Paradise Lost, Mud Skippers and Rainy Days

Todays forecast was for scattered showers in the Cairns area which has until now meant a short lived gentle rainfall soooo Cameron and I decided to head out and go for a short walk in the hills.

I took Hamish and Xanthe off to school in the car and then we headed out. We parked up at the start of the Ivan Evans Walk off Ellen Close and headed off into the forest. We had climbed about 200m up a some rock steps when birds started to appear so I stopped to investigate and found my target species Buff-Breasted Paradise Kingfisher. This stunning bird is a breeding migrant into Far North Queensland, nesting in termite mounds. It was showing reasonably well so I got the camera out only for the heavens to absolutely open and the light shower turned into a tropical downpour! We were nicely sheltered under the trees so did not get too wet but the birds didn't appreciate it and everything vanished.
After about ten minutes we realised that the shower was not going to ease up any time soon and so we turned back and headed for the car.
As we were both slightly damp we decided to head for home but no sooner than we had got into town it stopped raining and the sun came out so we diverted and went to the mangrove boardwalks close to the airport.
The forest here is quite extensive

The boardwalk whilst old was still serviceable so off we headed

The birding was very hard going with the best bird being this Varied Honeyeater

but there was still lots to see. Cameron and I spent ages watching, and in my case trying to get pictures of, the mudskippers. These amphibious fish are completely at home in and out of the water and use their front fins as legs to walk around. They are very jumpy though and getting anything half decent was quite difficult, these are the best that I managed - although size is hard to judge from these pictures these are large fish probably 6"-7" long

I noticed that Cameron was in a familiar outfit again today...

...not quite sure what it is about Mr Potatoe Head and those shorts!!

Despite putting on copious amounts of Bushmans Bug Spray Cameron was starting to get bitten so we headed back to the car.
On the way home we stopped of briefly at a very small pond on the Yorkeys Knob Golf Course to have a quick check to see what if anything was around. The usual ducks had been joined by this rather fine individual..

a male Australian Wood Duck [with two Pacific Black Ducks in the first picture]
We just got home before the rain arrived again..

...Cameron is now watching DVDs!

Xanthe is meant to be going to a Pool Party after school today so lets hope the weather dries up a bit!
Tomorrow I am dragging them off for a walk in a forest somewhere on the Tablelands - exact location to be decided!

Spot the birdie...

Tish was on a late last night and did not get in until gone 1120pm, by the time she had had a shower and bite to eat etc it was well past 0030am so Cameron and I left her to have a mid morning snooze today aqs she is on another late this afternoon.
I decided to take my little helper..

off to Reddens Island.
This is a small peninsula just to the south of Yorkeys connected by a short bridge. The beach offered a different view of the Knob

He got slightly stuck in the anti-bike kissing gate system and i was tempted to leave him locked up...

The reserve is a smallish area of mixed forest and looks quite interesting.
There were lots of things flying around - mostly insects like this rather attractive moth

There was plenty of bird calls but not too many were visible - I have an app on my phone that has Australian Birdsongs on it but it is hard going trying to work out what is what, luckily I have a couple of days next month with another ex pat birder who has been in Cairns for seven years so he is going to take me to some good sites in the city and the Atherton Tablelands - he has an excellent memory for calls so should be very helpful!
Despite hearing more than we saw there was still plenty around to show the sites full potential - although some of them were a bit tricky to find so here we go there is a stunning bird called the Lovely Fairywren in this picture, can you find it??

Zoomed in this is what it looks like

the blue blob in the middle - great photo eh!!!!!

Will post the first picture with the bird circled tomorrow!

Student of the week!

A small update today ....

Well done Hamish!!

Tish's Frilling Day Out

Tish was off today so we decided to go up into the Atherton Tablelands - an upland region to the south-south west of Cairns. It is an elevated, fertile plateau that forms part of the Great Dividing Range and is between 1600 - 4200 feet above sea level. It has a huge range of wildlife much of which is restricted to this part of Queensland.
Today as an introduction to the area we went to the Mareeba Wetland Reserve - although in all honesty it is more a Savannah reserve and quite similar to parts of the NT.
The reserve itself was about 7km down a well graded gravel track and was easily reached by a standard vehicle.
The track started off going through lush sugar cane fields before entering into dry woodland.
There were a few properties along the side of the track and one in particular caught our attention due to the garden features...

As we got to the entrance to the reserve we noticed something lying in the road

it was either an odd shaped piece of wood or something a bit more interesting so we drove forward very slowly and watched it .....

they run in the most ridiculous manner on their two hind feet.
It played peekaboo through the grass with us for a short while before it retreated to the safety of a tree

it is certainly the biggest Frill-necked Lizard that Tish and I have seen!

