An expedition to Howe Flat

 I was invited to join Wendy, a visitor from Melbourne, on a walk along the Howe Flat track.  We used the services of Mallacoota Hire Boats to ferry us across to the Parks Jetty.  The trip over took about 40 minutes and was a little damp from the chop below the boat and a shower above it.  We got a few birds along the way, mainly hauled out on the Goodwin Sands.  We were dropped off at 12:40 and were scheduled for Rohan to return at 16:00 to pick us up: this gave us some parameters to guide our times.

Here is the approximate route we followed (for reasons that escape me now - and that I really don't want to think about in detail because they would be too embarrassing - I didn't have the eBird track logger running).  According too Google Earth this is 2.8km each way With a ridge to be ascended in each direction.

We had not gone too far when Wendy spotted a large reptile looking up a big tree, which it duly ascended.

I do think they are attractive beasts.  I do not think about what those claws could do, if one got between the goanna and where they wanted to go

A view of the forest on the ridge.

A magnificent old tree - I suspect an Angophora.

This shows the nature of the vegetation on the Howe Flat.  Basically a dense tangle of shrubs.  I think these are mainly Meleleuca sp.  

It also shows where the "road" crosses Howe Creek which we took as our turning point.  It took us about an hour to get here with brisk walking and a few pauses to investigate interesting bird sounds,  There is a boardwalk crossing the Creek which we took but the foot path beyond the boards looked rather more muddy than we felt like exploring in our limited time (and non-waterproof footwear).

Coming back slightly from the Creek this is where the track heads off to the beach.  

As we didn't make contact with either of our target species: Ground Parrot (Wendy) or Eastern Bristlebird (Martin),I suspect that attacking from the beach with 1.5 km of heath might be a better approach if the mouth can be crossed.

On the way back we we able to look around a little and were surprised to find the track was a very short distance from the shore of the Inlet.

A Caspian Tern was taking 5 on a sandbar.

Just after I commented about not having seen a single orchid we came across this Dipodium roseum (and did notice a few others on the more relaxed walk back).

The most surprising thing on the way back was finding a car coming along the track towards us!  Someone coming camping.  

Rohan was waiting for us and we trundled back.  The wind had died down and the showers had moved on giving a gentle ride back.

We ended with 34 species of birds with a few other "observations" of noises-off such as clattering wings of a departing pigeon, that we didn't identify to species.