Friday 13th December 2019. 0848 – 0950

3.5 mm in rain gauge since yesterday. Sunny morning with cloudless sky. No wind increasing to light southerly breeze later. Track damp.

Wow! If this is Friday 13th can we have more of them!
Thomas and I set out reasonable early after unloading half a trailer full of scoria and doing some landscaping. We usually start later on Fridays because the Volunteers are hard at work with maintenance on the walk and it tends to be rather crowded and noisy from power tools. Reaching the far side of Lloyd’s Suspension Bridge, I exchanged banter with my neighbor who was using a backpack powered blower, noticing as I did so that there was a Possum behind her in a tree on the creek bank. Further investigating confirmed a Green Ringtail Possum although it was impossible to find a viewpoint to reveal who it was. I suspect Mum with joey but could not confirm. A group of men were at The Other Side loading a trailer employing various tools but decided to go ahead and check the tree next to one of their storage sheds and picnic table. To my surprise the spot recently occupied by the Chocolate Brushtail was today taken by a Green Ringtail Possum! Again a facial view was hard to obtain so I don’t know which one (or two). We saw two more Green Ringtails further on, one near the large River Oak between Platypus Point and Log Jam Peninsula and a final beauty in number 4 of the Overhanging Bushes who provided by far the best images. It’s not often that I see at least 4 Green Ringtails in one morning!.
To add to this there was a fine large Eastern Water Dragon close to Snodgrass’s Pool in which was a Platypus and a pair of Pacific Black Ducks. These were all within 50 mtrs of the maintenance activities!
There was no other major excitement to report but we photographed a Rufous Whistler, a distant Bush Stone Curlew in the Paddock, a very cheeky juvenile Willie Wagtail and one of the long suffering male Figbirds. There was also a juvenile Water Dragon under the Highway Bridge.