Nature Notes

It’s easy to overlook a bird you see every day. Easier still to dismiss it. Silver Gulls - the default “seagulls” of Geraldton’s beaches - are perhaps the most misjudged creatures along the foreshore. They’re treated like scavengers of chip packets, noisy opportunists, background noise for picnics and shoreline walks.But spend a little time watching them, really watching them, and a different bird emerges. BirdLife Australia describes the Silver Gull ( Chroicocephalus novaeho

The first time you wade into Geraldton’s water with a mask on, you realise the coastline has two worlds: the one we move through on land, and the quieter, green-lit world just beneath the surface. That second world belongs to the seagrass. Offshore from Bluff Point and Sunset Beach, meadows of Posidonia  and Amphibolis  stretch across the shallow seafloor - not forests, exactly, but something close.DBCA’s marine habitat maps list these meadows as some of the most important ec

Some creatures endure the Midwest heat. Meat ants calculate  it. Walk anywhere along Geraldton’s coast or inland scrub - Drummonds, Moonyoonooka, Moresby, even the sandy edges of cul-de-sacs - and you’ll eventually find the unmistakable sign of an Iridomyrmex purpureus  colony: a low, open disc of fine, sun-bleached gravel. No towering mound. No grand castle. Just a flattened circle of stone and sand, raked clean by thousands of mandibles. CSIRO’s ant identification sheets de

Some plants survive the coast. Spinifex builds  it. Along the dunes at Drummonds Cove, Glenfield, and Sunset Beach, the long, tough runners of Spinifex longifolius  stitch the sand together in a way that looks effortless - until you look closely. DBCA’s coastal dune profiles describe this species as one of the primary “sand binders” of Western Australia’s mid-west. A quiet architect of the shoreline. Today at Sunset Beach, the wind had been working hard - scouring the top lay

Some creatures announce themselves with wings or size or confidence.Others work quietly, almost anonymously, shaping the coast in ways most people never see. Trochus and turban shells belong to the second kind — the quiet cleaners of the intertidal zone. Walk the rock platforms at Flat Rocks, Separation Point, or Bluff Point during a low tide and you’ll see them if you slow down enough: small, spiral-shell grazers moving with the tide’s breathing rhythm. WA Museum guides desc

There are birds you go looking for, and birds that simply take hold of your attention.The osprey is the latter - always half in the sky, half in the sea, and wholly stitched into the identity of Geraldton’s coast. From Beresford to the Marina to the exposed edge of Point Moore, these birds build their stories in sticks: high, heavy nests perched on poles or lights, looking out over wind, water, and the long curve of the Indian Ocean. At Point Moore, the nest sits on a pole in

I went looking for mangroves today. Some documents had suggested a small outpost of Avicennia marina  once clung to the edges of the Point Moore peninsula - one of the southernmost mangrove presences along Western Australia’s coast. A 2014 coastal hazard assessment identified “mangroves at the edges of the peninsula”  as part of the local ecological system (WA Department of Transport, Assessment of Coastal Erosion Hotspots in Western Australia , Appendix D). But when I walked

High above the salt-baked rooftops and wind-carved dunes of Geraldton, a small falcon carves out its life. Meet the Nankeen Kestrel ( Falco cenchroides )-often seen hovering in place, scanning the ground below, hunting in the margins of our built environment and natural edges. A resilient resident This kestrel has thrived across Australia, including Western Australia’s Midwest coast. It favours open ground, such as farmland, grassland or coastal scrub-anywhere it can hover, s