Apollo Bay

Summer Return To Paradise Picnic Ground

February 10, 2017 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Paradise Picnic Ground is the bomb. You get great fungi there and it’s usually quite isolated. On this trip, during the final week of the summer holidays, there were a couple of other family members there. Still, Sethy and I were keen to show my mum just how great the area is.

Unfortunately, there won’t be any commentary to accompany the images. I have no idea where to start with moss and lichen, and it is difficult to get help with fungi IDs. The insects I can only narrow down to ‘caterpillar’ or ‘cuckoo wasp.’ I did find a really cool grasshopper… but forgot to put the SD card in the camera.

Mum loved it. It was less busy then the other areas and very few people actually walked on the loosely defined paths, which meant we could take our time. As it was late summer, we only found the most basic of fungi. I did discover a company that does fungi tours in Forrest while at the market.

Our only issue with the area was that there was a bit of bush bashing involved, the ‘paths’ were overgrown. This can make it a bit difficult if someone you are with has a leech phobia.

Enjoy the photos! I’m keen to return at other times of the year 🙂

Decorator Crab at Marengo

May 21, 2016 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

I’ve never really been that interested in crabs. Sure, they are fun to photograph but they didn’t fascinate me the way that other animals do.

That is, until I saw this decorator crab.

This is the coolest thing ever. It is a group of species of crab that use seaweed as a form of camouflage. According to Australian Museum,

The Decorator Crab’s carapace is covered with hooks to attach algae, seaweed or anything in the environment that will assist in camouflage.

When I first saw this species I thought these photos would suffice for identification. Alas, it wasn’t until I got home and spent $20 on a 60 page book about crabs that I realized that these pictures didn’t show enough information. Oops! I now know for next time.

Looking forward to finding more of these.

Autumn Visit To Marengo Rockpools

May 12, 2016 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Another trip to Apollo Bay, another visit to Marengo. We aren’t predictable, are we?

With each visit though we learn more things. I change what I look for. Seth doesn’t – he just tries to find as many crabs as possible.

Birds along the great ocean walk

April 23, 2016 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

It was the first week of the holidays. My parents did their semi regular trip to Apollo Bay, and I thought I’d try to knock out a couple of parts of the great ocean walk. I was lucky enough to do this on two of the days – you can read about those adventures here.

Shelly Beach to Marengo

The first part of the walk was from Shelly Beach to Marengo, accompanied by the little dude. There was a lot of rock scrambling and sitting to watch the waves, so the emphasis wasn’t on birding like I would have liked.

Still, I reckon we managed to do pretty well.

We saw this hooded plover family about halfway back. It was pretty exciting to see. We also saw a number of plovers converging at Barham Beach. It’s so comforting to know that the young here have a much better chance then those around Geelong.

Decent numbers of sooty oystercatchers! Annoyingly, some people have even seen a beach stone curlew recently along this stretch of coast. The area is taunting me!

We were also fortunate enough to see the striated fieldwren above. 🙂 A lifer for the little dude.

The walk was actually fantastic. I wouldn’t mind exploring the area properly and going beyond what we originally saw.

Blanket Bay – Cape Otway

I have no idea what the above bird is. I spent about an hour at Blanket Bay just trying to find the olive whistler, before giving up. Fortunately, others on the Vicbirders group couldn’t ID it either. While that sucks, it means I’m not a moron. Huzzah!

Beautiful golden whistlers.

This guy is apparently just a young common garden skink. Huh!

OLIVE WHISTLER!

I was sitting down on the side of a steep bit, trying to catch my breath. I saw this little guy and swore in my head. It was phenomenal and I wasn’t even trying. I’d spent a lot of time on previous trips trying to find this guy and here it was, just sitting out in the open. Thank you, birdy!

The birding was a tad substandard on these parts of the walk, but that was mostly because I was multi tasking to try. The first time I was watching a 7 year old and we were focusing on EVERYTHING. The second time I got so caught up in macro photography that I had to rush to catch the shuttle back.

I have read that the birds get even better along the other parts of the walk. It sounds like that if my goal is birding, I should just stay in the ONE area for a couple of hours rather then doing lots of little areas. It is a brilliant place to learn.

Young Galah At Apollo Bay

March 4, 2016 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

These photos are from my January visit to Apollo Bay. The photos are mediocre – no amount of editing could save them! – but I still thought they were fascinating.

I don’t see juvenile galahs that often. I see connecting strands of saliva from adult to chick even less. I’m very much looking forward to returning later this month 🙂