Ellura Sanctuary, Swan Reach, SA, 5354
                      
Awards
We have been quite surprised this year (2022) to have received a lot of positive attention, unknowingly nominated for 3 awards.
Thank you so much to all those people who were involved.

  • 31 March 2022, Highly Commended, The Australian Government Individual Landcarer Category, 2021 SA Landcare Award.
    We prepared a short video clip highlighting the work we do here

  • 1 April 2022, Fred O'Mallee, our Giant Mallee, was voted SA Tree of the Year.
    We made a bit of a song & dance about it here

    The ABC had a chat about him as well here

  • 21 August 2022, The 2022 Citizen Science Award for Outstanding Achievement, from The Murraylands & Riverland Landscape Board.
    We were interviewed on ABC Radio, by Sophie Landau here

Poster
Marianne Broug Vielle, from SA Natureteers Facebook group, created this amazing A3 poster of some inverts she's photographed at Belair National Park. She's keen on people using it for education, particularly for our children, etc. It only costs $1.50 to print it in A3 at Office Works. Click here to download the poster

Thank you
We'd like to thank all these people for giving their time and energy to help identify our local species; allowing our web site to be so useful to others. At times, people like to remain anonymous. As such their iNaturalist (or other) username is used here to respect their privacy; it doesn't diminish their help though.

