The nights are drawing in...
As my parents said back in Scotland.
Halfway through Autumn and I suspect this weekend will be a last hurrah to our warm weather and the gales will set in. Daylight saving ended a week ago and it's now light at about 6am which I enjoy. I'm almost finished harvesting the cannabis crop, and the amount of pruning and cutting back in the garden is scaring me! Even though the winter solstice is only about nine or ten weeks away, there's no real change to sunrise times for about six weeks.
The beach was beautiful this morning. Around 8am, facing west, shadows from large dunes behind me. Ahead is San Remo and Phillip Island. The water is full of seals, penguins, sharks and whales in migration. Not to mention we are on the Great Southern Reef which runs right along the south of the continent and apparently is as important, ecologically, as the Great Barrier Reef.
Just as the land plants have their seasons, so does life in the sea. Algaes, bryzoans and seaweeds grow madly in winter. Basically it makes the rocks far too slippery to go out for hours taking pictures. With today's sun, some of the slime will dried off but it's starting to become dangerous. This morning's pix:
Yellow and White stripped anemone. That spaghetti stuff below it may be some kind of molusc egg. Hard to say.
This is an eleven (or 8-15) armed sea star. I't not politically correct to call them 'Starfish' because they're not fish. So there! It's quite big - around 12in. across. The cool thing about them is if an arm falls out, they not only regrow the missing arm, the arm grows new buds and becomes a whole new sea star. How's that for immortality.
Just some sponges but they're a happy colour.
And it wouldn't be complete without a Gibby report. She found a small whiting for breakfast this morning. Nice change from the decaying seal flipper from last week.
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