Heathland gets going

We began the day with a walk into Mallacoota.  This counts as two checklists for eBird.  The first goes from the house to the edge of the built up area, passing Stingray Point.
This list totted up to 24 species today.

We then continue on to the end of the Council camping area and back.
This generated 30 species, with the most surprising being a Superb Lyrebird wandering around in the swampy area beside the Shady Gully Boardwalk.

After a rest we headed out to do the Heathland Walk.  En route we swung by Bastion Point to see if a Beach Stone Curlew was visible there (as one had been reported on the Mallacoota Birds Facebook group).  The short answer is that it wasn't there.  However an Eastern Reef Egret was there and posed nicely.
 So did this Little Pied Cormorant.
 When we first started coming down to Mallacoota there was much anguish about plans to built a breakwater and new boat ramp at Bastion Point.  From what we read we thought it was going to be a massive edifice.  In fact it is pretty modest and has been the subject of more or less continual maintenance work ever since it was built.  I suspect whoever designed it didn't really understand how the tides and waves work here.  Whatever: the ramps were closed today for "emergency dredging".  I think that was because the last storm filled the area up with big tough kelp!
 On to the Heathland walk.  For the loop bit we always do the beach section first - no idea why!
 This time the heath was well in flower.  The first flowers seen were Hakea sp.
 They tend to stick out above the core species of this heath which is Allocasuarina nana.  I hadn't seen a mass flowering like this before.
 A more typical example.
 I have blogged many photos of Correa reflexa under the spiffy image rule.
 Hybanthus monopetalus
 Leptospermum sp.
 Hovea heterophylla.
 A bean!  That is about as far as I am prepared to go!
  I will go to Craspedia sp. on this one.  I'm tempted to say C. variabilis.
The sea was pretty lumpy: at times it was very noisy but we seemed to get sheltered from the onshore wind and the noise went away.
 Betka Beach is a major hotspot for Hooded Plovers, and we found two today.  Here is one of them with a Red-capped Plover in the background for comparative purposes.
 A portrait of a Red-cap.
Late in the day I went back into Mallacoota to get a serve of Barramundi and chips for tea and swung by Captain Stevensons Point to look again for the Stone-Curlew. With as much luck as before, but I did see a Curlew Sandpiper which was good.  The trip list thus far is at 70 species which isn't too bad.

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