  • (AldingaRoo)
  • (BaronSamedi)
  • (BLawson)
  • (CesDaMess)
  • (Distinguished_Orca)
  • (Fauna_Mirifica)
  • (HowardDC)
  • (InsideRelic)
  • (JudeBirder)
  • (LadyRobyn)
  • (LeithallB)
  • (LifeIsAmazing)
  • (Meta4)
  • (MrRHydon)
  • (Nj852)
  • (Pennywort_Man)
  • (PlantBrah)
  • (RattyExplores)
  • (RudyNature)
  • (Sea-Kangaroo)
  • (Teaa981)
  • (Wild_Wind)
  • (ZaneDJ)
  • A O'Brien
  • Aaron Schusteff
  • Abbey Throssell
  • Adam Brice
  • Adam Dutkiewicz
  • Adam Yates
  • Agapakis Nikos
  • Aidan Beutel
  • Alan Dandie
  • Alan Melville
  • Alanna Alley
  • Allen Sundholm OAM
  • Amy D.
  • Andrei (Ichman)
  • Andrew Allanson
  • Andrew Allen
  • Andrew Humpage
  • Andrew Thornhill
  • Andy Szito
  • Andy Young
  • Annie Evankow
  • Anthony Paul
  • Antoni Camozzato
  • Arthur Chapman
  • Arthur Yang
  • Arturo Femia
  • Asaph (Asaph01)
  • Asimakis Patitsas
  • Augusto Degiovanni
  • Axel Kallies
  • Belinda Copland
  • Ben Kurek
  • Ben Parslow
  • Ben Travaglini
  • Bernhard Jacobi
  • Bethany McLeod
  • Bevan Buirchell
  • Bianca Giles
  • Bob Mesibov
  • Boris Bueche
  • Bostjan Dvorak
  • Bradley W. Jones
  • Brendan Duggan
  • Brenna Farrell
  • Brian Dagley
  • Brian Lovett
  • Bruce Blackwell
  • Bruce Edley
  • Bryan Cantrell
  • Bryan Lessard
  • Byron Golledge
  • C. Hewitt
  • Cael Gallery
  • Caitlin Henderson
  • Catherine (CPye3381)
  • Cathy Powers
  • Chris Cohen
  • Chris Lambkin
  • Chris Seager
  • Chris Steeles
  • Christian H. Moeseneder
  • Christoper Burwell
  • Clara Dandridge
  • Connor Graham
  • Coral Johnston
  • Craig Polkinghorne
  • Craig Williams
  • Crowley Museum & Nature Center Inc.
  • Cynthia Chan
  • D Gordon E Robertson
  • Dan Blamey
  • Daniel Duval
  • Daniel Heald
  • Danilo Lüdke
  • Darren Carman
  • Darren Fielder
  • Darren Schmitke
  • Dave Albrecht
  • Dave Holland
  • David (Dmail)
  • David Akers
  • David Armstrong
  • David Emery
  • David J. Ferguson
  • David Muirhead
  • David Mules
  • David Rentz
  • Dean (SauceGandhi)
  • Dean Nicolle
  • Dee Nolan
  • Dee Petersen
  • Denis Brothers
  • Denzel Murfet
  • Dezmond Wells
  • Dianne Clarke
  • Dion Maple
  • Djari Sabutaro
  • Dominic Funnell
  • Don Herbison-Evans
  • Donald Hobern
  • Előd Kondorosy
  • Elliott Gordon
  • Em Lamond
  • Emmett Collins-Sussman
  • Erich Volschenk
  • Ernst Weiher
  • Ethan Beaver
  • Ethan Yeoman
  • Even Dankowicz
  • Fabien Piednoir
  • Francesco Martoni
  • Francesco Vitali
  • Frances (CicadaExplorer)
  • Frank Prinz
  • Frank Walther
  • Fubberpish
  • Gabriele Franzini
  • Gavin Goodyear
  • Gelkiu
  • Geoff Williams OAM, AM
  • Geoffrey Cox
  • George Seagull
  • Gerrut Norval
  • Gideon Pisanty
  • Glenn Cocking
  • Glenys and Graham Pearce
  • Gordon Claridge
  • Graeme Cocks†
  • Graham Armstrong
  • Graham Brown
  • Graham Winterflood
  • Grant Schiermeyer
  • Grant Wang
  • Gray Catanzaro
  • Greg Baker
  • Greg Bellion
  • Guido Brusa
  • Guy Taseski
  • Hannah and Grant
  • Hayley Pojikar Prentice
  • Helen Vonow (SA Herbarium)
  • Iain MacGowan
  • Ian Gibbins
  • Ian McMillan
  • Indra Bone
  • Jack Crosbie
  • Jack Morgan
  • Jakob Fahr
  • James Lumbers
  • James Nankivell
  • James Peake
  • Jan Anderson
  • Jane Widness
  • Janet Whitington
  • Janine Duffy
  • János Vörösbaranyi
  • Jason Graham
  • Jason Van Weenen
  • Jean-Philippe Basuyaux
  • Jeanie Shelton
  • Jennifer Gardner
  • Jennifer Rycenga
  • Jenny (8593)
  • Jenny Donald
  • Jeong Yoo
  • Jill Dark
  • Jo Jo Swann
  • Joel DuBois
  • John Ascher
  • John Douglas
  • John Fowler
  • John Luck
  • John Oliver
  • John Tann
  • Jonathan Hoskins
