BBQ and cicadas

After my days birding (see earlier post) we went next door for a BBQ.
Our neighbours Alan and Jen are great and the children just love them.
They had prepared little party bags for each of them - but not the normal bags. Instead each was given a small bag of polished gem stones and an empty bag with an invitation to "raid" the gem boxes round the back.
I should point out here that Alan and Jen along with Jens parents have over the years collected and polished hundreds of gem stones which have fascinated the children since day one. To say the children were excited would be an understatement and here are a few of the best that they chose

Interspersed with adult conversation, couple of glasses of wine, fresh caught fish and the richest homemade sloppy chococalte pudding I have eaten in years (we provided salad and some of the wine I hasten to add) the kids went lamping round the garden with Alan and found a superb selection of beasts - spiders, frogs, geckos and their eggs and a couple of stunning looking antlions...

One of the commonest things they found though were these cicada cases - made as the adults emerge from the ground and shed their larval case

there were literally hundreds of them on the trees and walls indicating that big numbers were emerging at the moment possibly due to the wetter weather that is starting at last.
Eventually they even managed to find this adult that had just finished emerging but had not dried out yet

We meant to take it home and keep it in a box outside so that the children could see one fully formed but much to Tish's relief we forgot t take it with us when we left - well it was 9pm!
Luckily (or not depending upon your point of view) it didn't matter as when I went out side this morning I found two fresh adults to show the children

It is amazing to think that these beasties no more than a couple of inches long can produce a noise that drowns out bird song!

Tablelands

Yesterday I spent the day birding with a friend on the Atherton Tablelands. This is a fertile plateau to the SSW of Cairns with very fertile soil making it a rich agricultural area. It was once covered in rainforest some remnants of which still remain. There are many specialist birds that are completely restricted to this area and these were what we were after.
We had a great if long day - 0515 - 1600 so I could get showered before we went round to our neighbors for a barbie.
We started off at a couple of inactive volcanoes - Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham.
Both these lakes are surrounded by forest and have sme great facilities including restaurant and swimming, we will visit again during the summer hols. Aside from the birds the forests themselves were spectacular with some huge trees such as this giant kauri pine...

despite looking like a deciduous tree this is in fact an evergreen. As you would expect the forest was quite dark which made taking decent photos quite tricky which was a great shame as it was heaving with mammals such as Musky Rat-Kangaroo and Yellow-Footed Antechinus (a species of mouse / rat).
The birds were spectacular with one of the target species being the Tooth-billed Bowerbird - this is the least spectacular of the species that we get in this area but can be quite tricky to find. We were exceptionally lucky and heard at least seven during the day. We saw three of them including this one which was probably the most obliging

It was in deep shadow hence the rather poor quality of the images. The males make a bower or display ring to attract the females. In this case they lay leaves with their pale underside upwards....

They then sing from close by to draw them in, apparently they are great mimics and include many different aussie bird songs in with their song but as I don't recognise many at the best of times the subtleties of this were lost on me.
The birds at both these sites were amazingly obliging offering amazing views of sometimes skulking forest specialities such as
Brown Cuckoo-Dove

Wompoo Fruit Dove

Yellow-Breasted Boatbill

although not brilliant pictures check out his bill!!!

From the Lakes we moved on to Curtain Fig Tree National Park. On the Tablelands there are a couple of "Fig Tree" National Parks so called because they contain some very large trees that they have made tourist attractions. Now I am not particularly plant orientated unless they have great flowers like orchids and so trees certainly don't do a huge amount for me but this one was stunning...

There is a boardwalk that runs around the tree and it is very popular with tourists - today it was Japanese tourists two coachloads. We came here for one range restricted endemic called Bowers Shrike-thrush which dutifully performed well but was not able to get any decent pictures as it kept getting flushed! This is also one of the best sites for spotlighting tree kangaroos so I suspect we will return one night to try it out.
From there we moved onto Hasties swamp NP - which did not live up to its name. the swamp consistd of a puddle of water about 10m square that was unsurprisingly virtually empty of birds as well. Although I as i type this outside on the deck we are having a much needed major downpour which is hopefully the start of the wet proper (the temp has certainly dropped to a much nicer 26 degrees - only downside is that we have a minor roof leak directly over the kitchen sink so will have to go into the estate agents in the new year.
From Hasties (via a Police breathtest check point - I passed!) we headed north towards Mareeba to try for a couple of the Dry country specialists.
It looked like our luck had finally changed when we discovered that they had closed the reserve for essential works but we decided to still drive the first section of the track before the reserve just in case. What a good choice it turned out to be as we found two corkers.
Firstly  an Australia Bustard with its fledged youngster, the pictures again were not great as it was distant and the birds are amazingly cryptic despite being Australia's largest flying bird. These are the best I got...

We carried on until we got to the reserve gate where we turned round and headed back, we stopped briefly at a small bridge over a stream that had a small puddle in it. It was here that we had what was probably the bird of the day in the form of a Pale-Vented Bush-hen, this bird is not rare in Australia but is incredibly skulky and very rarely seen. Tony who has lived here for the last seven years has only seen them on a couple of occasions (although he hears them regularly) including one five second view earlier this year. Today there were two of them walking through the grass at the back of this puddle for a couple of minutes before they vanished. I was so engrossed watching them that I almost forgot that I had a camera with me so I only got these rather poor shots

From here we headed off to Big Mitchell Creek for another attempt at finding White-Browed Robin, we failed but did find this dragonfly being attacked by a parasitic wasp

All in all a superb day with over 100 species seen of which 11 were new to me taking my Australia list to 300 with two species heard but not seen!

Butchering Butcherbirds

Our local pair of Butcherbirds have recently fledged at least one chick. This has meant that there has been lots of activity in the garden.
It started this morning with the adult catching and devouring an adult Australian Figbird - unfortunately I did not have the camera out, an error I soon rectified.
I then spent a fair bit of time trying to catch some "in flight shots".
Not completely successfully unfortunately.
Here is the adult sitting in the trees eying up its next meal

The best in flights I managed

I also just missed a group of three of these guys..

Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo

BOXING DAY .....water fight part 2

Today being Boxing Day we managed to get a lie-in until about 0730 which was great.
After breakfast we decided to beat the rush and go for a swim in the lagoon at the south end of the esplanade. It was quite quiet and the water was cool which for Tish in particular was most welcome.
We had a great splash around for an hour before we came home.
The afternoon was spent re-living the Olympics thanks to the five disc DVD set we got for Xmas - nice to see bits that we did not get over here.
Once the heat of the day had died down the children went back outside onto the trampoline.
This was far too tempting....

After that the water pistols came out as well...

The hose came out as well...

After this the children broke out from the cage around the trampoline and Tish got involved which meant the camera had to be out away. We all ended up soaked