South-eastwards again

As our schedules are about to get a bit committed we seized the moment to head to Mallacoota for a few days.

The drive down was fine, although after passing Bombala it looked as though we might get rained on..
 .. but nothing happened.  At one point on Imlay Rd there had obviously been a fire, but whether this was a wildfire or a Habitat Reduction burn was unclear.  As it was quite isolated I suspect a wildfire - the fact that it had reached the crown does not rule out a çontrolled' burn.
Once at the coast everywhere looked quite dry.  Some dams that are normally good for birds were dry and the mown grass in parks didn't look to be growing lushly.

There were more people around than usual as shown by this full car park ...
 .. and the anglers from the cars.
 A more relaxed (and obfuscated) couple of fisherpersons.
 A useful sign at the boat ramp.
 As we got back towards the house after a walk into town we found Mr and Ms Plod at work.  From their position they were checking the guys who had retrieved their boats from Karbeethong Jetty.
In case you are wondering why Ms Plod isn't in the photo it is because she had wandered off to a little jetty where a boat had arrived.  She had her RBT gear in hand so I hope the lads hadn't had too many tins.

A comparison of adult and immature plumage in Silver gulls.
Many Silver Gulls.
A Crested Tern.
Two White-headed Pigeons turned up at the house.  As you can see, the young ones are not that white around the scone!
A pair of Chestnut Teal, which are - apart from at the waterworks - the common duck in the area.
The fruit bats are back.  There are about 60 in this photo and there are many trees covered in them.  On an earlier visit a local told us the Sparks and Wildfires Service had counted 20,000 in total one year.
They look very cute: but they are always fighting and can carry nasty diseases so should not be approached.


I had hoped to get some photos of them flying out to feed but was a tad early.

Comments

Flabmeister said…
Thanks Jeni. I intend to get down there later in the visit to catch then flying out, if they get going across the Inlet rather than inland as they did last evening.

Martin
24 January 2016 at 17:36:00 GMT+11
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more