  • Joseph (cobaljoseph)
  • Josef Kohlmetz
  • Joseph Schubert
  • Josh Magro
  • Joshua Basham
  • Joshua Gan
  • Josip Skejo
  • Judy and Rob Peters
  • Justin S. Bartlett
  • Kai Squires
  • Kai-Philipp Schablewski
  • Karen L Wilson AM
  • Karen Weaving
  • Kari Dawson
  • Kate Sandiford
  • Katja Hogendoorn
  • Kaye Proudley
  • Ken Harris
  • Ken Walker
  • Kerri-Lee Harris
  • Kevin Bonham AM
  • Kevin Huang
  • Kevin Williams
  • Kitty and Tony
  • Konan Farrelly-Horsfall
  • Konstantin
  • Konstantinos Kalaentzis
  • Kristen Messenger
  • Kristi Ellingsen
  • Kurtise Templeton
  • Kym Nicolson
  • Larney Grenfell
  • Leigh Winsor
  • Leon Crang
  • Leonie Kirchmajer
  • Lila (fairypossum)
  • Lindsay Popple
  • Liz O'Donnell
  • Lorenzo Locati
  • Lorin Timaeus
  • Louis O'neill
  • Louise Merigot
  • Luke and Denise Flitter
  • Lyn Cook
  • Lyn Craggs
  • Maddi Giannotta
  • Malcolm Worthing
  • Malki (The_Naturalist)
  • Mallik Malipatil
  • Manfred Jusaitis
  • Marco Duretto
  • Marco Selis
  • Margaret Langley
  • Marianne Broug Vielle
  • Marilyn Hewish
  • Marina Cheng
  • Mark (Vandalsen)
  • Mark Apgar
  • Mark Hura
  • Mark Hutchinson
  • Mark Newton
  • Mark Ridgeway
  • Martin Hauser
  • Martin J Steinbauer
  • Martin Lagerwey
  • Matt Campbell
  • Matt Endacott
  • Matthew Connors
  • Matthew Lindsey
  • Matthew Pintar
  • Matthew Vosper
  • Max Kirsch
  • Max Mallen-Cooper
  • Max Tibby
  • Michael Caterino
  • Michael Gasteracantha
  • Michael Jacobi
  • Michael Kearney
  • Michael Keogh
  • Michael Pennay
  • Michal Dutkiewicz
  • Michal Sloviak
  • Michele Chiacchio
  • Miguel de Salas
  • Miguel Machado
  • Mike Burrell
  • Mike Crisp
  • Milo van Loon
  • Natasha (ethmostigmus)
  • Natasha Taylor
  • Ned Fisher
  • Neo Scott Anzai
  • Nicholas John Fisher
  • Nick Lambert
  • Nick Monaghan
  • Niels-Jan Dek
  • Nigel Main
  • Niko Kasalo
  • Norbu (Nysfour)
  • Ollie Scully
  • Orlando J. Bonney
  • Otto Bell
  • Owen Lishmund
  • Owen Seeman
  • P Sweet
  • Patrick Campbell
  • Patrick Wake
  • Patrick White
  • Paul M Hutchinson
  • Paul Whitington
  • Pedro Reck Bartholomay
  • Penelope Gullan
  • Peri Coleman
  • Pete Woodall
  • Peter Crowcroft
  • Peter Lang
  • Peter Marriott
  • Peter McQuillan
  • Peter Slingsby
  • Petra Hanke
  • Phil Warb
  • Prakrit Jain
  • Qld Museum
  • Rachel Behm
  • Ralph Foster
  • Ray Fisher
  • Rebecca Hamdorf
  • Reiner Richter
  • Remko Leijs
  • Renate and Glenys
  • Richard D Reams
  • Robert Lawrence
  • Robert Mitchell
  • Robert Raven
  • Robert Read
  • Rog Standen
  • Roman Romanov
  • Ron Atkinson
  • Rusty Ryder
  • Ryan Shofner
  • Saida Noor
  • Sam Gordon
  • Samuel Brown
  • Santiago (sanpa)
  • Santiago Morales PP
  • Sarah-Jayne Hucks
  • Scott Eipper
  • Shannon Deale
  • Shaun Winterton
  • Simon Ong
  • Simon Taylor
  • Sofia Zvolanek
  • Solomon Hendrix
  • Stephan Gottwald
  • Stephan Kleinfelder
  • Stephen Cox
  • Stephen Fricker
  • Stephen Mahony
  • Steve Walker
  • Stewart Tomlinson
  • Susanna Heideman
  • Suzanne and Jim
  • Teresa Van Der Heul
  • Terra Occ
  • Thaddeus Charles Jones
  • Thilo Krueger
  • Thomas Mesaglio
  • Tim (twan3253)
  • Tim Rudman
  • Timothy Hammer
  • Tina Meakin
  • Tobias J. Smith
  • Tom May
  • Tom Weir
  • Tony and Jenny Dominelli
  • Tony Daley
  • Tony J. Eales
  • Tony Robillard
  • Trevor Sless
  • Victor Engel
  • Victor W Fazio III†
  • Villu Soon
  • Vladislav Grigorenko
  • Volker Framenau
  • Wayne and Cheryl Donald
  • Wendy Hayward
  • Wolfgang Wüster
  • Won-Gun Kim
  • Xuankun Li
  • Yingyod Lapwong
  • You Ning Su
  • Zac Billingham
  • Zig (tropicbreeze)

