Lotsa photos: many of Animals without legs

 This is mainly about a trip we took to Merimbula, via Green Cape.  I shall begin by commenting on the title: I don't consider 'flippers' to be legs, so we begin early in the day with a few snaps of a seal swimming beside the Broome St Boardwalk.

Check the whiskers.

At the end of the Boardwalk I heard the call of an Australasian Figbird and with a little help from Photoshop Express, here is the male. The female was nearby, but I have too many photos in this post anyway.

So we headed off from home, with our first destination the Disaster Bay Lookout.  This first image is a reverse view of photos I took a few days ago on a trip to Nadgee.  It shows how the Bay Cliff could be considered a sea stack, if the encroaching sand was removed.

The pattern left by waves washing on the beach was intriguing,

Moving on to Pulpit Rock we were greeted by a large circle f white water, signalling that a cetacean (again flippers not legs), had just rejoined the water after a breach.  That didn't happen again but I did get a couple of snaps of parts of whales.

The view looking North.

We had hoped the Shearwater migration might have started but not so. The only ocean bird seen here was a solitary Gannet - by this time about 400 metres away.

I also snapped this Fairywren running around: it is fully off the ground and leaning into a curved path.

Rock platform with descending Frances!

The next photos were taken by Frances as went into the rock platform while I  continued to look for Cetaceans.  Looking back to the steps:

The Southern Wall.

An insertion in the wall.  No idea what it might be.

When the insertions fall out they leave these holes behind.

This shows the complexity of the rock here and a second type of insertion.

The underside of part of the wall.

When the geologising was done we headed off for a walk in the Heath.  Many New Holland Honeyeaters were squabbling in the bushes.

Grevillea lanigera 

Hakea decurrens showing fresh fruit (blue arrow); ripe but still green, fruit (orange arrow; and old dry fruit(red arrows).

Very old fruit and flower!

Euphrasia collina collina: Flora of Victoria notes 8 subspecies occur in Victoria with overlapping ranges.

According to the iNaturalist AI this daisy is Arctotis acaulis.  That has a common name of African Flat Daisy so a BIG HINT that it is not native here!  An expert has identified it as Argentipallium obtusifolium: part of the split of Helichrysum some years ago.

Definitely Bossiaea ensata: one of the few species I am certain of!

We ten moved to the Lighthouse area where a Nankeen Kestrel was taking 5.  The head looks grey, making this a male.

A good sized swell running and washing over the rocks.

Not kelp, but seal fins sticking out of the water

In the larger group I think there were at least 12 seals lounging around in the waves.

A view North from the Lighthouse.

While looking at the seals a young woman called out to us that there was a big Brown Snake between us and the lighthouse.  Frances soon spotted it.  A fine specimen: my guess is about 1.8m long and well muscled.  

It eventually took itself back into the veg so we left the area.  About 10m further up the track there was another of similar dimension.

At Pambula the first business was acquiring lunch at Wild Rye.  A 9.5 rated steak and kidney pie for me.  Despite closing the Cann River Cafe (and ceasing deliveries to Mallacoota) the Pambula operation will continue.  Apparently the problem is getting accommodation for staff.  Then to the small wetland to eat the pie and look for the (now resident) Magpie Geese.

A right Charlie's Creek track.

 I have read a few explanations of why, in English slang, the phrase "a right Charlie" means a fool.  This one is well off (my understanding of) the mark, and I suggest the author gets professional help.  I was always told that it is a reference to Mr Chaplin, reflecting the number of daft situations in which the Little Tramp finds himself.  Whatever: the meaning seems to have a fair application to the walk we did today, shown in the following extract from Google Earth.

I will come back to this a little later, but as a depiction of the two tracks I'd say the material Google accessed was an approximation drawn by someone in the Bairnsdale or Melbourne offices of Parks who has never been East of Orbost.  And their drafting tool was the famous "thumbnail dipped in tar".

Here is the track which eBird logged from where we actually went.

At an early point we came across this sad specimen.  I have asked iNaturalist for suggestions about identification (the first suggestion by their AI - emphasising 'Artificial' rather than 'Intelligence' - was European Dormouse).

The track - well cleared (presumably to let the Parks contractors get to rebuild the jetty at the end) is surrounded by densely regenerating Acacia scrub of which A. terminalis was well into bud.

The bloodwoods (Corymbia gummifera) were well into flower, explaining why a proportion of the fruit bat flyout has been pointing in this direction.

It never fails to astonish me how the autofocus function on my camera will find something other than my target to focus on.  In this case it has ignored the blossom (~80% of the image) and gone for Frances arm (~5% ) in the background.

A nice new jetty with some anglers well ensconced.  When we were last here (before the fire) the piles of the jetty were covered with sea squirts: they have yet to re-establish.

A Pelican passed over, giving me at least one bird snap.

Here is the eBird track.  Many diversions from that shown on Google Earth, amounting to an extra kilometre of distance.  It also suggests far better the amount of ups and downs along the way rather than the flat track I had been expecting from the straight line on Google Earth.

Flowers were generally hard to find.  A pretty little Dianella sp.

An orchid!  Eriocholus cucculatis , with the vernacular name Parson's Bands: the column etc always makes me think of a ranting evangelist, rather than a timid Parson.

I find it hard to capture steepness in photos.  This was one of the early gullies which the track took.  This was quite a surprise as on our previous foray (from the Double Creek car parking area) partway along the track the difficulty had been flooding rather than altitude sickness.

The contrast between the burnt black branches and the green foliage justified this image.

Two interesting holes: I think Bandicoot, but advice has been sought.

An attractive butterfly kept fluttering in front of us.  Every time it landed it shut its wings rendering itself both less attractive and harder to find against the fallen leaves.

Eventually I got a shot of the upper wings: a Variable Sword-grass Brown (Tisiphone abeona).

Colourful Gahnia sp. fruit

Finally we get to Charlie's Creek: by this stage I had realised that the track shown on Google Earth was garbage, as we had already done 2.9km and that shown was only 3km.  It was also interesting that the last1 kilometre we had walked had had NO maintenance from Parks for at least 2 years, and possibly not since the fire.

I had hoped that with the shiny new signs at each end of the track they would have fixed up the crossing here.  Hah: I am talking about Viv Parks here.

Frances crossed upright doing a sideways shuffle.  I sucked in my dignity, threw it away  and crossed on hands and knees.  But I didn't fall in!

Along the rest of the track the wattle showing signs of flowering was Acacia longifolia.

This is the low lying area which was flooded last time we walked this track.

Attractive bark on some sort of burnt tree.

Double Creek: a pleasant sight as it meant the end was close(r).

Nice new signs are always possible in Parks-land.  Slashing a track, or replacing a bridge not so often.