The walk to Wineglass Bay lookout from Coles Bay in Freycinet National Park is a pleasant enough walk and a popular tourist stop. The views are pretty good from the lookout and most people stop here but a few continue the walk down to the beach as we did today. A quick scan of the sea produced shearwaters (fluttering) and gannets (Australian) but really these are just southern hemisphere versions of Manx shearwater and northern gannet and this could just as easily be a scene from north Wales. What really makes these waters stand out is the presence of albatross. Now you know that you are in the southern hemisphere. Shy albatross is the species most likely to be seen from land in Tasmania at this time of year, but tantalisingly for me, Buller's albatross is the second commonest inshore species here, and this would be a new species for me so I took every opportunity to scan the sea.
No Buller's today, I had to be content with several shy albatross, but still a marvelous sight. Sadly, on the beach there was the washed up corpse of an albatross. It was a shy albatross, the largest of a group of albatrosses known as mollyhawks which are the lesser albatrosses. These have 2.5m wingspan. The great albatrosses, such as the wanderers, have wingspans of 3.5m.
This bird can be identified as shy albatross from the bill.
Very much alive, this impressive bird is Pacific gull.
There are plenty of interesting plants in the eucalyptus woodland, include this which is a species of tea tree.
Hyacinth orchid.
Wineglass Bay from the lookout.
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