Visitors

0520 this morning saw me parking at Darwin airport expecting to hang around for a while waiting for Aunty Jo to arrive. Instead 0536 saw me driving out of the car park as Jo had got through customs and was out virtually before I had sat down!
Needless to say none of the children were asleep when we got home.
But the big news (sorry Jo) is not the arrival of visitor from the UK but the arrival of rain - and what a storm with over an inch of rain in a couple of hours..

 
With Jo needing some sleep Tish and I took the children out to Casuarina Beach to go shell hunting, we forced the children to wear their raincoats but decided not to ourselves which was probably a mistake - but as it was too wet to take a camera let alone the new to us camera that we have just bought from Jo there are no embarrassing pictures to us slightly soaked.
In the afternoon we went to Rapid Creek to look for the Frogmouth but disaster it was not there - hopefully it will be back before Jo goes but we did check the trees around it and could not find it.
We then walked down to a small park on the way to my Barking Owl site

Luckily the Owls were more obliging...

Tomorrow we have some domestic chores to do relating to our forth coming move and then Jo and i will take the children back onto the beach whilst Tish gets some sleep before her next two night shifts - which are her LAST shifts in Darwin!!!!

Build up of a different sort...

Housework day today prior to the arrival of Aunty Jo early tomorrow morning. We have re-arranged the beds to give her Xanthe's room and moved Xanthe in with the boys.
Tish has just come off a couple of nights so once we had moved the beds she has gone to sleep and the rest of us went out to Holmes Jungle - on the faint off chance that either the owls or the Little Curlew would show.
We did not see the former but there was a small group of nine Little Curlew..

..seven of the nine are visible in this one but too distant to zoom in properly.
During the short walk the children collected various feathers (mainly from Brolga and Little Corella) and a shed snake skin.
Having done the shopping we came home and the children made the Xanhamcam bird.

Yesterday Cameron and I did a quick check of a couple of key sites prior to Jo's arrival and at least one Frogmouth was still present, we did not see the second so possibly it is on eggs somewhere nearby.
We also managed to re find the pair of Barking Owls..

hardly great views but as the leaves are now out it is harder to get a clear shot.
The highlights for me yesterday though were nine Oriental Plovers on the rock ledge at Nightcliff but they were too distant for any decent pictures - they take my Oz list to 223.
See you tomorrow Aunty Jo!!

Owl-tastic

On the local Northern Territory e-mail group there have been several reports of Little Curlew arriving. This wader breeds in eastern Russia / Siberia and over winters in Australia and was one of my target birds. I saw one very distantly through horrible heat haze at Knuckey Lagoon on Monday and was keen to get better views and if possible a few photos;  they do arrive in good numbers and can be seen on most open grass areas in Darwin but given we are moving in a few weeks I did not want to miss seeing them. I was very interested in an email that said there were 30 at Holmes Jungle over the weekend so a short walk this morning was called for - Tish was on a half shift and the children were all in school (although collect Cameron at 1115 today).
The swamp area where the Little Curlew were reported was bone dry but there were good numbers of Brolga with some flying in..

 I ended up with a final count of over 450 birds including several pairs that were displaying.
As I still had not seen any Little Curlew I decided to try and get a bit closer to where the cranes were feeding to see if the waders were with them. To try and give me chance to get a decent photo of a pair dancing I decided to stalk through the taller grass so that I could get closer without disturbing them.
As it turned out this was a good choice! As I was walking through an area of chest high grass I flushed a group of three owls and then a fourth single. They all came off the ground no more than 5m ahead of me so I was able to get good views of them as they scattered, and I was able to follow a couple of them and watch as they dropped back into the grass about 100m ahead. They were clearly owls belonging to the Tyto genus - that is Barn Owl types - but did not feel like Pacific Barn Owls. I got the camera out and continued towards where I saw them go down and in the space of the next twenty minutes flushed at least three of the owls getting some semi decent pictures in the process.
I decided to call it a day at this stage as my suspicions as to their identity needed to be confirmed (and it was so hot that I did not have a dry stitch of clothing on me!).
Being able to look at the pictures on the laptop at home confirmed my thoughts that these were Eastern Grass Owls - a rare bird in the Territory and one that is frequently claimed but often misidentified.
I sent my best pictures off to one of the most experienced local birders, who is writing the definitive guide to birds of the Top End for his opinion. He confirmed my ID as well as adding that in 27 years of birding the Top End he never managed to find one himself!
The images will be used in his forth coming book!

