Marvellous Mangroves

There are over 40 species of mangroves in Australia covering large areas of the coast (except in Tasmania where there are none) as a result there are many birds that are mangrove specialists and rather awkward to locate.
Having been pointed in the right direction by another local I returned to one easily accessible part to see if I could get any decent views and possibly the odd picture of Mangrove Golden Whistler.
I decided to take the bike as it was not that far and I can take the bike right into the swamp - my suspicions that I am unfit were confirmed!
I had a very satisfying couple of hours and managed to see my target reasonably well and got some really bad pictures....

 There is a male Mangrove Golden Whistler in the middle of the ditch at the bend

The back end of a female Mangrove Golden Whistler

Sleepy Sunday

We had a quiet day today as I had stayed up to watch the cycling road race - Tish unfortunately was working today, although she did stay up and watched most of the race and as she said when she came home she paid for it!!!
I took the children out to Knuckey so they could have a play and I could relax and do some birding before going home and cleaning the walls!

The children had a great time - not sure that the fish were having such a nice time...

 With 50+ of these things hunting effectively they must have been disappearing fast!!

Finally got a decent ish picture of a rather smart wader called the black fronted dotterel:

Liberating Larry

Earlier in the week when we had gone shell hunting we had unintentionally bought home a stowaway in the form of a Hermit Crab that for some reason the children christened Larry!

We discovered it yesterday and decided to liberate Larry this morning - after we had finished watching the opening ceremony for the Olympics.

We returned to Lee Point and found a suitable rock pool for the big event.

The children soon lost interest and turned to more typical beach time operations but Tish was fascinated and spent a long time peering into the pool watching his antics!

The children inspired by the sculpture from yesterday built themselves a sandcastle and then promptly invaded and raised them to the ground again..

Tuckered, Tattooed and Tired

We spent the day at the Royal Darwin Show. The queue snaked around the car park and at ten o'clock we thought we would be baking in (I hate to say it yet again!) the warm Darwin sunshine, but unlike that of the olympic games it moved remarkably quick and after 30 minutes we were ushered into the show grounds. The gorgeous bbq smells assaulted you from the get go, so after a few minutes there were mumblings of being hungry mum! We decided to eat a VERY early lunch which consisited of buffallo burgers for our tucker. We sat and watched some puppet drumming monkeys (for those in the know they reminded me a lot of Zing Zillas). After the drumming monkeys we ventured toward the screaming hordes. The show ground around the perifery was packed with the typical fairground rides. The kids not keen on spinning or being flung around in tea-cups etc opted for a jumping castle with a massive slide. All three threw themselves into the spirit....

Xanthe and Cameron at the top every time I got ready to take a pics of Hamish he was down already before I could get the camera on him!! Hence the little man in the purple t-shirt running to have another go! They could have spent the rest of the day on here but mum and dad were gently baking in the sun and after 20 minutes coaxed them off with more adventures.

We moved on to more... Xanthe and Hamish choose this....

Here she is getting ready to jump....

And him having a go too.. Cameron was not heavy enough (they have to be a certain weight before they can bungy). So Cameron and I decided we would have a go on the dodgems. Daddy missed the photo op though as he needed to supervise the other two. Cameron said when we got off, you drive like that all the time mum!! Cheeky .....

We moved on through various "can we have" junk stalls - answer - no NO NO! And had a wee pause resting and a drink under some prime real estate shade and watched a chukka of polo-cross. (Lecross on horseback) Injury stopped play, rider got a ball in the eye! They play their sport hard here!!!!
Moved on when play did not seem to resume and moved through the bird exhibits warnings of very angry birds that bite and the reptile house (also things that bite) nevertheless Xanthe still had a go at holding an exhibit. EEEWWWWW!!!!!!!

Watched a marvelous talented individual create this....

The tractor is stuck and he's digging it out it represents 2012 the Year of the Farmer at the Royal Darwin Show.

The kids had another go at joining the main stage and for a brief time ran away and joined the circus....

And once you've run away to join the circus you have to blend into the culture so the only thing left to do was get a tat!!!!

 The biker chick - she will be a bikers 'Mol' I'm sure. Although she said she liked the Goth thing to Mum!

 The London Wide Boy!

And Cameron.... the burlesque queen?????!!!!!

We left soon after, tuckered, tattooed and tired! But we had two drops of rain, the first in seven weeks... the build up is coming, bring your brollie JO!

