Shady Gully

This is an interesting bushland Reserve in the middle of the town.  We walked around in once, soon after we started coming down here which exercise was notable for me losing a mobile phone while doing a cross country stretch.  I have ridden my bike through it a few times and our morning walk goes past the edge of it, but we hadn't walked a circuit any time recently.  It seemed pretty sheltered so a good place to hide from Saturday's gales.

Here is the route.

 As we started off there were some interesting galls on some Exocarpos cupressiformis.

The bird life was quite noisy, mainly because it was dominated by a large tribe of Bell Miners.  So as expected there were few other birds evident.

There was also relatively like in the way of blossom. The commonest flowering shrub was this one, which looked quite distinctive but turned out to be quite tricky to identify.  The East Gippsland book had nothing to match it and iNaturalist offered nothing close.  Eventually I searched through all the white flowers in Betty and Don Woods 3-volume set of South Coast books.  On the last page I consulted there was an image that matched.  It is Pimelea axiflora.

 I put that up as a suggestion on iNaturalist and a reviewer has agreed with me, which is good.

As we moved up towards the Genoa Rd a few yellow flowers began to appear in the form of Acacia longifolia.

 I can't remember was species of plant this was, but the catalyst for the photograph was the infestation of scale insects!

Although we kept an eye open we didn't see a single orchid.  That was a surprise as although the forest is fairly dense I thought there were enough open patches for something to have stuck its stalk out!

I would not say it was an exciting walk , but quite pleasant,  It met criterion 1 which was to be sheltered from the wind, and gave us a small challenge in identifying the Pimelea.