The last influx of these owls to Darwin was in the early 1970s.
We may have to go and have a look one evening!

Dugong-it

A very bad pun for a very brief sighting.
Tish and I had an appointment in the city today at 1030, on the way we called into a bike shop to get a replacement inner tube for Xanthes bike - I repaired a puncture yesterday, put the wheel back on the bike and pumped it up. I was just about to get Xanthe to come and test it when there was a huge bang and the tube exploded!
Anyway getting the replacement tube took about 30 seconds so we went and sat in a car park near the Boat Trailer Club and chatted whilst looking out to sea. A small pod of four or five Bottle-nosed dolphins were feeding / playing a little way off shore - my second species in a couple of days having had Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphins over the weekend.
Just as we were about to leave a fat grey shape without any dorsal fin appeared on the waters surface much closer in, lifted its head before vanishing back down again - it was a dugong!
Unfortunately we never saw it again before we had to leave!

The build up continues..

...and not just for Jo's arrival in a weeks time either. It is starting to get seriously hot and humid now - aircon on each evening and the start of the nights just to get to sleep.
There has been a huge change in the vegetation as well. Next doors trees have become fully leaved again and their Mango tree is starting to produce fruit although not much and not off particularly good quality either at the moment but it is early yet.
The Palms in the garden are all now in fruit and you are in danger of getting dumped upon from on high every time you go out into the garden.
The main culprits are the Torresian Imperial Pigeons. They can be remarkably tricky to see at times

but eventually they show themselves

In addition the lizards and frogs around the place are becoming more visible and vocal.
This one is a regular visitor to some unused paving tiles

There has also been an increase in the number of baby geckos around, in fact I shared a shower with one yesterday that was no more than an inch long - very cute and very helpful as they eat any flies that get past the security screens.
Whilst we have not seen them yet the Green Tree Frogs are gearing up for the breeding season as every once in a while you hear a series of four or five "crawk crawk" calls - having looked on line these are the males getting excited!
As an aside at 0930 on Wednesday 19th Alice Springs passed its record for the longest dry spell on record - and it still has not broken.

STOP PRESS....

Hot news [well cold really]  THE FRIDGE IS NOW REPAIRED AND WORKING PROPERLY!!!!!

All change, or busy times ahead!!

Six months ago tomorrow we landed in Darwin having flown from the moderately chilly Aberdeen to the baking hot Darwin! What a six months it has been, there has been so much to get used to; the temperature and humidity, the countryside, new job, new house and school and some great new people.
Today though seems a good day to announce though that we have a busy six weeks ahead of us as it is all change in the Funnell household.
Firstly a week on Sunday we welcome our first visitor from the UK in the form of Aunty Jo. She is staying until mid October and then on 25th October we are on the move again! Not quite as far as Aberdeen to Darwin but still another reasonable move - we are off to Cairns in Northern Queensland.
Tish starts work at Cairns Private Hospital on 5th November!
We have loved our time here but all told we are looking forward to the move - everyone says that Cairns is lush and very scenic with the mountains and the Great Barrier Reef, on a practical level it is also considerably cheaper to rent accommodation - and there is a wider selection available as well!
More details will follow in the next few weeks!

Sand Dollars revisited

Last weekend whilst Xanthe was at Tournament of the Mind I took the boys for a walk along the beach at Casuarina Coastal Reserve behind the hospital. The beach is a classic tropical beach - empty, gentle slope and sand as far as the eye can see. We were amazed at how many sand dollars we found, and we ended up bringing 30 home.
This weekend Tish is on short night shifts - that is she goes in at 9pm not 7pm - we all decided to go for a walk on the beach before she had to get some sleep.
We were not really expecting to have a repeat of the previous weekend so I had not taken the shell box - what a mistake....

In total we found over 220 of them along a relatively short stretch of beach.
Some of them were quite large..

and as you can see from the last one have an attractive pink fringe.

The reason for the high numbers became obvious as we reached one part of the beach. We had thought that they lived off shore and that the shells we were finding were washed up after the animal inside dies. Whilst we were walking this morning though we started to find several much darker ones that were much more brittle, we assumed that they were young individuals that had not had time to lay down enough calcium carbonate to form their shells, and whilst this is undoubtably true it is only half the story.
Tish was picking one up when she noticed lots of tracks in the wet sand, and at the end of each one was a raised circular mound of sand...

on closer inspection we realised that these were live sand dollars! There were literally hundreds of them of varying sizes.
We carefully dug up one of the larger ones...

