Its the weekend

After a busy week we were all ready for the weekend. Unfortunately Tish is worked last night (Friday) and is on again tonight. The night shifts start quite late at 1030pm which is taking a bit of adjustment!
Despite being told not too the children were up and about before 0630 again today which was a tad frustrating!
One of the good things about the new house is that it is large enough that Tish can shut herself in our room and she does not hear anything so it will be easier for her to sleep, and as I write this mid afternoon she is still in the land of nod which is great!
I took the children out this morning to do the weekly shop and call in at a couple of birding sites on the way (well a bit of a detour way but ...)
We walked round Cattana Wetlands first. This is an old sugar cane farm that was bought by the local council to protect and area of native forest and they have been slowly restoring it to something more natural. It is now a series of lakes (very square and regular lakes on the whole) interspersed with native planting and a bit of open grassland. It will I think be a nice local patch to work, possibly not quite in the league of Knuckey but still very satisfying!
At this time of year waterfowl numbers are quite high

One of the more naturalistic lakes is drying up nicely at the moment and has wide muddy margins that are attracting a few waders. Among the more regular Black-fronted Dotterel there were three Red Kneed Dotterel

I had left my scope and digiscoping kit in the car so the pictures are a bit distant.

With all the open water and native plants it is also very attractive to various nectare feeding birds such as this male Olive-backed Sunbird

There were lots of dragonflies buzzing around but I am not up to Tish's standard when it comes to getting photos of them, this is the best that I got

a male Slender Skimmer.
There were heaps of butterflies as well buzzing all over the place but again I was not up to Tish's standards!

a male White-Banded Plane.

We then moved onto the Esplanade in Cairns itself. This is a superb site, the children love the play park and I can sit on the bench and watch one of Australias best migrant wader beaches whilst still keeping an eye on them. I was all ready with the digiscoping kit but the tide was too high, had checked when high tide was and had assumed that an hour before would be perfect for pushing the waders up close to the beach but in fact the tide was far too high and aside from a few black-tailed godwits there was nothing on view. it also turned out that this particular play park is a popular destination for childrens parties and there were two going strong today so after about 30 mins we went off and did the shopping - decided that taking pictures of my three playing whilst there were heaps of other children around would not have been sensible hence lack of family pictures!