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!