Big Beach Beetling

We went for a training walk along Big Beach today.  This is needed as a walking group we are in down here is planning a trek to Lake Barracouta in a couple of weeks.  It will be an 18km round trip and we haven't walked that far in one go for a fair while, let alone on beach sand.  Our plan was to walk briskly for an hour and see how far we got: the answer was 4.65 km according to my birding app tracker.

 So about half way, which is OK.  The following image shows our route and Lake Barracouta, confirming we got about half way.

The big storm reported as causing devastation in Geelong travelled East, but fizzed about Bairnsdale and we got a very brief shower about 30 minutes into the walk.  Apart from an excellent rainbow - I really prefer the French phrase "arc du ciel" - the shower delivered 0.2 mm at home (and at the BoM station).

 This is the last stage of the rainbow which showed the spectrum rather well.

 An indication we were heading in the right direction?  Possibly not as the bird was heading the opposite way!

The pink dot is a flag indicating a fox baiting station.  The footprints indicates the site has been checked.  This project is to remove the foxes predating the Eastern Bristlebirds which inhabit the dense scrub in this part of the Howe Flat.

Although the part of the Flat behind these dunes didn't burn there are still burnt leaves mixed into the base of the grass.

 The yellow line marks the profile of Tullaberga Island with the Gabo Island lighthouse behind it.

 It really was a beautiful day for weather.  This is looking back to the West from our turn point towards Bastion Point

 Looking East towards the next (unnamed) headland.  I had thought  this was the one which used to link to Gabo Island (there are local tales of bullocks walking across to Gabo Island in the early 20th century).  However that is actually Telegraph Point, another 4 km further (the name hints at that being the point at which the phone lines went across, on poles!).

There were many banks of washed up shells.  Unfortunately we didn't find any Paper Nautilus shells which have been reported as found on this beach in the recent past.

 Another bank had a lot of small spiral shells mixed in with the cockle shells.

 This close up of the small spirals shows the wide range  of patterns on them.

I recorded 13 species of birds on the walk.  It is always surprising that there are few waders on this beach.  Once past the sometimes-entrance to the Inlet we only saw 2 Australian Pied Oystercatchers.  Presumably this reflects either the absence of  food for the small Plovers, Stints and Godwits seen  in the Inlet or those species dislike of the surf.