Eungella to Cairns: the Eastern Highlands

Consider the platypus. It has a duck-like bill covered with specialized receptors for finding its prey; a beaver-like tail covered with fur that is not used for swimming; and otter-like webbed feet for swimming (front) and steering (rear) armed with straight claws for digging (front) and curved claws for grooming (rear). Females lay eggs and nurse their young, but lack nipples. If you didn’t already know that it exists, you’d be hard pressed to believe that it does. Platypus were “discovered” near Sydney by European settlers in 1797 (of course, Aboriginal Australians knew about them for millennia). Bewildered, the local governor sent skins and drawings to Great Britain. British zoologists who examined the specimens in 1798 thought they were a hoax perpetrated by Chinese taxidermists, who were selling mummified monkeys with fish tails as mermaids at the time (link).

Platypus in Broken River, Eungella National Park

Winter Texans (Part 1)

We rented a house on the Gulf Coast of Texas for a month and ended up staying for three months. We knew the birding would be good and the diving bad, but there were national seashores and wildlife refuges to visit, and coastal bays and estuaries to kayak. And while we had explored West Texas from El Paso to Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande, we had not spent time in the Coastal Bend.

Rande and the Big Blue Crab, a local Rockport landmark on Little Bay