Too many photos of are impossible

In a recent Facebook exchange it was agreed that too many photos of echidnas, pelicans and a couple of other things were impossible.  Several of them feature in this post (although not echidna - I saw one yesterday, but the phone-photo went to Echidna CSI from whence it is not really shareable).

This post covers two days, as I didn't take many photos on Tuesday 11/12.  Dawn looked promising but didn't develop strong colours.
I was up on the roof making sure the gutters were clear and had an eyeball with this young person in the adjacent gum tree.  Definitely a species of which too many photos are never enough.
We did the Casuarina walk today and everywhere was very dry.  Hardly any ground layer flowers and only Leptospermum sp in the shrubs.
There were many fallen florets of  Dendrophthoe vitellina on the ground.  I had never noticed this mistletoe until last Saturday (see also below).
We found no open orchids but the Dipodium punctatum was in bud in a couple of spots.
In the afternoon we went for a walk to Quarry beach with the small dog, who has been feeling a bit poorly this trip for some reason:  So we didn't go far but the beach was beautiful.
So on to 12 December!  The best sunrise of the trip!

There was a good range of fowl on the lagoon near Broome Street ...
.. including 2 Great Egrets.
As we passed Shady Gully there was a whole lot of mistletoe flowers on the ground.  This time I was able to spot the Dendrophthoe vitellina on the host eucalypt.
A nice little white flower which I think is Myoporum sp (Boobialla).
The house on the left at the top of the paddock is for sale and got looked at yesterday.  It has got spectacular views over the Inlet, which are unlikely to be built out, although a house could appear in the hoss paddock..
Back in Karbeethong our neighbours have a spectacular array of Yuccas.
In the home garden the Agapanthus are flowering well for Christmas.

Our main outing during the day was to the Water treatment Plant (aka the poo pits).  I suspect someone had a few issues opening the personal access gate!
This snip from Google Maps shows the layout of the site: I have decided to number the ponds for reference.
The greatest concentration of waterfowl were on pond 2 - some photos are below.  As we walked beside pond 4 a moderate sized (about 1m long) Lace Monitor - aka Goanna - appeared from the rocks, crossed the track and scrambled up a tree,

These are the hind claws.
To keep a balance this 1.5m Red-bellied Black Snake then slithered across the track and disappeared into the rock.  It was suggested, firmly, that I didn't get closer.
The notable denizens of Pond 4 were about 220 Hoary-headed Grebes.  They are definitely the more common small grebe in this area and counts of this order are quite common at the ponds.
Back at pond 2 there was the usual flock of Pink-eared Ducks.
Some extra Australian Wood Ducks flew in ...
.. followed by Grey Teal.
Horse numbers seemed low in the open paddock but the white foal was having a great time.  Frances commented that the foal's legs were nearly as long as its mothers but the body was much smaller.
Walking back towards Watertrust Rd I was taken by how straight the trunks of the trees were.  The colour of the one in the foreground was a good contrast to the 50 shades of grey-green of the standard pattern.
The wind was evident throught the day and got stronger as the day progressed.  The pelicans seemed to having great fun sailing up and down parallel to the ridge.
They seemed to use their feet as air-brakes when they wished to slow down.

They have obviously watched WWII movies of Stukas going in for a bombing run.
Fortunately they haven't fixed sirens to their legs!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 rec...
Read more

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 ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more