The school holidays are upon us and I normally take a day off here and there while Lisa is on leave. It looks like we will have a proper wintery school holiday this year, and this mornings’ walk on the beach was cold and blustery. Not that there was much of the beach to walk on, with the dark choppy water eating its way up close the base of the dunes:
The overnight storm had pushed weed up the top of the beach, which was now stranded at the high tide mark. On days like today it is hard to imagine that the waters are ever warm, clam and clear enough for me to snorkel in. Today instead of looking underwater I was beachcombing the weed to see what had been caught up in it. This included endless numbers of marble sized sea urchins much smaller than the ones I see, and the occasional fish:
There were also heaps of bluebottle jellyfish, the largest with a body ten centimetres long. This one was nowhere near that size, but it did still have its long trailing stinger still intact. The body floats on the water with this stinging tail draping below waiting for unsuspecting prey. Much as it could be a very painful experience, I would really love to see one of these in the water:
Lisa and I got home just in time, as the rain started to fall. We then got ready to head out for another but longer walk. Having recently and finally found some walking boots that feel comfortable, despite her upturned fused big toe, she was all revved up to test them. So regardless of the driving rain that was hitting the windshield, as we drove to Ambergate, we were determine to have a wander:
Our trip here last spring was the first and only time we had been here, and then we were looking out for orchids. Today we were just out to have a walk, with nothing in particular in mind to look for. But seeing we had an idea of what the terrain would be like, i.e. level and easy walking, it provided the ideally place for the first real test of the boots and whether they would remain comfortable:
We timed things perfectly and the rain stopped as we arrived, and we had a second pleasant surprise to find quite a few flowers out. It wasn’t the mass of blazing colours we had seen before but the occasional white, pink, yellow, blue, red and purple broke up the greens of the equally lovely grass trees, shrubs and grasses. I was fascinated by this sundew type plant using it’s sticky flowers to make use of other plants to gain height:
I was even more stunned when I came across an orchid. I’ve seen the Banded Greenhood orchid before but simply didn’t expect to find them out this time of the year. I now know better and have read that they start to flower as early as May, and are amongst the first Greenhood orchids to flower. I’ll have to find out what other orchids flower so early, and start looking for them:
It wasn’t just the flowers that caught my eye. I’m not going to even guess what tree this is, but we loved the texture of the trunk. The knobbly look of the partly burnt trunk made it look all warty, with the red sap oozing out of sores. It is the only trunk we saw like this, but that said it was probably also the biggest tree we came across so maybe some of the younger ones will turn out like this in time:
While we were out to test Lisa’s boots there was a lot of stopping to check out what might be about. This included an amazingly structured home of what I believe to be a Bagworm caterpillar. The image probably makes it look bigger than it is. It is only about five centimetres long so you can hopefully now appreciate the delicate nature of the tiny sticks that it has cut to perfect size to build its home:
All over the ground was the familiar sign of cockatoos, half chewed gumnuts. We could hear their call and as we rounded a corner spied them up in the canopy. It took them a while to notice us, as they busily added to the collection of chewed gumnuts littering the floor. Eventually we decided to walk forward, which was when they alighted flashing their white tails at us:
While we had spied so much already, I had spent most of the time looking down towards the groundcover immediately off the path. Being winter I was on the hunt for fungi, and there was a pretty good collection of them scattered throughout this reserve. So many in fact that I struggled to know which images to include. So I have decided to provide you with a collection of images with less words than usual:
As the fallen debris from the grass tree stem on the ground indicate this one was tiny, maybe a centimetre in diameter:
I only came across two of these red coloured fungi, and sadly both had been munched by something:
Next up was the home of fairies, tiny and delicate conical capped fungi huddled together on fragile 1mm diameter stalks:
This wavy shaped one was an unmissable being a vivid bright yellow, and strangely smooth on the underside while the top of the millimetre thick plate was covered in tiny matted filaments:
Then there were the bigger specimens, this one measuring closer to fifteen centimetres and resembling a pixie’s hat, with a distinct bobbly pattern:
This was one of the strangest, it looked like the caps were dissolving as if someone had poured acid over them. The partly intact caps looked sickly, poorly and very uninviting:
The only way to truly identify mushrooms and toadstools is to also check the gills under the cap, but most were too small or low down to allow that. Unlike this one, which was close to twenty centimetres wide and fifteen centimetres tall, and had a cap covered in a sticky residue:
In amongst all the standard fungi, there was the occasional unusual find. I’m really interested to find out what this one is, and to give an idea of size it is only about three to four centimetres high:
This green one is smaller than all of the others, and each stem is only about a centimetre high and it might be a type of lichen. I have put all of my finds up on QuestaGame, so will hopefully get them identified:
The more traditional fungi’s kept appearing, and I had to keep a sharp eye out to find these. Again only a few centimetres across and very well camouflaged:
One last fungi image and I had to include this one. The top reminds me of a freshly baked cupcake or cookie, and as I watched it something jumped across my view:
The tiny cricket landed on the same fallen log, a mere few centimetres long but with the camera already set to macro it was the ideal chance to take a snap before it continued its journey and was lost from sight:
We too carried on, all be it at what seemed a much slower pace. By now we were however getting hungry, and the thought of pizza at the Shed Brewery in Busselton hurried us along. The boots were still doing their job, and Lisa’s toe wasn’t whinging or complaining one bit. So next weekend we will head somewhere with rougher terrain to take the test to the next level:
As we neared the car we again heard the familiar sound in the canopy, and stopped to watch. This time they seemed a little more jittery, and took flight before we continued on our walk. As they lifted off the branches they showed us their true colours, making us very happy to have seen both the white and red tail cockatoos:
Sandbagged 