....and realised that the darker coloured ones were in fact the live ones! If you enlarge the photo above you can see that the edge has a ring of fine cilia or hairs. I assume that they move through the wet sand by using these as little paddles.
What amazing beasts they are.

Almost ready...

The pool guy returned this morning and finished off the process of turning this....

..... a very unattractive pea soup coloured liquid into this.....

.....a much more acceptable coloured liquid. We are not quite there yet as we have to leave the pumps on a bit longer to let the water clear completely but we should be OK for tomorrow afternoon which as the temperatures are now peaking at over 35 degrees will be very nice.
Downside today is that our fridge/freezer is playing up BUT luckily we have been able to get a replacement receipt and as we are still well within the manufacturers warrantee someone will come out to fix or replace it.
We have our house inspection tomorrow when the property manager comes round to check we have not wrecked the place - not too worried (certainly not about the inside of the house) but not certain exactly what we should have done to the garden so will wait and see.
Despite spending most of the day cleaning and tidying - a straw poll how do small children make a mess that a cyclone would be proud of? - did manage to go out for a walk down at Leanyer swamp. Spring is certainly on its way as the volume of bird song has increased dramatically and several species that have either been absent or very secretive during the winter months are starting to show - most notably being Cicadabird and Pheasant Coucal..

... this adult is in breeding plumage as it is predominantly black on body and tail - they are brown in non breeding plumage.
Also had very poor views of sharp-tailed sandpiper but as did not have scope with me did not get decent views as it was too distant.

Arty shot

Most of the time I am trying to get photos that show the whole bird - sometimes they are small as have not bought the digiscoping kit with me - but occasionally I go for the more arty shot. These pictures from a few days ago definitely belong in the second category.
The bird in question is a Pacific Reef Heron. As its name suggests these are a coastal species and come in two colour morphs, the white morph that looks superficially like a little egret and the dark morph which is a dark slatey grey.
These couple of shots are of a dark morph that played peekaboo with me whilst I was watching a couple of distant Chestnut Rails.

There were literally hundreds of small fish swimming in the shallows so I am sure it is a very well fed individual.

A vital update for forthcoming visitors - our pool pumps have been replaced today and some strong chemicals added to the water. We have run the pumps and cleaned the filters and the pool is getting better, the pool guy will return tomorrow and the pool will be given a good clean and should be up and running again by the end of the day, I will post a before and after shot on tomorrows blog so watch this space!!

Seven down four to go...

Saw the last species of kingfisher that occurs in the Northern Territory today namely the Little Kingfisher...

Whilst not as colourful as Azure Kingfisher (very similar to Common Kingfisher in the UK) this minuscule member of the family (about the size of an oak leaf) is a real beauty when you watch it fish at low water.
There are only another four species in Australia that I have not seen - one of which is extremely rare (no more than a couple of records from mainland Australia), one restricted to the top end of Cape York, one restricted to east coast of northern Queensland and the last widely distributed across eastern Australia.
This takes my Aus list to over 215 species not bad for the first five and a half months.

Tournament of Minds

Today was Xanthes Tournament of Minds competition. This was the regional finals the winners of which then go on to compete in the Australia - Pacific Grand Final in Perth.
When we heard that she had been selected we had not really realised just how large this whole competition was.
They were entered into the Language and Literature section. They had been given six weeks to write and prepare a short modern morality play encompassing bits of Shakespeare, Dickens, Dahl and The Beatles.
They then had to perform this in front of the panel of judges and then later being given another puzzle and two minutes to think up a solution before presenting that to the panel. They were scored on all aspects of the day including how they interacted with the other teams as well as how well they completed the challenges.
Us parents were only allowed to watch the prepared challenge before being booted out to come and collect the team later,
We were not meant to take pictures during the performance but got this one as they were given their initial feedback.

It was only when we came back for the results presentation that you could see how big the event was

Xanthe and the team are somewhere in there!
Unfortunately they did not win but they all had a great time which was the main thing.

Hanging out the washing the new house classification method

I am thinking of developing a new method of classifying houses that all estate / realtors should use. At the moment it is done on very mundane [but I am told important] features such as number of bedrooms and bathrooms or the presence or otherwise of a pool. To my mind the far more important feature is the length of time it takes to hang out the washing - the higher the score the better rating the house should get.
Let me explain .....

