The Pitta patter of tiny feet in the forest..

Last night Tish was on night shift, having slept poorly due to someone using a chainsaw - although I did get some ear plugs which helped slightly I hope!
So after dropping Hamish and Xanthe off at school Cameron and I went out for the morning to give Tish a chance to get too sleep - once she is asleep she usually sleeps through most things but she does need to get too sleep first! We decided to visit somewhere new today and so we headed out to a place called Howard Springs to see if we could find Rainbow Pitta, these colourful birds spend most of their time foraging among the leaves on the forest floor looking for insects. I have seen them before, in fact I saw one briefly yesterday at Buffalo Creek before sitting on the boat ramp waiting for Chestnut Rail to appear out of the mangroves as the tide dropped - with no success.
Howard Springs is apparently the place to go to see them as they often hop around the picnic tables! Not today though, there was a fair bit of work going on as they upgrade the facilities and so there was a lot of noise around the car park so Cameron and I headed off into the forest.
The path goes in a loop but the advice is to go clockwise to half way and then return the same way so this is what we did. There was not much showing on the way out and then as we started walking back we met one of the workers with a leaf blower clearing the path!
Once the dust settled we carried on but I have to say I was not expecting to find anything so we were walking along chatting when I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye and sure enough there was one feeding about 20m into the forest.
The light was very poor so my pictures are not much better but they are a really beautiful bird and one I hope to see more of as they start breeding from October onwards!

As you can see the changing light and shadow makes a challenging environment..(NB this picture is not from the same spot as the ones below)

At first it was on the forest floor adjacent to the fallen tree showing off its blue wing flash and red / orange undertail coverts.
It then jumped onto the tree and gave prolonged views of its back!

These pictures do not do it justice but what a cracking bird!