Thursday 10th October 2019. 1505 – 1555

No rain. Very hot sunny day. Little or no breeze. Track dry.

Thomas and I braved the heat this afternoon and saw our first Platypus at Platypus Bend in company with a family group from Croatia. The far bank was preferred but he did venture close enough for one reasonable image. At the Log Jam we met up with a tour group who had frightened away all the residents apart from a solitary juvenile Saw-shelled Turtle. The group leader was busy organising for them to see a Green Ringtail Possum in No 4 of the overhanging bushes. I gave him my card at out last meeting! Things then quietened down and in the middle of the narrows I suddenly observed 2 Platypuses who were rolling horizontally in unison, breaking the surface intermittently but mainly under water. It was impossible to see their sex or what they were doing and they then vanished. After seeing nothing for several minutes we walked on to the viewing Platform where a male Platypus travelling at high speed emerged from under the the bridge and followed a good racing line until he vanished at the upstream corner. Within a minute another male Platypus followed the same course at similar speed, so I conclude that what I had seen previously was 2 males fighting. A much smaller flock of Plumed Whistling-ducks were seen from the Car Park on the far bank of the tributary.