There was no paddling today so I slept until after 7am. That's also partly because I worked out that my new sleep mat needs to be blown up from both sides. I've been sleeping on a half flat mat! Should've read the instructions.
My water supplies were down to the last 4 liters so I set off down the beach with two bladders to be refilled. Along the way I was on the lookout for shorebirds to count for Dr Eric. Along the 2 km of sandy beach there were 2 pairs of hooded plovers (hoodies), 4 sooty oyster catchers, 4 pied oyster catchers, a handful of silver gulls and Pacific gulls and 1 enormous wedge tailed eagle in the skies overhead. The best way to observe hoodies is by walking along the wet sand as they are preparing to make nests soon in the dry sand above high tide. Their nests are easily missed and can be trodden on. They run away from you as you approach and then when you're far enough past their hangout they fly back past you. It's worth looking up some of the other behaviour that they use to distract and divert predators during breeding season. Very clever.
The water was in a lagoon behind the beach and had a very slight stagnant (still water) taint, but good enough to drink.
Also found washed up was a large shell with a rotting animal inside and a long dead crab. Is this a spider crab? The claw was next to it but I posed it for the photo. The mug is there for scale so you can see how big it is. The photo of the rock (a solid aggregate of minerals as Youngtown posted a few days ago) has an especially large crystal of, I think, feldspar. It's the rectangular shape and is about 8cm long. Feldspar is one of the minerals found in granite.
It was also a chance to get the battery charged using the solar panel. At the moment I'm staying in touch with a mobile phone but tomorrow I'll paddle to the north side of the island and have to use the satellite phone to post a report. Thanks for all the great posts to the discussions too. If you're comments don't appear immediately or it says they're spam, don't worry, we will find them during the day and make sure they go up. However, if you post comments that are way off topic (silly) or show any signs of bullying we will delete them.
T-shirt winner:
SkyeUnicorn for their post on how to sort shells on todays Discuss.
'You could sort the shells by colour, size, shape or habitat. I think that sorting by habitat would be the best way, because some shells can have a wide range of designs and size but usually have the same habitat.'
