The sun (and the rat) return

Dawn on May Day was suitably red!


Once the sun was above the horizon the redness declined.  However the sun still had to climb above the hills in Nadgee to become visible.  It is pretty much spot on where I positioned the red arrow in yesterday's post.
A pair of Rainbow Lorikeets enjoyed the warmth of the sun, in contrast to the cool 7.5oC of the air.
As we got to the end of the Lagoon boardwalk on our first walk of the day Frances pointed down and there was the Swamp Rat.  Rather bolting, as usual, it sat and posed for photographs.
Here is a detailed image of its front paw.  Possibly a manicure is in order.
What is rapidly becoming an old friend, the Lyrebird near Shady Gully was scratching around in the litter.  It too hung around for quite a while ignoring us, about 5m away, and passing cars.
Our second walk of the day was the Casuarina Walk which runs from opposite the Health Centre to Betka Rd, opposite the start of the Heathland Walk.  The zigzag is the drop into, and out of, Davis Creek.
There are quite a lot of Casuarinas along the track but to my mind it is the huge Eucalypts which dominate the vegetation.  My guess is that many of these are more than 40m high.

The vegetation is a lot denser in Davis Creek, mainly Pittosporum, with a dense ground layer of bracken.
The bird life along this walk wasn't greatly exciting but 18 species were recorded.  We didn't see a single living flower.  I have qualified that observation as we did see some dead Bloodwood blossom: presumably knocked off the tree by feeding bats.

Back at the house I decided to see how my camera would go at recording a shot of a paddleboarding bloke out in the Inlet.  The image was clear enough to show it was in fact a blokess.
Our final expedition of the day was to Tip Beach.  I'm not sure if the name refers to it ending at a promontory or it being fairly close to the waste depot, as both seem reasonable.
The rocks at the end of the beach, close to Bastion Point, where the Shire are busy doing 'something' with the new breakwater, were rather odd it that very different types of rock seem to be mixed together,

Although the sea was quite calm the outer rocks got wet.

As the beach is very sandy there weren't many birds around although 2 Sooty Oystercatchers (possibly the ones seen on the other side of the breakwater a few days ago) were at the point and 2 Hooded Plovers were on the beach close to the start of the walk.

The moon rose nicely again.  There was a lot of haze which meant the images were rather blurry so haven't been included.  No bats were visible in the streak of moonlight across the Inlet.  I'm not sure if that was because moon rise was somewhat later so the flyout had finished or if they had decided to fly somewhere else.

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