds. It's inspiring to see these birds utilising our precious urban bushland areas.

The first activity of MCMC's Upper Merri Sodic & Erosive Soils Working Group kicked off with a special presentation by eminent soil scientist Dr Robert van de Graaff in October 2019.  Dr van de Graaff explained that due to the geological and climate history of the Merri Creek catchment, most soils in the catchment are sodic and thus highly susceptible to erosion. These soils present major challenges for urban development and until now have been largely overlooked.  Detailed mapping of the soils and assessment of the degree of risk they pose is sorely needed. Dr van de Graaff's presentation is here (8.8MB pdf). 

Photo: The muddy Merri (foreground), thick with sediment from sodic soils in the upper catchment, meets the Yarra, June 2018 © Katrina Roberg

Everyone in Melbourne's northern suburbs has heard of Merri Creek (well almost).  Real Estate ads often list "close to Merri Creek" as part of a property's attractions.  That's a stark contrast to four decades ago when property near Merri Creek, at that time considered as a weed-infested drain, was so cheap that Councils were able to buy up properties to create parts of what is now the Merri Creek parklands.

How far from Merri Creek does today's positive effect extend? A terrific blog article (in April 2019), not by Merri Creek Management Committee, answers this question. Using on-line data to analyse real estate ads and generate maps, the author shows that properties up to 1.3km from Merri Creek include the word "Merri" in their description.  Read the full article here.  

Under the guidance of Uncle Dave Wandin and the Wurundjeri Tribe Council’s Narrap Team,⁠ Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) staff participated in their first cool burn at Bababi Djinanang Grassland, Fawkner in mid-July 2019. Cool burns, also known as cultural burns, are conducted using traditional Indigenous land management techniques.

They differ from our usual ecological burns which are normally done in mid-autumn, with a hot fire which moves fast due to the largely dried out vegetation. In contrast, cool burns are done following heavy rains, when the soil is wet and lots of green vegetation has resprouted. The cool fire moves slowly and burns a patchy mosaic, giving wildlife time to move to safe ground.