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Tag: Walpole Wilderness

Grand sands (#36 in series: “looking down” at pneumatocysts on Mandalay Beach)

Published January 23, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#36 in series: “looking down” at pneumatocysts on Mandalay Beach)

Mandalay Beach is near Walpole, in Western Australia’s “Deep South”.

I have seen many wild ocean beaches – on every continent, bar Antarctica.

Mandalay Beach – named after a ship that was wrecked there in 1911 – is one of my all time favourites.

It is really wild (do not swim there) but easy to reach; any able-bodied, sensible driver of a 2WD vehicle will easily “manage” both the track that leads off the South Coast Highway and the short walk from car park to beach.

In every direction, the vistas are splendid.

However,  you should never forget, also, to keeping look down to the sand at your feet. (ditto the rocks, any clefts therein, and the rock pools)

read moreGrand sands (#36 in series: “looking down” at pneumatocysts on Mandalay Beach)
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Splendid by name…and in fact.

Published March 6, 2022 by Pelidoug

Splendid by name…and in fact.

 

 

Lustful, too!

East of the Nullarbor Plain, when an Australian talks of “blue wrens”, chances are they are Superb Fairy-wrens, Malurus cyaneus.

Superb Fairy-wrens do not exist on the WA side of the Nullarbor.

There – at least in WA’s southern half – the (equally superb) blue wren in question is usually the Splendid Fairy-wren, Malurus splendens.

read moreSplendid by name…and in fact.
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Trapeze with feathers, sans safety net

Published February 22, 2022 by Pelidoug

Trapeze with feathers, sans safety net

 

 

Anyone who pays close attention to small birds surely cannot fail to marvel at their hyperactivity, their agility, and how radically and swiftly their appearance changes.

From one nanosecond to the next, the very same individual can appear remarkably different in shape, colour, size…and attitude.

All photos feature New Holland Honeyeaters attending the very same Grevillea, adjacent to the eastern wall of a house in Walpole, in Western Australia’s “Deep South”.

read moreTrapeze with feathers, sans safety net
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Feeding, Flaunting, Foaming, Forest-walking – Deep South WA

Published February 20, 2022 by Pelidoug

Feeding, Flaunting, Foaming, Forest-walking – Deep South WA

 

 

This post is a teaser: each subject of its four photographs will soon be explored further, in its own particular post.

All photos copyright Doug Spencer, taken in February 2022.

The first two images were both taken just a few steps outside of the house in which we stayed in Walpole.

Above, feeding, (& probably pollinating the Grevillea) is a New Holland Honeyeater Phylidonyris novaehollandiae.

Immediately below, flaunting, is a male Splendid Fairy-wren Malurus splendens.

read moreFeeding, Flaunting, Foaming, Forest-walking – Deep South WA
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