Its the weekend

A quiet weekend it has been too. Tish has been working both days on domiciliary (home) visits which has meant that she does not have to get up too early and is back in time for tea. Unfortunately our pool is still out of action as we are waiting the pool company coming to repair the leaks and the pumping system, otherwise I think we would have been in the pool yesterday afternoon.
On Saturday we had a lazy day doing not much at home. My major task was to clean the BBQ which is not a particularly pleasant task, all the cooking surfaces get scrubbed down after each use but the drip tray etc only gets a proper clean once in a while! The children lounged around watching TV and DVDs which was a great chance for them to relax - Xanthe did not even get out of her PJs all day!!
Today we went to Knuckey Lagoon very briefly before a short walk on the beach and then the weekly shop. Our walk on the beach was cut short due to smoke! There were at least four bush fires on the go this morning as well as the tail end of yesterdays fire at Shoal Bay tip. This number of fires is quite normal and no one is bothered it just made visibility very poor!
Knuckey was absolutely over flowing with birds with hundreds of Magpie Geese pouring in..

It was great to see geese coming in and reminded me of Strathbeg although it is considerably warmer and the geese were the wrong species.

Another reminder of autumn back home was this wood sandpiper

these northern hemisphere breeders are passing through the UK at the moment on their way to wintering grounds in southern Africa. This bird is almost certainly from the breeding populations in eastern Russia is one of the early summering visitors coming down the Australia / Pacific flyway to over winter in our summer. Hopefully many more to come with the opportunity to get a better picture or two!

As a quick PS Cameron and I revisited Howard Springs to see if we could get a better picture of the Pitta. The bird showed brilliantly running around only a couple of feet in front of us but as it was dark and the bird was moving fast the pictures are slightly blurred, I did manage to get this shot of it when it stopped a little way into the forest - I had to use the flash though but not a bad shot.