Beach combing

Took the children for a walk along the beach today whilst Tish was asleep pre night shift.
There was a huge amount of vegetative detritus

but the only corpses we found were a catfish skull and a dead fish that had probably been discarded from a net.
The children love the beach and spent hours looking for shells

You never quite know what you are going to see and today these two Beach Thick-knees were very obliging

I took a couple of panoramic shots
Looking north towards "the Knob"

Looking south towards Yarrabah and Cairns

The flow of water off the lowlands has slowed considerably - this is one of the main outflow streams

hardly a raging torrent!


The flooding has subsided and there are no problems getting out of Yorkeys now which is great - although one of my local birding areas is a bit damp...

Tish is on nights so tomorrow will drag the children round Cattana

Normality resumes...

After the last couple of days weather it is GREAT to get back to normal, the roads into Yorkeys re-opened to traffic mid afternoon  -  now we just have to wait to see how long before the Bruce Highway, the main supply route into Cairns, re-opens and the essentials can be pushed north,BP Cairns down to last 1000 litres of fuel on Friday....
The sunsets are back to their normal superb self after any weather system has pushed through

The moon isn't too bad either...

Its now 7.15pm and for the first time in three nights the children are in their own beds and will hopefully sleep...............................................

Ita

It would be an exaggeration to say "we survived Ita" as in reality it blew itself out before it got to us - according to data from Oz Cyclone Chasers it was a borderline Cat 1 /2 as it moved south from Port Douglas area. That said we have now got our first Aus cyclone under our belt and it did have its moments.

Tish was told not to go into work on Friday as it was expected to start having an impact half way through her late shift so we used the time to finish getting ready - everything was out the garden in the shed; water containers filled, bath filled and a few extra dried provisions bought - although there was a massive run on food in the shops as people panic bought - the best I saw was someone buying 240eggs and 30+ litres of milk!
Having done all that we could we went onto the beach in the afternoon - if it was going to hit Friday night and be as severe as the initial forecasts then we wanted to burn some energy off the children first as it could be a while before they went out.
The sea was starting to swell a bit but nothing much

Tish and I thought that anyone on this was going to be in for a rough night...

Friday night turned out to be a non event for us, and more importantly nowhere near as bad an event as predicted for people in Cooktown / Cape Flattery / Hopevale where Ita came ashore. It seems as though she made landfall as she was in the process of replacing the eyewall and as such she was not as tight or intense as she would have been otherwise.
We woke up on Saturday to wind and rain that slowly started to build during the day.
I went our first thing with Cameron to see what was going on

who when he thought I wasn't watching opened his coat to see if he could fly...
The seas were starting to get a bit more impressive

 As it started to get much more blustery at lunch time I went out for one final look just to see if anything was happening

From about 1pm the weather deteriorated quite fast and we had extremely heavy rain and severe gusts, the wind strengthened throughout the afternoon and evening. The forecast track was updated and refined constantly and by 5pm it was clear that we were going to get hit full on by Ita as she moved down the coast - luckily by the time she hit us she was only a Cat 1 borderline Cat 2 so whilst interesting was not the catastrophic force that had been forecast.
Still images don't reall do it any justice so we took a few poor videos of it from the safety of the deck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fFFsE0m3TU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b86n5biwr8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Sb484buvI

It came over during the night but if I'm honest apart from a couple of loud bangs as things bounced off the roof and the drone of the wind that you got used to not much else happened!

By 4am it had all blown through and the morning was nice and calm so I took the children back onto the beach to see what if anything had happened, the answer was not too much
The skies though were superb

As you can imagine I spent Saturday afternoon with the bins hoping for some seabirds to fly past, the morning was very quiet with just a single Lesser Frigatebird but the afternoon picked up and we had three hours of really interesting birding including one Aus tick for me.
The light conditions were not good so took only a couple of pics

small group of Lesser Frigatebirds over the house.

I had hoped this morning that there would be some birds relocating themselves by following the coastline north again but it has been very disappointing. There are still 30+ Lesser Frigatebirds a long way off shore and I did have two small groups of Lesser's with one Great Frigatebird over the house but thats been all.
The downside of the storm for the birds of course has been the extra stress it has put on them. A number of them have not survived the ordeal, here in Yorkeys I know that there have been several grounded Sooty terns at least one of which has not survived

Some have been picked up and taken to Vets etc but there are many others that will be found dead over the next couple of days.

Breakfast with the Birds and other odds and sods

Well ten days have past since my last posting - note to self MUST do better.
We are now in the first week of the childrens Easter break and it is looking like it is going to be a tad interesting...but more of that later.
So what has been happening here? We have had the normal last week of term madness, I had to make over 2kg of playdough for Cameron

in fact baking was about to take over as Tish in her infinite wisdom had suggested to her work colleagues that they should all come for Tea at Tish's. Twenty plus signed up so I ended up baking the odd scone, cake and making a few sandwiches - never want to bake a scone again!
We took no pictures other than of these unexpected and uninvited party crashers

these Lesser Frigatebirds obviously  liked my cooking!

On Wednesday this week we took the children up to Port Douglas for Breakfast with the Birds.

You have a buffet breakfast inside a huge aviary full of native Australian birds. Here are a selection from the day

Elvis - he is a 35 year old Red-tailed Black Cockatoo

Cameron decided that he did not want him.
There was also a stunning Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo loafing around as well

Also hanging around the breakfast area were these cuties

The kids luv em

There were the ubiquitous crocs as well
Freshwater

Saltwater (he is 4.5m long approx)

The childrens reaction was very interesting, they were uninterested as they said "we see these at the end of the road"
There were also several wallabies waiting for food...

We spent over four hours wandering around, the children were fascinated and the photo ops weren't bad either...
Cattle Egret in breeding plumage

Cockateal

Eclectus Parrot

Gouldian Finch

Pied Heron

White-browed Woodswallow

Yellow Oriole

The next couple of days are going to be interesting as Tropical Cyclone Ita wends her merry way towards us - currently a borderline Cat 4 / Cat 5  they dont get any bigger than that!!!!!
In laymans terms we have a cyclone BIGGER than UK heading our way!!!!!
THE FAT LADY IS STARTING TO SING