Stories from Shannonvale, aka the Moth man from Mossman: Busy, busy weekend

It has been a bit of a case of the day after the night before!
Friday as mentioned in a previous blog was Hamish's birthday sleepover. As one would expect when small boys are involved not much sleeping was done, although to be fair this was more due to Cameron getting over tired and completely hyper - so much so that at 9.45pm I bought him and his mattress into our room so that he could calm down and get to sleep, which he eventually did at gone 1015pm!
On Saturday morning when we had swapped children back again (Xanthe was out at a sleep over on Friday night - gone 0100 before she got to sleep!!) we opened pressies...

after which the children played until tea time and then we all collapsed for an early night.
Today I was up early to collect Pat (husband of Annalies a work colleague of Tish) for a days birding on the Tablelands. We decided to hit the forest areas as Pat had not been into them for any serious birding. The weather was patchy with scattered showers, this meant that the light conditions were horrendous, meaning few photo opps but the birds were superb as they were desperately trying to feed up following a week of poor weather. We had excellent views of some skulking species such as Eastern Whipbird but despite some serious stalking...

we failed to get any photos!

The best from today included
Lewins Honeyeater

Several Victorias Riflebirds including this male (the black one) and female feeding on berries

and a very obliging Grey Headed Robin that put on quite a show for us

Not all the pictures were quite in this league and so I do feel I should share these...

... a big pat on the back for anyone who can a) find the bird; b) identify family and c) identify species (though if anyone gets it right you are more likely to be called a smarta##e).
Just to prove that it is not all birds I did take a couple of scenic shots..