Wanderings on ACT election day

 As we had voted by post (and couldn't get back to Canberra if we wanted to vote in person) I was free to do other things on the 17th of October.

I began by going to Stingray Point to get a few birds for the eBird October Big Day.  A good start was a pair of Musk Lorikeets (part of a group of 6) making nice.

Then loud cursing by a Little Wattlebird (green arrow) let me find the Channel-billed Cuckoo (red arrow).

A close-up of the Cuckoo!

Later in the day I went to Captain Stevenson's Point where the Little Corella flock were finding things to dig up.  I counted 74 visible in the area.

I couldn't quite work out what they are eating.  Possibly Kikuyu Grass rhyzomes?    Their beaks were well splattered with mud giving a strange piebald effect.

Late in the afternoon we went to Bastion Point to see what was in the rock pools.  Not a great deal of diversity but Sea Hares (Aplysia juliana) were present in good numbers and range of sizes.

In this image I can count 9 Sea Hares- a fairly typical density across all the rock pools.

There are at least 3 in this pile, which was likened to an Echidna train!

A strange organism living under a rock. iNaturalist has been consulted.  They have come good!  It is an egg-mass of Aplysia sp and as there are heaps of them around I suggest it is A. juliana.

A patch of empty barnacle shells made an interesting pattern. I'm not sure if this emptiness means the inhabitants had moved out due to getting too big or is something else had acquired skills in barnacle emptying.  Apparently once barnacles become adult and enter their shell they don't move, so something has come along and removed the crustacean from within.  Snails are a common suspect.

A pair of Eastern Grey Kangaroos were having a good tussle in a paddock visible from my window.

I think they were just practising.  The others in the background didn't seem at all interested in, nor alarmed by, the stoush