Taxonomy
We source all our Latin/binomial/scientific names from Atlas of Living Australia (www.ala.org.au). It's a Federal Government body that maintains a database of all life in Australia, with photo's, and uses the currently accepted taxon of all Kingdoms. Different Taxonomists disagree on the correct names of species, and we don't take any sides on these issues. As we need to know the "current" names of a broad range of species, we use Atlas as it's the only database we know of that provides this via filtered downloads; that also allow us to check spelling, etc.

Statistics
We do confess to liking our numbers. While they help us with the web site work, primarily they tell us of the rich diversity we have on Ellura:
1,429 native & 63 introduced species identified. 1,242 native animals, 157 native plants, 27 fungi, 2 crust & 1 algae.
Of those native species that are listed on the 2010 Murraylands Regional Species Status Assessment (excludes invertebrates, etc) plus those on the SA Butterflies & Moths website, Ellura has:
1 Endangered, 6 Vulnerable, 47 Rare & 41 Near Threatened. These numbers tell us how important it is to protect our Habitat
It's an indictment on society that 33% of our listed species are at risk! Further, over 5% of the species we've identified are introduced.
The web site contains 12,465 examples (5,115 enlarged photos) & 93 video clips across 2,017 species (including introduced). We are very excited to have achieved 120,000 hits in one month :-)
We are also now linking to iNaturalist observations we have made. So far we have 1,370 of the published species have attained Research Grade
status.
Navigation
  • We've now added a search button which highlights our "Complete List", if you're looking for a specific species.
    It includes a Google link to search anything on our web site. It's not fancy, but it doesn't use javascript, and so is safer & more compatible (except for Safari).
    Finally it links to our "What's New" page as Google is slow to update our latest work.
  • Thumbnails are small, low quality, images (for fast loading) of larger, high quality, images which show much greater detail.
    This site is primarily a collection of thumbnail pages of related wildlife. Most of the menu items, therefore, will open a thumbnail page.
    Clicking on a thumbnail then opens the full photo page of interest.
  • We recently added a photo zoom feature, from the photo page of interest. We mark the higher level pages with small magnifying glasses, in the "variation" comment, to indicate which photo's have a larger version sitting behind them. We aim for desktop sized photos (ie 1920 x 1080 pixels) but this is not always possible depending on the original photograph.
  • When you are in a photo page, you will see "Previous" & "Next" links. They let you traverse all the photo's quickly. This may seem a bit random at times as the "next" photo on, eg, a scorpion page could be an introduced Honey bee. This is because you are on the last photo of the arachnid thumbnail page and the next photo in menu sequence is the bee on the introduced thumbnail page.
  • In a photo page, if you click on the menu item the photo is primarily linked to, it'll take you to that species' overview on the appropriate thumbnail page. Eg Clicking on the "Small Plants" menu, when looking at an Orchid photo, will take you to the Small Plants thumbnail page with that Orchid species at the top of the page. We have now added more links to each photo page, so you can go directly to the Order, Family or Species on the thumbnail page (by clicking on the associated names).
  • Our status page describes the colours (we designed) & codes we use to show the conservation value & location of species.
  • If you wish to link to one of our species from elsewhere, each species is "named" on the thumbnail page. So it's best to link to the species like this: www.ellura.info/Orchids.html#Diuris-orientis rather than linking to a particular photo. We are constantly updating the site and trying to improve the quality of photos shown. As such, there is a strong chance a particular photo will be replaced with a better one. Since part of the photo names use their camera assigned name (for internal filing), your link to a specific photo can then fail.
  • All photo pages repeat the same text as shown on the thumbnail pages. But some have a story or photo specific information included. These are now highlighted on the thumbnail pages by bolding the 'variation' text.
  • For our regular visitors we have a What's New page. Here we show the latest photos of old identifications on the left, and a photo of each of our most recent identifications on the right; all in date sequence when added to the web site. If we add a lot of new photo's of one species, we only show a few of the best so as not to swamp the new photo's with similar examples.

Introduction
G'day. Just some ramblings to help you understand what this web site is about and how to use it. It's down here because we felt the information above was more important for you to see. While we have been complimented on it's ease of use, there are some features that are not obvious (discussed above). We focus on species on Ellura, the surrounding Murraylands and over into the Adelaide Hills & the Riverland.

