Lee Point and other bits and bobs

We were woken up this morning at around 0230 by a bit of a storm - having watered the garden it then promptly rained for several hours.

In the morning I took the children up to Lee Point again whilst Tish went to church. This area (Lee Point and Buffalo Creek) is a  superb birding area but has a high rate of car break-ins so caution is the name of the game. At Buffalo Creek there is a secure car park that is open most days from 6am so I will be able to have a proper trip out there at some stage.
Anyway when we had walked along the beach last week we found a couple of "pansy" shells but managed to drop them before we got them back to the car - today we found yet more and kept them safe.

We also saw some spectacular dragonflies along the edge of the scrub / mangrove forest. Most of them did not hang around long enough to get any decent photos but this particular one was very obliging (identification to follow shortly..)

After a short walk we then retired to a shaded lay-by along the road and did a gentle bit of birding from the car. We have stopped here before and had great views of several species of raptor and today was no exception - although they showed up the lack of quality of our camera lens.

Nankeen Kestrel

moulting Whistling Kite

very distant adult White-bellied Sea Eagle
On the way back we found a group of 15 Red-tailed Black Cockatoo (we had only seen one briefly before) and managed to get some great views but very poor photos

They are the two black blobs in the middle.
As is the way though once you see something once you start bumping into it again and again. Today was no exception and having picked up Tish we stopped at the local shopping centre to get the last couple of things we needed before the children go back to school tomorrow and guess what there were two in the trees in the car park.

The pictures don't do their size any justice, they are huge and very impressive birds.

When we got back home there was this small lizard by the front door.

The afternoon was spent, yes you've guessed it, in the pool!  Oh yes and messing around with an old digi camera to see if I can connect it to my scope and improve the birdy shots, and yes I can, just need to replace the camera batteries.

Back to normality tomorrow as school term starts.