We continued on down the track till we reached the car park. The Reserve covers over 2000 hectares of lowland wetland and dry woodland as well as some higher dry hillsides. This makes the potential range of species quite interesting.
Although I was aware that the property had several family parties I certainly was not expecting to see this appear beside the centre..

apparently the Emu's come in off the dry woodland and hillsides to drink at the wetland and one family in particular then hangs around for a few days before vanishing into the bush.
This individual was almost too photogenic....

....with Cameron looking a tad concerned we retreated into the centre.

The views form the cafe / information area were impressive...

From the base here you can goon several walks up to 6km to various parts of the reserve but we decided to leave those for another day (probably in the winter), they also run twilight cruises which sound fun!

The centre was packed with wildlife itself. Hamish was most impressed with these

St Andrews Cross Spiders and spent a long time wandering round counting how many he could find (11 was his final tally).
The staff also pointed out this huddle...

 of what we think are Small Bent-winged Bats - very cute whatever they happen to be!

The centre itself was a large wooden framed open plan structure with a broad balcony overlooking the lake. Its beams provided the perfect opportunity for these Welcome Swallows to build their nest

A very interesting place and one to which we will be returning.

Now thats what I call local produce...

As we are settling in we have had the chance to start to explore the area and there are some great little gems to be found.
It was clear from the children's first day at school that fresh Mango's were not going to be a problem. We walk past so many trees and the rule is you can't pick them off the tree but you can collect any that have fallen off - so that's exactly what we have been doing and we now have several sliced and frozen ready for periods when there are none to be had in the shops. We don't have a mango tree in the garden which is a shame but they are all around.
This afternoon having walked the children home from school and come back from a short cycle ride I had a good look round the garden and found that we have quite a nice selection actually in the garden.
Firstly although I think we have missed them this year I found lots of these on the grass..

below this rather large tree

and yes they are indeed lychees - apparently our neighbor out the back before we moved in was racking the tree over their garden to harvest them!
The next discovery was very easily identified

..this does seem to be the only Lime on the tree so they have either been gathered by previous tenants or the tree does not produce many.
The big finale though is this

there are two trees dripping with these and there were a couple on the ground.
having checked with Alan he confirmed that they are in fact passion fruit - and very nice they were too!

On a different note as the festive season draws ever closer - although I am sorry but with day time temperatures of 30 degrees it is NOT Christmas weather the children are bringing home the next set of family heirlooms. These are from Hamish and will be prominantly displayed when we get our tree

On a birdy note the house list now stands at 39 species in the first three weeks (Wulagi had 46 in nine months), whilst I was out taking the pictures of the fruit trees I noticed this Helmeted Friarbird belting seven shades of something out of the largest stick insect I have ever seen

it dropped into the garden the other side of the fence but there can only have been one outcome!

It is nice to see that in the sand beneath the extension that makes up our bedroom we have a thriving colony of antlions - will have to see if I can find an adult!

Off to sort the washing and get tea - Tish is on a late so wont be back until 1130pm.

Tish's grand day off...

...well all most, it actually was a bit of a catalogue of errors!
The car played up a bit, we tried to change the address of our car insurance to find out that despite the fact that we were paying the insurance it was not in our name and so we had been uninsured, the area we wanted to go to was closed due to a rock slide....need I go on!
Anyway the day was not a total loss and we went for a short walk through the Botanic Garden which look great and is another of the places we will return to.
Despite taking the camera we did not take any people / places shots which was a bit daft.
The butterflies in the Gardens were stunning. The highlight for me was an all too brief view of a Cairns Birdswing butterfly:

the blurry bit in the middle should look like this

(Picture from Flkr)

Tish did better than I did and got this little beauty from the Rainforest Boardwalk

This has the snappy name of Green-Banded Line-Blue Butterfly.

After we picked the children up from school we went for a swim on the beach - the water inside the stinger net was a balmy 27 degrees - luvvly!

One of the biggest features in Aus are the sounds which are obviously impossible to take a photo of some thought I would see if I can upload links to two sound files...

Firstly Bush Stone-Curlew - the background sound at night in both Cairns and Darwin, this bird often ccalls right outside Xanthe's bedroom window

 http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/bushStoneCurlew.mp3

NB you may have to click "open" for it to play


Secondly the Laughing Kookaburra
http://www.xeno-canto.org/33173

Click on the brown triangle pointing to the right


Click on the links and sit back and enjoy