Here's the Dragon

For those who did not manage to find the Dragon I have circled it in the picture below

his head is in the middle of the circle!
Hamish and Xanthe out at a sleep over tonight and Tish on a late so it will just be Cameron and I this afternoon!

School Hols

We are now part way through the first week of the school hols and this is officially the warmest September on record so far...luckily the nights are still very pleasant with temperatures in the high teens so blankets are still needed! The day time temperatures though have been rather high, in fact on the Tablelands on Sunday the thermometer in the work van peaked at 42 degrees - but as the humidity was very low it felt fine.
As the weather has warmed up we are getting back into the summer routine, yesterday we had our first swim of the summer at the Lagoon (Xanthe had an art workshop in the morning making bugs but at the moment we are not allowed to see her work as it is going to be displayed in the Tanks Art Centre). It was very pleasant but you can tell the children have acclimatised as after about 45 mins Cameron was shivering  - the air temp was 32 degrees and the water was I think in the low 20s.
We are also spending a fair bit of time on the beach here at Yorkeys.
It is not a "shell" beach like Casuarina in Darwin was but we did still manage to find a few Sand Dollars

This one is still alive but we also found three shells so we will keep an eye open for them.
The children love the freedom of running on the sand and at this time of the year they can safely splash in the water but as the summer progresses we shall have to be more careful as the stingers move in.

We never both with shoes and usually by the time we have walked a couple of hundred yards atleast one of the boys has taken his shorts off and stuffed them in Daddy's pocket!

The water was nice and warm in the shallows so we all had a paddle..

....although for some reason Tish was not impressed by my suggestion that she was scarring the small fish

In the evenings we have been having great sunsets, the clouds build up in the late afternoon and as the sun sinks behind the hills we get some superb skyscapes

slightly spoilt by the power lines but I am not skilled enough to photoshop them out.


Over the weekend I had a trip with the husband of a friend of Tony who has been letting us use his photos on our web page. Andy is not a great birder but just has a passion for taking wildlife pictures - he had sent us a list of his targets so we planed our route accordingly.
One of Andy's target species was Boyds Forest Dragon - a very cool lizard restricted to North Queensland. As I have been looking unsuccessfully for one since we have been here I must admit I was sceptical but having told Andy this we set off.
We were entering the forest at Lake Barrine when my attention was caught by some movement on the gound as a Musky Rat Kangaroo vanished off into the undergrowth, I was just turning back when to my amazement

I saw a Boyds Forest Dragon...

I have not altered the light at all in this shot...can you see it?!
As Andy really wanted to get some decent pictures with his far more impressive camera once we had got him onto it he set off and stalked it.
Here is my picture at ISO 1600

a very poor record shot but a self taken Boyds nonetheless
Here though at an impressive ISO 6500 is Andy Macdougalls superb shot of the same wee beastie (he has given permission for us to use his pictures)

They are amazingly cute!

We also scored with another much wanted lizard the Eastern Water Dragon - not as rare or restricted as the Boyds but another that I had failed to find before. This time given where he was mine were the better pictures

A very enjoyable start to the holidays.
Off on the bikes tomorrow as Tish is on a run of late shifts but we should be back at the lagoon over the weekend.

End of term...

This is the last week of term and everyone is ready fr a break! Cameron has not been in school for the last couple of days as he has had a stomach bug - this has added to the others frustration as they have been trying to wangle an extra two days off as well. Cruel daddy did not fall for this!
Thursday was book day and they were allowed to dress up as characters from their favourite books....

Hamish as you can see went as Darth Vader - he also had a little gadget that had DVs breathing on it so he looked very cool.

Xanthe went as Pippi Longstocking - although unfortunately she did not quite have the hair for the ponytails.
Other than that our week has been rather quiet; our sunbirds had a very narrow escape when a Black Butcherbird attempted to get at the nest, luckily the rather unsightly mesh screen did its job and despite a concerted effort the nest and chicks are safe and must be getting close to fledging as they hatched 14 days ago hopefully I will be able to get a picture of it but.
The other unexpected sighting of the week was this beauty

a Common Lionfish. This poisonous fish is regular on the Reef but this one I watched from the Marina wall!

Sunbird special

Our sunbirds are now over ten days old and will probably fledge in the next couple of days so I thought I would try and get some video of the adults feeding the young...
http://youtu.be/quqa5_DihUE

They apparently leave the nest during the night so I doubt that I will get any pictures of that but I will keep my eyes open just in case.

