Most of today was spent behind the wheel as I covered a fair bit of ground heading north to the Monkey Mia area. In fact, I didn't get all the way to Monkey Mia as I stopped at Hamelin Pool for the night, but I will be visiting Monkey Mia tomorrow. The drive was relatively easy and quite scenic, at least what I could see. I got on the road just after sunrise but for the first hour or so Iwas in a dense fog so I could see very little of the country side. By midmorning it had cleared and the landscape turned into the stereotypical Australian landscape, eucalypts and red dirt.
I arrived at about 3:00 at Hamelin Pool and checked into the caravan park before heading down to see the stramatolites. Stramatolites are essentially colonies of cyanobacteriaoo that date back millions of years. In fact, they are one of the earliest forms of life on Earth and are responsbile for oxygenating the atmospohere. These are only one of two major colonies that still survive today (the other is in the Bahamas and in deeper water). In theory they sound really cool. In reality, they look like rocks. Sort of strange shaped rocks but they look like rocks. I had been warned of this so I wasn't disappointed but it was still cool to see them.
After spending some time looking at the stramatolites, I wandered over into the bush and found a Chiming Wedgebill. He came very close to me but never sat up so I could photograph him. I did manage to get some photos of the local race of the White-browed Scrubwren that looks very different than the eastern races so that was nice. After that, I headed back down the road to see what else I could find. My hope was for a Redthroat and I was fortunate to find a pair while I was looking at a Black-faced Woodswallow. One of the redthroats proved quite cooperative and Iwalked away thrilled with the images as you can see above. Hopefully tomorrow I can track down a wedgebill again, but all in all I was quite pleased with the day.
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