J is for jellyfish

 

jellyfish close to ocean floor

Most of the Australian jellyfish are also full of toxins. The main ones to worry about are those that hae been beached. Stepping on them is still painful!

3 different jellyfish on the beach

The blue-bottles (aka Portugese Man o'War) is apparently four creatures merged into one. From the Australian museum website:

The float (pneumatophore) is a single individual and supports the rest of the colony. The tentacles (dactylozooids) are polyps concerned with the detection and capture of food and convey their prey to the digestive polyps (gastrozooids). Reproduction is carried out by the gonozooids, another type of polyp.

 J is also for journey. The waiting list for cardiology evaluations is just as long here as in the US. Because my pacemaker was no longer under remote monitoring, they found me an earlier appointment - in Canberra. We could and did do it and I feel more comfortable that I will soon have it back under an alert system. However, it was a 3 hour trek each way (over the mountains). We stopped at a national park along the way (almost all of these are free in NSW) and did some bird watching. According to the website, the river does contain platypus but we didn't see any. 

We did hear whipbirds (no pictures) and had a sacred kingfisher blast right by us (ditto). However, we did find the female (left) version of the golden whister

two birds of very different coloring; left beige, right bright yellow

We also saw this cutie - a flame robin that sat right across the river from us:

small bird with bright orange belly

Nope, still no rose robin!

It was a cool park and we saw only two other hikers (and we stopped both going and returning). Will go back eventually and have a look for the platypus again!

We are up to Swansea next - a dog, a beach and a pool!

Happy Halloween!



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