Exploring Dutton

I really wish this lovely area had a different name: you'll think I have taken up amateur proctology and been practicing on the next Leader of the Opposition.

Instead I spent the day looking at various parts of the area around Mount Dutton Bay West.  This began with a walk a little further into the coastal reserve.  Frances stayed at the house and I'd said I'd be back within an hour so I had to retreat at the point shown.  The more Southern houses in the settlement appear on the track print, with the actual track starting in the Reserve about 800m down the road.

 Today I noticed more blossom on the vegetation than a couple of days ago.  First up, some eucalypt ...

 ... then a better photo of a Correa than I achieved on Whalers Way.

I was walking quite close to the water and noticed what happens when limestone is undercut.  Rather focuses one's mind.

 This is looking across the bay towards (I think) part of Coffin Bay NP.

 The dark lines close to the far shore are an oyster farm.

 Another undercut, with some well eroded exposure to the rock.

 A couple of starfish were lurking at the bottom, indicating that this was pretty close to low tide.

I moved swiftly back to the house pausing to look at a couple of noisy small birds.  I had trouble identifying them, but the way they cocked their tail made me think Heathwren and sure enough on checking references they came out as Shy Heathwrens: I think my second ever sighting.  The other interesting birds were 2 Cape Barren Geese honking as the flew overhead.  They are really quite common in this area.

I then went to explore the Salt Creek swamp near Farm Beach.  It was almost devoid of birds, so I carried on to photograph what I referred to in an earlier post as a graveyard of tractors.

While they are pretty rusty many of them look to have inflated tyres so I wonder if this is where people store their launch equipment over Winter and these things lurch forth each summer?

My final expedition was to the Big Lagoon towards Port Lincoln.   This is one of the few spots where others have ebirded in the area and we had noted numbers of fowl in the little remaining water.

In fact it appeared that the brown stuff is not mud but scum on the water, as ducks seemed to be swimming around in much of it.  In some places a few Red-capped Plovers and Red-necked Stints were trotting around on it.  We had noticed some Red-necked Avocets as we drove past  ...

 .. and there quite a few Pied Stilts also in attendance.

There were many species of ducks including over 100 Pink-eared Ducks: some are shown here with (front row left end) 2 Freckled Ducks.  Not a great image but ..

 This has a good mixture of the fowl.

For those interested my full list for this site is on eBird.

On my way back to the house I looked down into Lake Wangary and could see a lot of ducks and swans but at 500m distance from the closest public access (and it being 1.8km across) there was no hope of getting a decent count.

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