End of first week of hols lots more to come..

The end of the week has been rather busy with domestic chores - most notably cleaning and tidying the childrens rooms, not a simple task.
Yesterday (Friday) we went into Palmerston Library to get some details of art workshops for Xanthe - the school holiday ones are over booked but we have the artists schedule for the rest of the year so we will look at booking her on the coloured pencil course. On the way out of Darwin there was a superb Black-shouldered Kite sitting on the telegraph wires but unfortunately the traffic meant that I was not able to stop and take any pictures.
Tish was working Friday night and again tonight (Saturday) so I took the children out today. They were all rather tired so we settled on an easy day and went back to Fogg Dam to look for crocs (we failed) and Brolgas (we succeeded)
It was another great day with numerous highlights including two lifers - white-browed crake and red-backed kingfisher
Xanthe yet again was in charge of one of the cameras but this time she took less pictures of us and more of the wildlife.
Here is a selection from today..

I liked this shot of the marsh as it really shows how busy it is - there are puddles everywhere each with their own selection of birds

Along side the birds we had our best views of agille wallaby so far - this looked like a female with her very large joey, although I hope it did not try to get back into her pouch.

They were very happy tucking into the grass.

........nice to see the Darter with its wings open

Red-Backed Kingfisher

Pied Heron



Striated Heron trying to hide

And my entrant for worst photo of the day...

Purple Swamphen

The undoubted stars though were the Brolgas - we saw atleast five. Here are a selection of Xanthe and my best shots of two of the closer birds..







Xanthes shots of the pair

Well worth the wait to see them properly rather than just in flight.

The icing on the cake was that the black-shouldered kite was on the wires again but due to traffic yet again I could not stop to get any pictures.
Tomorrow we are off to Jingli Water Park so that the children can burn off some energy before a BBQ to celebrate Territory Day in the evening - we may come back via the kite site, surely one of these days we will see it and be able to stop and get pictures of this stunning raptor!

Fogg Dam and points east

Today we went on a short trip east along the Arnhem Highway - the main goal was to see if we could see any freshwater crocs at Fogg Dam.

The marshland is artificial - the reslt of a failed experiment by an American farmer to set up rice paddies in the Top End. The result whilst not effective for rice has blossomed into a superb wetland, in fact this whole section of the Arnhem Highway east of Darwin is bordered by wetlands all the way to Kakadu.

The reserve at Fogg Dam has several viewing platforms along the old dam wall that offer great views of the area. Today though we were not able to walk the dam rather we could drive and stop of in the parking spaces as the Rangers were trying to catch a Saltie that is apparently in the area - the closest we got to seeing it were the traps that had been put out

Xanthe continued to use one of the cameras and got some interesting photos of the family whilst I was birding

The birds were spectacular and I will try and get better shots another day and as it is only 40 minutes from home we will visit frequently as appartently at the end of the dry the flocks can be impressive.

The site was alive and we managed to get a few nice photos as well as missing a few (such as Purple Swamphen that skulked in an area that did not allow me to get any pictures at all).
These are the best that Xanthe and I managed between us:

Pied Heron

Willie Wagtail (Xanthe)

Darter

Royal Spoonbill

Black-Necked Stork (Xanthe)

 White-Bellied Sea Eagle

When we had finished at Fogg Dam we headed further east to have a little explore. We found two new parks that I had not realised existed. One Djukbinj covers about 1800km square and has I have since discovered got a couple of great off road tracks to explore but I did not have the right map in the car so we went no more than about 800m up the main track before I decided to leave it for another day.

The second Leaning Tree National Park is much smaller but what a little gem it is

There are two tracks that take you down to the edge of the lagoon that apparently does not ever dry out so the birding at the end of the dry can be very interesting.
We parked up and had a very nice picnic

The children were then able to have a run around before we headed home (more pics by the artist now known as Xanthe)..

The only slight frustration here was that we had two brief views of two different Dingo's but they slunk off into the bush when they caught our sent!

Tomorrow is a cleaning day - the house, toys and garden are having an early spring clean as it is badly needed - so there will be no blog tomorrow.

I will leave you with my favourite picture of the day - not quite sure why but I love this shot by Xanthe!

Xanthe's turn...

A selection of photos taken by Xanthe makes up todays blog - hence no pictures of the artist herself.

a nice gallery.