Scouts and Froggies

The undoubted highlight of this week has been the arrival of Hamish's scout uniform

My apologies for the rather startled expression he has not quite sure what went wrong!
His scarf is a deep burgundy colour and as his investiture is next week I will post another picture of him in his full glory (and use the proper camera for it as well).
The rest of the week has been taken up on work for my new venture - myself and Tony another ex pat birder are starting our own Bird Tour company specialising in tours in and around the Cairns / Tablelands region, lots of good endemic species as well as over 400 spp in total. The amount of work as you can imagine is quite daunting but with Tish helping out with the design of art work and marketing materials  we are cracking on very nicely indeed.
In addition to all the legal requirements we have been checking out timings and key sites over the last few days and will continue to do so until we go "live" so to speak.
We have had quite a run of good birds not least of which has been the return of the frogmouths!
In Darwin we had a great site where a pair of Tawny Frogmouth could be seen quite well, her the common species is Papuan Frogmouth and they are quite simply HUGE

The pictures are not quite in the same league as the tawnies as the birds are further away and in deeper shade but they are spectacular.
On our walks round a few of the key local sites we have run across many mudskippers including these digging out their own little swimming pools

A few other highlights from the week
Mangrove Robin

Welcome Swallow

And a slightly out of focus Yellow-Billed Spoonbill

It is now 0200 and Insomniacs R Us is going to close.......