Australian Sea lions

We had a great day today, first of all a brief visit to Bales Beach, although the tide was too high to walk around the headland to a nice sea pool, and then we decided to go to a Raptor Bird Display which was on nearby, while we waited for our Seal Bay tour. The bird show was really pretty cool, largely because the audience was quite small and there was lots of interaction with the birds for both adults and kids. We saw a magpie and currawong, kestrel, boobook owl, barn owl, tawny frog mouth (not actually an owl apparently, which I didn’t know), blue tailed kookaburras, barking owl, and a wedge tailed eagle, which was very popular with everyone, such an impressive creature, Daniel was very impressed with how long its wingspan was. What I found interesting was that the barn owl hunts by stealth so is completely silent – even his legs have feathers on them, because if they didn’t, to a mouse they would sound like a whip when he brings them down to pick the mouse up. So with very soft feathers on them they’re really quiet, and he can sneak up on his prey.

After lunch we went to Seal Bay and on the Sealion tour which takes you down a boardwalk and right onto the beach within 10m of the Australian Seals with a guide which was really cool. They are apparently quite endangered, I think it’s the third largest colony in the country. Australian sealions it turns out have an 18 month cycle, in that their gestational period is 18 months, then about a week after the pup is born the bull turns up and gets her pregnant again, and she feeds the pup milk for 18 months until just before the new pup is born. They also work on 3 day on and off again day shifts, where they go out to sea for 3 days to feed (100k offshore and 100m down), they eat about a third of their body weight, and then come back for 3 days to rest and digest. When they are feeding a very young pup the mums might only go out for a day, but pretty soon even the mum is off for 3 days at a time and the pup just has to wait. There were really cute pups rolling around in the surf and surfing in on waves having a great time.

Now we’re back home resting – unfortunately I’ve come down with something so am not feeling that great. Good thing we’ve got a few more days here to rest up.