When we were living in Tilbury the house would have a low score [and yes I know that I did not hang the washing out all that often there]; Scotland would have had quite a high score and Darwin would have an even higher score.
This score would be a function of certain key factors - temperature and distractions!
The temperature is self evident - if its brass monkeys weather you rush to put the washing out [often more in hope than anything else] and then get back into the warmth - obviously Scotland scored very low here as it was regularly exceedingly cold and rarely warm; Tilbury scored reasonably well here as it had good summers and the winters were not as cold so on the whole a better score; Darwin obviously scores very well as it is always hot when I hang the washing out.
The distraction factor  is the more important one and unsurprisingly relates to over flying wildlife. The greater the variety the more distractions the higher the score.
Tilbury scored very low as aside from the odd flying rat [feral pigeon] and sea gull there was little else to take your mind of the routine activity; Scotland was a different story especially during the spring and autumn when there were distractions aplenty - at times they were more than enough to off set the temperature issue. Darwin though is amazing - I am sure after a while it will get boring hanging out the washing watching Rainbow Lorikeets, Black Kites, Galahs and Figbirds but it hasn't yet - this combined with the temperature obviously give here a very high score.
When I have worked out the exact details of the scoring system I shall pass it on to our estate agent in the hopes that it will be adopted and thus aid future birders who are relocating!!

Despite the ramblings above it has been a busy day today with Xanthe going to a birthday party to play laser tag, shopping, washing [and associated activity as outlined above] and preparation for Xanthes Tournament of Minds event  tomorrow - more of that next time.

Tonight Mathew I am going to be Dancing with the Stars

Dancing with the stars.....

Wulagi Primary knows how to throw a good shindig and tonight it was Dancing with the Stars. Each primary school year had to choose a song a and make up a dance to go along with it. In true Ozzie style a bbq and cool drinks were not far away and we headed for school at around 5pm for dinner and a show at 6pm.

Cameron got the hibbie jibbies and a little stage fright and at the last minute back out of dancing to his groups chosen song... none other than Iggy Pop's Wild Child. Which is very apt for Cameron but he got a little shy and no amount of coaxing was going to move him. After each dance the parents could join in and needless to say Dom took to the camera [edit: Tish TOLD me to use the camera] and left me to 'shake my booty'. Not one to turn a good boogie down I decided to join in with gusto and surprise , surprise once I had given it a go Cameron loosened up and got with the program!

Hamish's group chose the Macarana and Xanthe's the Hokey Pokey as it is called here, the Hokey Cokey in UK and Hokey Tokey in New Zealand! Here are some of the pics. we had a ball and after falling in to bed knackered all said we had a great evening.

Doves [Pt II] and Pitta Perfect

Cameron is in school for a half day on Wednesday and so having cleaned the floors and done all the routine housework and prepared tea [pasta with a fresh vegetable sauce] deiced to make the most of a less hot day and go back to Buffalo Creek to see if I could refind the wader roost and get some decent photos.
I certainly got some nice pictures but not of my intended subjects.
The roost had moved and so I headed back to the car to drive down to the next car park - with the tide all the way in did not fancy wading through knee deep water just in case! As it was quite late in the morning I was not really paying a huge amount of attention to the forest edge as there had been several cars drive past and so anything interesting would have been flushed back into the forest - how wrong I was!
I had barely gone 100m when I spotted this little beauty walking out of the forest..

...it was an amazing co-incidence having blogged about Rose-Crowned Fruit Dove yesterday to have brilliant views of Emerald Dove [mentioned in the blog as the other beautiful dove of the Top End].
As I was watching the dove my attention was drawn to another beauty walking out of the forest edge, and two Rainbow Pitta promptly appeared and put on a show for the next hour or so. I only got one very poor shot of both of them together [have not posted it] but took the odd picture of the pittas - in total got over 250 photos which I edited down to 77 of the best.
One of them seemed completely unconcerned about me and allowed me to follow it around before I sat back in the car as it walked ever closer.
Have posted a few of the best here..

I also got a couple of nice shots of probably the daftest Aus bird I have encountered so far the Orange Footed Scrubfowl. These birds belong to an ancient group the Megapodes that bury their eggs in an earth mound to incubate them. As a result they are very territorial and are quite aggressive with it. They have in my opinion a head that is too small for their bodies and a daft running style - a very entertaining bird to watch.
These two came racing up to investigate me and were I think a bit put out when I did not cower away in fear [I should add that I was nowhere near their nest mound].