Wot a prat!

Cameron and I went to Knuckey this morning where we saw the focus of the blogs title! For the non birders I am not referring to somebody behaving idiotically rather a species of wader. Although I think he does what a hobby looking at stuff through the bins and there are moths in the fridge. This is not normal?
Pratincoles are a very strange group of waders. Most waders feed by picking up insects from the surface of the ground or by probing the soil with their beaks, pratincoles however hunt by hawking for insects in a manner reminiscent of swallows. They are superbly adapted for this with long pointed wings and a short beak designed for aerial feeding. In Australia there are two members of this group that occur - Oriental and Australian Pratincoles.
I have seen Oriental in the UK and had distant views of Australian when watching the Bustard several days ago. I have been hoping to find another and get better views and possibly some photos - and today was my lucky day.
This very obliging if slightly distant adult in breeding plumage hung around all morning.

Unfortunately all the time we were there it stayed firmly on the ground, but still a cracking little bird.
The water levels are really starting to drop on the lagoon and today an area of woodland that had been flooded was dry enough for the cattle to take shelter in - with their accompanying attendants.

You can never tell what is going to turn up and today I got a "big" surprise in the form of..

this adult White-bellied Sea Eagle. Whilst not an uncommon bird I had not seen one away from the coast before.

Tish arrived home having had a busy shift so we are having a relaxing glass of wine before tea - chilli, always a favourite.
Wot a day although the physical work load is less it is no less busy as there are no lovely Auxillary Nurses or Maternity Care Assisitant (You girls are worth you weight in Gold) for the babies. So infact with 6 mums and their lovely babies you are infact looking after 12 people! However, today I attended a c/s so it was just one mum and baby to care for and that was lovely but really theatre is not for me. I don't like the fact we all look the same in our theatre garb and are trussed up in masks and hast and even booties. But hey ho. Tomorrow a late so a lovely lie-in. On Saturday I am doing parent education for 6 hours! Good grief they are gonna have me yakking in their ear all that time!!!!!

Forest Kingfisher

A gentle walk round Holmes Jungle today was very productive with a nice range of birds and butterflies seen.
The undoubted highlight though was this photogenic beauty. I can say no more other than enjoy...

Knuckey Lagoon tomorrow with Cameron before a few domestic chores, its a hard life but someone has to do it!!!

Red capped Plover nest number two

Today was overcast and quite cool - temperature barely got above 28 degrees. With that in mind after homework was finished decided to go to the beach to have a kick around with the football.
As is the way no sooner had we started than other things got the better of the children and they were soon off digging up crabs etc...

This was the view looking back towards Buffalo Creek..

miles and miles of sand!

On the walk back our attention was caught by this "injured" red capped plover

A quick search soon revealed the reason for the display.

The children were very impressed with this.

In the morning I paid a quick visit to Knuckey Lagoon - the overcast conditions meant that everything was active throughout the morning. It was a very enjoyable couple of hours but I really could not get the digiscope set up to work and everything was out of focus which was a right pain.
The most unexpected photo though was this

a golden-headed cisticola.

Tomorrow Tish is on an early and Cameron is in school so I think a trip to Holmes Jungle may be called for, and hopefully a few photos of butterflies will appear.

Everyone say ahhh cute....

I returned to Buffalo Creek this morning with among other things the goal of seeing if the red capped plover eggs had hatched.
I first found the nest on 28th April and have been meaning to go back and see if it was still there for the last week or so. I did not find the nest again but as soon as I was in the general area a female plover started to get very agitated so I retreated and then set up the scope to see what I could find. Eventually the reason for the agitation became clear as I saw two of these cuties...

They may not be from the same nest but I think the chances are quite high that they are.

At school Hamish is doing a project about "His Backyard" so we have been searching to see what we can find.
It is amazing what you see when you start looking. Not sure what most of these are but they are impressive non the less..

We also saw these two.

The top one is a hawkmoth called Hippotion rosetta (I think) and the bottom is a butterfly called Common Crow.
Tish is on a late today so I  have left the outside lights on of course to help her park the car, I wonder what they will attract, have not risked putting one of the moth trap lights out as may get inundated!

Sunday walk

The children and I went for a brief walk today to Lee Point to look for more sand dollars / pansy shells. we found a few although all were quite small so we are still looking for that ellusive large sand dollar - my theory is that we may well find more in the spring following storms.

A couple of snaps from the garden today - taken with my phone. At this stage have not been able to identify these but I am still looking:

Here's Wolly!

They were originally much closer! Wolly is circled in this one....

Darwin - Dakar rally

This pix just sums it up!

Although it does not do it justice - to say at times visibility was poor would be an understatement, but read on!

Today was our long awaited return to Litchfield National Park. When we first went we were in the tail end of the wet and as such most of the roads and swimming holes were closed due to erosion and salties respectively!

Today having checked the relevant webpages over the last couple of days everything was open so we were off!
The drive in via Batchelor was uneventful - although I have to say it still freaks me out that you can legally drive at just below 81mph on a single carriage road way; but as Tish will testify to my driving is starting to fit into the local scene so you have to rise to the challenge!
Our plan of action was to go to the Lost City, have a picnic lunch and a swim at Wangi Falls and go home via the back route. Whilst I do still miss the variability in lighting up times (here sun rise varies between 0630 and 0650 and sun set varies between 1830 and 1900) the predictability is great - in the dry you just know it wont rain although it has to be said that today was far cooler, almost jumper weather although in reality it probably did not get below 24 degrees it felt decidedly cool when we got out of the car.
Lost City is an amazing place about 10.4km south of the nearest tarmac road so only accessible to 4x4 in the dry season. It is a series of sandstone rock formations that have been eroded over millions of years into a variety of shapes that look like ruined building and statues:

The formations and textures on the rocks were fascinating, not to mention the fact that there were plenty of hiding opportunities for everyone..

All in all a great place to explore and one that we will be revisiting by popular demand

Tish certainly got the off road driving bug, I drove the track in and she drove us out...

From here it was off  to Wangi Falls for lunch and a swim...

The falls were spectacular, even more so in the wet although there is no swimming then as Salties move up stream and can be found swimming in the pools. Despite there being resident freshwater crocs no-one lost any toes! The water was far too cold for Daddy!

From there we headed home the back route which is shorter in distance but does involve approx 56km of dirt tracks!
There seems to be no speed limit at all in these areas and at times the visibility was non-existant. I understand the appeal of off roading (it was great) but the speed at which some of these cars were going meant that it must have been hard to enjoy it. That said we did see some great wildlife, some of which was less photogenic than others...

From the top White-necked Heron, White-faced Heron, Great Bowerbird and Antilopine Wollaroo - can you find it in the last shot?!
I was in the process of getting the digiscope set up for the herons when the next would be entrant for the World Rally Championship drove sedately past at about 70km and flushed them!
A lot of the areas we drove through were in the process of being burnt off - the Parks and Wildlife Authority carry out controlled flash burns to prevent the build up of dead material that could lead to serious forest fires.

Although it seems drastic nothing goes to waste as you can see from the last picture there were many Black Kite feeding in the recently burnt areas.

We returned home for a steak tea, shower and bed - all absolutely knackered.

We will be back though as there are another 60km+ of tracks down to another swimming site to be explored yet not too mention numerous other side tracks that are no longer blocked with gates!!