Shell hunting

After picking up the children from school this afternoon we decided to go on a shell hunt at Lee Point..

it had been quite a high tide this morning and so there was plenty of new material to sift through.

Once you have your eye in it is amazing how much there is to find, our little haul...

We are still finding a lot of sand dollars but they are never larger than the two in the picture, I wonder if as the monsoon storms hit towards the end of the year if we will get larger ones washed up

Wheres the froggy?!

As part of the occasional series of spot the... [birdie / wallaroo] pictures here is one from today.
I went out this morning with a local birder whohas come up to Darwin every dry season for the last ten years to visit his daughter and son in law. We went to a site that I had not visited before looking for specialist mangrove species and had a very rewarding morning. On the way back home we stopped off to check out a couple of sites for Australian Owlet-Nightjar and Tawny Frogmouth. Botth of these are nocturnal species that can sometimes be seen during the day as they can roost in quite open sites. We had no joy with the Owlet-Nightjar and it may have moved on as the tree has been recently burnt. We were more successful with the Frogmouth though..

....there are two in this photo can you see them both?

They are very obliging birds and allow you to get some very close views, the children were very impressed!

They are really cool birds!

End of the winter hols..

Today was the last day of the childrens winter holidays and luckily Tish was off. we met up with school friends of Xanthe and Hamish and went to the cinema to see Brave - the latest Pixar offering based in Scotland. One of the clans spoke in the Doric which was nice to hear! The only thing they got wrong was that it did not rain enough!
Tomorrow and Wednesday everyone is at school and Tish is at work so tomorrow I am meeting up with another birder and going to a couple of local sites!

Breakfast time..

We decided on a change of view for breakfast today. Tish did not want to go straight to sleep following her nightshift so we took a picnic breakfast out to Knuckey.

The view was certainly better than the normal one from our breakfast table although it was surprisingly much louder....

.....just off to get a pint of milk!

Again as per yesterday the images are larger when you click to open them up but am trying to make sure dont exceed my storage space too fast!

Knuckey kookaburra

Finaly got some semi decent shots of one of the iconic Australian birds, namely the Blue-winged Kookaburra.
We went out early this morning after Tish had got home to give her a chance to get to sleep as she is on nights again tonight. Unfortunately I think she was overly tired and managed to get only a few hours sleep but luckily tonight is her last night shift for a while.
It was nice and cool at Knuckey today and the children had a great time running around and playing..

much to the amusement of the local cattle...

Here are the best of this very impressive kingfisher..

Have deliberately loaded small versions of the images - if you click on them they should be opened up OK but have learnt that there is a limit to how much storage space I have when uploading images to the blog so by having smaller versions this should help with this issue. Let me know if the pictures are still OK

Paddling..

Why is it that I forget that my phone has a camera on it!
This afternoon I took the children on to the beach for a while in an ultimately futile attempt to give Tish chance to sleep before she went out to work for a 12 hr night shift - it failed because our neighbours across the road were having some trees removed from their garden. The work was due to be done yesterday but wasn't instead we had a shredder going full tilt from 0830 to 1630!
The beach was a great success as usual although given how warm the sea was it is really frustrating that we can't go for a swim. Paddling the water was as warm as a warm bath - absolutely lovely but you can't risk going out deeper than your ankles really!
Not sure what we will do tomorrow but we will go out in the morning to let Tish get to sleep.

Killer lamping [or do we need psychological help for our daughter..]

Yesterday we took a picnic tea out to Fogg Dam to try out our new spotlight and to see some Australian nightlife.
We had a very successful trip with three species of owl (Southern Boobook heard and Pacific Barn Owl and Masked Owl seen well). We also saw several sets of croc eyes and one superb baby croc probably no larger than the individual we held at Crocodylus Park back in May. We also finally saw our first possum, having heard them in the trees at home during the night but never managed to see them. We also saw many Night Herons that lived up to their name and appear after dark and could be seen feeding along the dam wall.
The only draw back were the mozzies - I think it would be fair to say that the sheer number at times puts even Scotland to shame. There were so many attracted to the light that they were dimming the beam so we had to turn it off and wipe them away! Luckily Tish had bought some Bushman Flyspray which I have to say was very effective and I think none of us got bitten more than once. All in all a very satisfying night out!
It certainly made a change from the cartoon that Xanthe had been drawing during the day - the big question is are we raising that rarest of beasts a female psycho-killer, or has she been reading too much Calvin and Hobbs "Revenge of the Pyscho Killer Jungle Cat"!!!
Enjoy......