Scooters and Birds

This afternoon we walked down to my local patch..

It is made up of the pond on the local golf course and surrounding parkland and mangroves.
Well when I say walked, I used shanks pony but the children came down on their scooters...
Xanthe

Hamish

Cameron

It also has the added attraction of large piles of sand...

All of which means that I can go birding and they can play - a win win situation.
One of the noisiest features of this local patch is the slightly large roost of Black Flying Foxes...

the black dots in the trees are the foxes. We have not got too close yet, but we are going to visit one evening with Graham to have a closer look at both the foxes and a few of the other nocturnal species that hang around.
Although the area is heavily landscaped and manicured from my visits so far it looks to have a huge amount of potential, I shall try and visit a couple of times each week if possible and will be interested to see hw many species I have found by the end of the year.
Here are a couple of the better images from today
Bush Thick Knee (very common on the Golf Course with 30+ around)

Oriental Cuckoo - very similar to the European Cuckoo and quite a scarce bird

there have been two around the last couple of days.

White-Bellied Cuckoo-shrike