This is our volunteer work, to help people like yourself learn about the wildlife that surrounds us all. It is primarily a photographic site, which means some/many identifications are not possible to deduce. It can make others difficult; as it's not possible to properly represent size. We've found some of the best books of late allow us to put a flower or gum nut on the page and know if it's the correct size or not. Oh how we'd love to guarantee a true life size image on your screen; but it's not possible as far as we know. We try to take photo's with a rule to measure size of subject, however, those photo's takup a lot of space, so now we state the measured size rather than display an image of it. Photo sizes are always 500 pixels high and no more than 900 pixels wide, to display properly on standard 15" notebooks.

Talking about size, it's important people understand that much of the beauty in the bush is in miniature. So many people who have seen our web site are amazed at what we have. They say things like "We've driven through that area and it's just scrub". JUST you say! People would probably understand our environment better if they thought of our salt bush more as "trees in a rainforest". For this is where a lot of the life and beauty we discover exists; under the saltbush canopy.

It's important to note that we are NOT trained biologists. We have had a lot of fun and learnt a huge amount undertaking this work. But WE DO MAKE MISTAKES. We rectify them as soon as we know about them, but please don't take anything here as gospel. Just a beginning to your research to identifying a species. If you find an error; be it an id, navigation, dead link, spelling, etc. please let us know. We want our site to be correct. We thank those who have already helped us this way. We show our appreciation of people's input on the species pages they helped id for us. A special thank you to Darren Schmitke. He contacted us via this web site and has been a tremendous help with his knowledge & other invaluable suggestions.

If you'd like to use our photos somewhere else; please talk to us. We are keen to oblige.

Approach
Our approach is to try and provide as many views of the same species as we can; so that you can look at something and find a match (regardless of the stage it's in). This means that the plant pages contain by far the most content (per species) as they have leaves, structure, buds, flowers, seed, fruit, etc. As well as many different stages in-between. Animals are much less variable, but harder to capture a good photo as they have this habit of moving about;-) Mind you, when it's windy tiny flowers arn't easy to capture either. We now capture insects, etc, in small clear plastic boxes. Some never settle, so we put them in the fridge to sleep; allowing us to take diagnostic photo's with out harming them. We then release them. Occassionally we'll find a dead invertebrate and post images of that; hoping to replace them with live images asap. As such, we are trying to visually characterise local species for you.

Layout
When this site started, we had about 500 photographs of 125 species to share with you. We now have over 10,000 photo's of over 1,650 species, and it's still growing!

The primary thumbnail pages are in family (or taxon) sequence of their Latin/scientific/binomial names. We use coloured text to indicate where the species is found, as well as coloured codes to indicate how threatened it is in the Murraylands. This family sequence means that if you find something and think "That's like an xyz", then there is a strong chance that it'll be in the same family group as "xyz". So by finding "xyz" here, you can easily see those other species in the same family. Or it might actually be "xyz", and the different views we provide help you recognise this fact. But wildlife being what it is, it's also just as likely to be somewhere else in the taxon tree completely. It is for this reason we are loath to break the pages down any further. eg Who'd imagine that grass cushion is a daisy .... really what is mother nature thinking?-)

To this end, we have now introduced "Key" pages. An important technique biologists use to differentiate species is to use 'keys'.
Rather than being in taxon sequence, our "Key" pages are sorted by the description of some notable attribute. The first of these we've set up are flowers.
Flowers can be very unique to a species, or they can be almost the same across the whole family (like Acacia).
The idea is that only one "representative" photo of each species is shown under each 'key' description. It is possible the same photo will appear under different 'keys' as it matches both. Or something more tricky could be happening; eg lilies can have 3 petals and 3 sepals. To you and me it looks like 6 petals. So we've put them under "3 Petals" as well as "6 Petals". Other times a species can have both lilac & white flowers. As such, we have 2 different photo's for this one species; one under each description. The descriptive terms we use are not botanical, but lay terms; the way we would describe them. While not scientific we feel it'll help everyone narrow down their id puzzles.

We recently upgraded our menu system to allow us to add more pages (like this one). It's a technological masterpiece if we do say so, but every browser has little quirks that made it very difficult to implement across the board. However, we believe we have succeeded, as we tested it in IE, Firefox & Chrome. If you are having any trouble with a different browser, but have access to one of these, then please try that one. Otherwise, let us know and we'll do our best to make it work on your browser.

Have a nice day people

Copyright © 1996-2023 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved.