It's wader and seal season on Davis Beach

Today began with the call of a Channel-billed Cuckoo just before daybreak.  The first I have heard down here.  What I thought was going to be a spiffy sunrise turned into a selection of sunbeams.


In family mythology these are referred to as "prophet lifters" relating to stories about Old Testament prophets rising up to Heaven  On checking with Professor Google there are no such references in the Christian Bible!

This post is set up thematically rather than chronologically.  I hope it doesn't confuse people (especially me) too much.
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There are a lot of flowering Callistemons around at the moment (I spit on people who have lumped them in with Melaleucas).  They do not seem to be getting much attention from Honeyeaters, but the Rainbow Lorikeets are having a fine time.
We took our early morning walk to Broome Rd.
This was quite a productive walk in terms of bird diversity but no major unusualnesses.  We extended a little bit to the Lagoon Boardwalk, mainly to check for Royal Spoonbills.  We were rewarded with 4 of that species plus a Cattle Egret in breeding plumage.  This crummy photo hopefully gets across the idea.
White-headed Pigeons.
After returning home I went for a prowl to see if I could track down the Channel-billed Cuckoo.  I didn't, but got a nice view of a Superb Lyrebird which ran off at a great speed.
Our second walk was the Heathland Walk,
... mainly hoping to see nice flowers - see below.  The highlights were actually on the beach section with 10 Pacific Golden Plovers ...
.. and 6 Bar-railed Godwits.  The other half of the title of this post gets justified a little further on!
The final walk of the day was out on Bastion Point.
Diversity as a total was very poor with only 10 species seen.  This is possibly because it was very windy.  (I whinged more than somewhat about schlepping a telescope over soft sand into a howling gale.)  The most numerous waders were Sharp-tailed Sandpipers with 25 recorded.
Also spotted were 2 Curlew Sandpipers, 6 Red-necked Stints; 13 Red-capped Plovers - including 2 fluffballs sheltering under their parent, and 4 Australian Pied Oystercatchers.

We had also gone to the Gun Club which is often a good spot for grassland birds.  Today we hardly saw a bird.  I did like this lizard sitting on top of a fence post.
At some point during the day I snapped this red-headed ant carting a dead bee back to the ant colony.
Its Koala season in the rest of Mallacoota.  This sleepy person was just across the road from our accommodation: possibly one of those that we see next door.
As we headed out on the Bastion Point walk this small person was crossing Lakeside Drive.


Eventually it got off the road  - having held up at least 6 cars behind me!  I pulled off to make sure it was well off the road and a nice Indian couple  (who, being at the back of the line, hadn't seen the Koala) stopped to check I was OK.

As we got on to Davis Beach, on the Heathland walk Frances spotted a seal on the beach.  I took a photo straight away - probably 200m distance so not too crisp - on the Julian Alps rule.  (That was developed when we camped in Slovenia with beautiful mountains all round us and I didn't take a photo as the light would be better in the morning.  For the rest of our stay the mountains were socked in with cloud!)
The seal moved down to the tideline and flopped, making us think it wasn't in too good a shape.
However it then perked up and waddled off into the water.


OK.  Plant time!  It wasn't quite the extravaganza we'd been expecting but there were some flowers around on the Heathland walk.  In the forested start we scored many Petalochilus fuscatus.
Can't remember the name of this one - quite  common down here.  I think its Schelhammera undulata.
Stackhousia monogyna.
Thysanotus tuberosus
That was interesting as we only saw a few on the way out but heaps on the way back, on the same track.  The opposite applied to the Petalochilus.

Burchardia umbellata.
On the gun club track we noticed this unusual bean.  No idea of the genus or species.

That's all for today.  In fact a VERY good day.

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