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My Nature Blog

Bonking(?) Sea Hares at Wild Dog Creek Beach

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I recently shared some photos of many Aplysia sea hares we found at Wild Dog Creek. My nephew joined us about 20 minutes later… and found another rockpool with even more sea hares.

My first thought was that many of these sea hares were mating with each other and that I’d interrupted a sea hare orgy. I tried Googling to learn more about sea hare behaviour. I ended up finding references to a different Aplyia species, Aplysia Californica, that engage in mating chains.

I’m still not sure what behaviour I’m observing in these photos. They do provide clearer views which should help with identification.

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Aplysia species At Wild Dog Creek Beach

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I was very excited to find these sea hares at Wild Dog Creek. There were a lot of them in the one rockpool! We came across two large groups of sea hares in the rockpools here. Both rockpools were on rocks about one metre off the ground, but had a lot of vegetation.

I’m not sure what the species is.  I had found Aplysia Concava behind Apollo Bay harbour a year ago and thought I may have found the same species.

It turns that sea hares are still too complicated for me and I can’t tell the difference. The identifiable features are clearly explained and there are more resources, such as this article at Nudibranch domain. I currently don’t understand the different body parts.

I have put the images on iNaturalist in the interim.

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Purple-crowned Lorikeets At Apollo Bay

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I was having a lot of fun looking at the musk lorikeets. Seth, who had run after me, said “I think those are purple crowded.”

I wasn’t confident identifying the birds based on my photos. I’d seen purple crowneds previously, but they were high up in the tree. The photo quality was bad and I couldn’t get a close look at the features.

I googled purple crowned lorikeets as soon as I got back to the flat. Seth was right! This was especially impressive when you consider that the birds he saw looked like the one above; they didn’t have the obvious purple crown that we later saw.

Seeing these birds was a definite highlight of the trip.

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