Busy, busy weekend

Its amazing how some weekends are quiet and then others are just completely manic. This weekend has been the later! On Friday night Hamish had his class camp. He came home from school at the normal time and after a shower and homework he returned to school to spend the evening camping - there was the option to sleep over until Saturday morning but we had to get him to Lake Tinaroo for the 2013 Hop N Howl Scout event by 8am so I picked him up at 9pm on the Friday night
As we had to drop Tish off at work by 7am and Tinaroo is a good 90mins drive away a busy morning was to follow. We got there in plenty of time and then much to Xanthe and Cameron's disgust turned round and drove straight home again via Smithfield to do the shopping before picking Tish up from work....unsurprisingly the rest of Saturday was spent doing lots of nothing!
On Sunday I relented and as Tish was not at work I went up and collected Hamish myself - in typical camp style the only dry item in his bag was his flannel!
He had a great time but after two late nights was completely knackered and rather grumpy so an early night was the order of the day for everyone!
On another note our Olive-backed Sunbirds are close to fledging and the two chicks are spending a lot of time looking out the nest

One of the trees in Allans garden is currently in flower much to the joy of the local Rainbow Lorikeets
The flowers are the white balls that are hanging down, the other white bits are the new leaves that seem to come out in groups and then darken up as they get older

Beaches

Having had a night shift over the weekend and then lates for the rest of the week on Monday we went for a walk along Yorkeys beach

There is always lots to see on the beach, although there are fewer shells than in the NT.
I was taken by the patterns the water made but none of the pictures really came out

Heres the croc

Here is the answer to the Spot The Croc competition.
Congrats to those who got it, I am amazed!

Wedding Anniversary

Monday was our 13th Wedding Anniversary and Tish and I spent the day visiting some plces north of us that we had not managed to get to yet.
We started off with lunch at Port Douglas before heading further north to explore Mossman Gorge.
On the way we stopped to take the obligatory tourist picture of the Cane Train - there are narrow gauge tracks along the edges of most fields and the harvested sugar cane gets put straight onto these small trains and taken directly to the refinary

 We then carried on straight to the Mossman Gorge Visitor Cente - which is quite frankly a waste of time but there is a very convenient shuttle bus service that runs from the centre to a carpark about 250m from the main viewing platform. Normally we would walk but both of us decided to be lazy!

The Gorge was flowing quite well but I would imagine that in the wet it is spectacular
There were a few deeper pools that people swim in

but it was far too cold so we resisted the temptation to do anything more strenuous than enjoy the view

From Mossman we carried on north to the small village of Daintree. From here there are several well known wildlife cruise companies that specialise in crocs etc - not a patch on the Adelaide River Queen cruises as it is illegal to feed wild crocs in Queensland. That said there were certainly crocs around - just above my left shoulder on the far bank of the river there was a four metre beastie eyeing up a group of Magpie Geese

It was very relaxing just watching the river flow by but Tish was having none of it and after a few furtive glances at her watch announced that we would have to move on to a different boat ramp for a better view...
Anyway that blew the "surprise" as she had arranged with Allan our neighbour to meet us at the "Daintree Boat Ramp" and he was going to take us on a trip up the river in his boat - unfortunately Tish had not realised there were two Daintree Boat Ramps and we were on the wrong one!
This was soon rectified and we headed back to the ramp close to the car ferry

We headed across the river to take a few pictures of this very relaxed croc

before we headed off up one of the many side channels along the Daintree

The Daintree is advertised as a great birdwatching site and this may be the case but I was far more impressed by the plant life.
The adaptations that the trees have evolved to get the nutrients and resources they need are amazing. the root systems are like a complex maze be they spike or buttress forms

The sheltered areas created by these roots are used as nurseries for both fish and in this case as a safe haven by a small croc

Can you see it???

The main feature though had to be the huge variety of epiphytic orchids and ferns - unfortunately there was quite a wind and the plants were moving more than I realised and some of these are slightly out of focus - I have not got the names for two of them.
Tassel Fern

These have been over collected and are now quite scarce in the wild

Elkhorn or Staghorn Fern

Two un-named orchid spp

Dendrobium nindii - another orchid that is rare in the wild due to over collection

We finished up on the main channel watching the sun go down over the mountains in Daintree National Park

It was a great way to spend our wedding anniversary!
A huge thanks to my lovely wife and to Allan.