AGM 2018 Report

Michelle and her Stick Insect

Saturday evening found the Fassifern Field Naturalists once again back at the Baptist Hall in Macquarie Street, Boonah for their Annual General Meeting.

President, Keith, welcomed all members and guests, and the formal section of the meeting was dealt with fairly quickly. The President summarised the year’s activities and brought members up to speed with the new naturalist brochures being developed. He thanked the committee for their support in 2017/18. The Treasurer reported a small profit and felt no need to change the fees. The Recorder gave a review of the members’ sightings in 2017/18. These are all recorded on the database. The new committee (which is the same as the old committee) was elected.

Michelle Gleeson, our guest speaker

Michelle Gleeson, the guest speaker, was then introduced. Michelle is the director, co-founder and South East Queensland presenter for Bugs Ed. Since 2003, Bugs Ed. has been providing a range of hands-on entomology based workshops for students of all ages, in order to encourage and expand their interest in insects. 

Insects are often hard to identify. More than half of Australia's insects can't be identified to species level because they haven’t been named yet. The most that should be expected is classification of larger species to Order and/or Family level. We were taken through some of the groups of insects, and their differing characteristics. The talk was highly entertaining with some quirky insect facts thrown in. Michelle neither talked down to us or over our heads. Her illustrations were excellent, and her display boxes fascinating. She finished with an exhibit of a female Stick Insect which calmly rested (most of the time) on her hands while she spoke.

Michelle with one of her specimen boxes

Insect specimens (and other arthropods) on display

Michelle's talk was received with acclamation and the meeting closed. Whereupon the delicious supper was laid out and everybody got down to the serious business of socializing.