Midweek update

Another week slips away, where does the time go to at the moment?
It has been rather busy as is usually the case with three small children! The main event this week (so far) has been that Tish had to have a minor operation on Tuesday. It was scheduled for later in the week but due to a change in circumstances they bought the op forward and so yesterday she went into Cairns Day Surgery Unit and had a salivary gland in her mouth unblocked. I picked her up early afternoon and apart from being a tad woozy from the anaesthetic there have been no after effects and she is sore but fine - have to say that did wonder if an operation on her mouth would reduce the spoken word but no....
Whilst waiting for her to come out I wandered around a few places.
Collared Kingfishers are a large spectacular looking bird that I usually only see disappearing around the corner of some mangrove lined creek but yesterday was the exception as these two showed very well

The most unexpected find of the day though was unfortunately dead but was still impressive and photogenic

This Reticulate Whipray was washed up along the Esplanade.

Often in photos getting the scale of the beastie in a picture can be very hard, particularly for insects. One of the most spectacular butterflies that we have in the garden on a regular basis is the cairns Birdwing - they will have appeared on the blog numerous times (usually out of focus and with size hard to judge) well at home over the weekend we had the opportunity to get a better picture with something in the same shot to give it context...