Turtle breathes, grebe preens, lake gleams

The first two happenings were entirely natural.

The gleaming involved a little unwitting assistance from skyscrapers.

All occurred as daylight ebbed at Perth’s Lake Monger, on September 30, 2019. (photos copyright Doug Spencer)

My beloved and I frequently see turtles at Lake Monger.

Yesterday, however, was the first time I managed to take a reasonable photo of an activity which every turtle must do, frequently.

Chelodina colliei – southwestern Australia’s own turtle – is known by many names, and is often mislabeled as a tortoise.

Its correct and descriptive common names are the Oblong turtle and the Long-Necked Turtle. Click here for more info.

Turtles live in water, but lay their eggs (and bury/protect them) in  “dry” land near waters’ edges.

Presumably, the individual below had just completed her primary task; when we saw her, about half an hour’s drive east of Albany, she was heading to a nearby wetland.

 

 

Once, we were near Lake Monger, in a backyard on the “dryland” side of the busy lakeside road which the relevant reptile had crossed.  As we – four adults and one amazed small child – watched on, a female laid a prodigious number of eggs in the pit that she had dug in a nearby homeowner’s front garden. She then covered her eggs.  The nigh-exhausted turtle then had to cross the road again.  Her hatchlings would, eventually, have to make the same crossing in order to gain any chance to survive for even one full day.

 

Crested grebes have recently begun their annual return to  Lake Monger.

 

 

As detailed here, September 2019 was Perth’s hottest September since meteorological records began.

It was also the driest in 42 years.

During September 2019’s final sunset small sections of Lake Monger’s surface briefly looked like this:

 

 

The Klimt-esque sheen was not produced by sunbeams directly falling on water. Lake Monger’s “shafts of gold” were a fleeting byproduct of yesterday’s last sunrays precision-bouncing off the highly reflective glass on some of Perth’s skyscrapers, circa three kilometres from where we stood.

Fittingly, the windows of the P & N Bank were the primary contributor!  (if you look closely at the image above, you can also see the shadows cast by some “darker” towers)