A walk from Pebbly Beach to Two Heath Cove

 On 2 March the weather seemed fine and we were feeling frisky so headed off to walk from Pebbly Beach to a Rocky Cove, somewhat over half way to Shipwreck Creek.  The red colouring here is a fungal infection, although there is - according to an entomologist friend - a mine track made by a moth larva in the lower left 

Cassytha sp, confirmed on iNaturalist as C. glabella, Slender Devil's Twine.

The heath is beginning to get back to how it was before the Black Summer fire.  This is Allocasuarina paludosa: sufficiently mature to have got some cones.

The white patches are another major component of the heath: Hakea teretifolia.

One clump of hakea was close to the track so I got a close-up.  There are two tactical reasons for not going into the heath: 

• the burnt Hakea has left a lot of sharp spiky bits which are easy and painful to trip on; and 
• I reckon snakes need to work for their food, not given an easy meal. 

This fungus is supporting a colony of green algae.

On getting to Two Heath Cove a nice skink was catching some rays.  I think it is Lampropholis guichenoti the commonest skink in the area.  It looks a little plumper than usual so suspect it is a gravid female.  

The rocks in the Cove look like ideal Tattler habitat: unfortunately the tattlers disagreed (or at least kept their heads down).  Frances did spot 2 Gannets passing by.

I was struck by the patterns created by water spilling off a rock.

On the way back to Pebbly we saw a female Scarlet Robin (probably moved down from the high country) and heard a Crescent Honeyeater.  Unfortunately the latter had ceased its "Egypt" call by the time I got my recorder app working.  Back on the beach I had a number of bird species rated as "likely" but only an Eastern Reef Egret fronted.

Why is it called "Pebbly Beach?"