Holmes Jungle revisited

As it was a nice overcast morning today I decided to drag the children off to Holmes Jungle for a bit more of an explore.
To say it is spectacular is an understatement - without a wide angle lense you really can't get any idea as to what it is like.

The birding is hard going but as it is only about five minutes drive away will be visited many times over the next few years.
I had one new species here today golden headed cisticola but there was so much noise I am sure that when I have mastered bird calls there are many more excitements to be discovered.
It is close to the main tip for Darwin so there are large numbers of black kite that hang around

The other wildlife is just as spectacular - in fact the butterflies were stunning.
Only managed two reasonable shots:

A black knight dragonfly

Black and White Tiger (if you open you can zoom in quite well).

In the evening whilst Tish, Xanthe and Cameron were at church Hamish and I went to East Point and sat in what is becoming one of my favourite little spots - a leaky irrigation pipe with some bushes close to and a nice place to park the car. The birds here seem to be very used to people and provided you are slow and reasonably quiet they adjust to you very quickly - in fact for a couple of species I was just too close to focus on them!
One major highlight was prolonged static views of rose crowned fruit dove - an NT speciality that I have only seen in flight, the only disappointment was the battery died and the bird vanished before I could replace it.
I did manage a couple of shots of this little beauty - a male little bronze cuckoo. They are small and catch flies in mid air so getting anything was quite a challenge, you can tell its a male because of the red eye ring:

For cuteness you can't beat birds packed in tightly as they go to roost.
These White White Breasted Wood Swallows are a common sight around the area

I have not seen too many large groups so just had to take this..

Very cute.