Sunday 2 July 2023 Cuttagee

 Another pearler of a day on which to have a lazy paddle. After getting ready,

we launched at 10.50am. As we did we got our first sighting of the day of the resident Sea Eagle as it flew down the eastern shore of Little Cuttagee. 

 It is Le Tour time again so inevitably cycling was the main topic of conversation as we headed down the lake.

Lots of birdlife today - swans, Little Pied and Little Black Cormorants, grebe, pelicans, 2 more sightings of the resident Sea Eagle, and another bird of prey, a kite or falcon I think. And beside the usual small bird life we had a good sighting of a Golden Whistler.

At Woolybutts Bay we paused and watch a mob of cormorants and pelicans fishing. Some of the pelicans chose not to fish for themselves and instead would wait till a cormorant got one and then would give chase trying, and sometimes succeeding, to steal the cormorants catch.

Eventually we paddled on and headed across the lake and entered the creek mouth. Once round the shady corner we entered shallow water and were soon passing over large schools of small - the largest being about 20cm long and the smallest, further up the creek, only a few centimetres in length.

Along the way in a 60 metre stretch we spotted, lying on the bottom, 3 large eels. Other than being dead they looked quite healthy.  Various hypotheses were put forward, which led to some research later that night.  Eels have a very interesting life cycle which you can read about in this short article:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-01-09/eels-australia-most-hardcore-animal/100572614

Close to running out of water at12.10pm we pulled in for lunch

and set off again at 1.15pm for a bit more fish spotting as we paddled back downstream.

Here is todays footage. Put together by me, with some help from L, it's not up to the usual standard but it does give a reasonable representation of the days outing.

As we paddled back up the lake the pelicans and cormorants, along with a couple of what looked like terns were now fishing the eastern end of Far End Bay. Suddenly one of the terns took off with a mouthful of fingerlings, closely followed by the other tern. Then down swooped a kite/falcon (was it the one we had seen earlier?) and gave chase. They swooped and banked, climbed and fell - just like the planes in all the WW2 battle of britain and red baron type movies (now I am showing my age!). They slowly disappeared across the lake until they were too far away for us to see the outcome.  The other question we were left with was: was the other tern just following its pal or was it trying to steal its fish??

That little excitement over we paddled for home in the increasingly chilly air. Nearly there.

Full of vitamin D and wonder at all the wild life we'd seen we ended our paddle at 2.40pm and headed home; where once unpacked it was time to light the fire.  That night it got down to 4oC which is very cold for us.

Trip Notes:

for maps etc see previous Cuttagee entries.