It's census time again in the Live Exhibits department!

Every 6 months the staff in Live Exhibits undertake a census of our entire animal collection. This involves counting individual animals from over 150 species including spiders, birds, scorpions, frogs, snails, fish, insects, reptiles, crustaceans, centipedes and millipedes.

This process takes around a week as staff are counting animals as they complete their usual daily tasks. The information will be entered into our Animal Records database to be used for keeping track of how many animals we have in each display and enclosure.

Chloe is busy doing a census of our native cockroach population. Photo: Deanna Henderson Source: Museum Victoria

Jack, the Forest Gallery's resident adult male Satin Bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus) has recently constructed a new bower.

Male Satin Bowerbirds build a specialised stick structure which they decorate with blue objects. In the Forest Gallery this includes bottle tops, straws and scraps of blue paper, but in the wild can include blue flowers and berries.

The purpose of the bower is to help to find a mate. Female Satin Bowerbirds will visit a male's bower and decide from the way it is built and how it is decorated whether to choose the male to be the father of her chicks. The male will also perform a number of behavioural displays or dances to try to woo the female.

In the Forest Gallery, Jack usually constructs his bower in the same place, so we are in the process of setting up "Bower Cam", a camera located in the Forest Gallery which points to the spot the bower is in. Unfortunately this time around, Jack decided to construct his bower elsewhere. So we have had to relocate his bower to his usual spot.

This may seem harsh - I mean, Jack put a lot of time and effort into constructing this bower, and now we've disturbed it. Well this kind of behaviour is exactly what would happen in the wild, as bowers are constantly being sabotaged by competing males.

Hopefully Jack will accept that his bower has now moved, and he will shortly be able to be viewed on "Bower Cam".

Jack's new bower, which has now been moved to his usual bower site. Photo: Deanna Henderson Source: Museum Victoria

"Bower Cam" will soon be up and running. Photo: Deanna Henderson Source: Museum Victoria

Sea stars are echinoderms, which literally means spiny skin. This Cushion Sea Star  (Patiriella calcar) is on display in the Museum's Marine Life exhibition, and this past weekend it was feeding time!

Sea Stars are predatory animals that feed on other marine animals. But the way they eat is simply fascinating! They don't have teeth so the way the consume their prey is by extruding their stomach from their mouth (found in the centre of the underside of their body).

In the wild, sea stars are able to slightly prise open bivalve shells with their tube feet and insert their stomach to digest their meal. In the photo below, the Cushion Sea Star was fed a piece of squid. The squid was moved down to the sea star's mouth before it was enveloped in its stomach which was slowly being extruded. Once the meal is digested, the stomach is pulled back inside the sea star.

A Cushion Sea Star digesting its meal with its stomach extruded. Photo: Deanna Henderson Source: Museum Victoria

The Live Exhibits team is very excited as we have three Queensland Lungfish arriving tonight.

In preparation for their arrival, two Silver Perch were taken out of the Milarri Pond and housed in the new Lungfish tank in our off-display area. These Silver Perch helped to condition the new tank so that the water quality would be just right for the Lungfish when they move in.

As the Lungfish will need their new tank later on today, the Silver Perch were placed back into the Millari Pond. They had to be acclimatised back to the colder water, so they were floated in the pond water in a tub for a while until the water in the tub was the same temperature as the water in the pond.

Stay tuned for the next entry on our new Lungfish!

Jessie Sinclair releasing the Silver Perch back into Milarri Pond. Photo: Deanna Henderson Source: Museum Victoria

As winter approaches and the days are getting shorter, the birds of the Forest Gallery will be looking for roosting sites earlier in the day.

As a result, the Forest Gallery will close at 4:30pm daily starting from the 17th May until early August.

This early closure allows the birds to settle into their roost sites for the night without being disturbed by wandering visitors.

So on your trip to the Museum this winter, be sure to visit the Forest Gallery before 4:30pm.

The birds of the Forest Gallery, including the Superb Fairy Wrens (pictured) will be roosting earlier each day over winter. Photo: Deanna Henderson Source: Museum Victoria

The Easter school holidays give us a great opportunity to put some more of our wonderful animals on display.

From the 27th March to the 11th April, the Children's Gallery is home to some Gumleaf Grasshoppers, Green Katydids, a wolf spider, water beetles, Green and Golden Bell Frogs and a Spotted Python.

These animals are on show to display the amazing biodiversity found within our sunburnt country.

The Live Exhibits keepers will also be giving two presentations a day - one at 11:30am and the other at 2:15pm. During these presentations, the audience will be able to experience all sorts of wildlife close-up, including snakes, lizards, turtles, spiders, stick insects and more!

The Biodiversity display in the Children's Gallery. Photo: Alan Henderson Source: Museum Victoria