Twitching in Cairns

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

 

Vietnam Veterans' Day

Rainbow flycatcher

Papuan frogmouth

Scrub turkey

Impressive Visitors' Centre

White orchids

Remarkable cobweb

Bird with a yellow tummy

A kingfisher

Green ants

Part of a lake

Looking for birds

Water lilies

More lake

Ducklings

Bridge over a lake

Swamp walkway

Fern frond

Us with John and Brenda

Blue wing kookaburra waiting for lunch

A few small boats

Late Monday afternoon we travelled into Cairns for the Vietnam Veterans’ Day Memorial Service.  This year, there seemed to be many more veterans at the service at the War Memorial on the Esplanade – the most perfect setting, looking out over the Coral Sea.  Silly us thought we would have dinner at the RSL afterwards (do the right thing), but no way would we have been able to get a table before 9.00 pm probably, so ended up just having dessert at Movenpick.

Tuesday morning we were BOTH out of bed early and back at the Botanic Gardens, hoping that the birdwatching tour would operate.  Yes, it did and we ended up with about a dozen people tagging along with binoculars and questions.  It most just superb weather, which made the walk through the Gardens and Centennial Lakes even more enjoyable.  Our guides seemed to spend a large amount of time telling us what the different bird calls were, with us looking skywards and wondering what we should be looking at.  However, it wasn’t long before we started spotting some of the many different birds in the gardens – the Papuan frogmouth was very accommodating and spends all day pretending to be part of a tree.  We locals tend to forget how interesting our common birds are to visitors – the Asians and Europeans in the group became very excited when they saw a white cockatoo and a willie wagtail.  We saw many new species on this walk, even a Wampoo dove, which even had our guides excited.  The tour finished with a quick walk through the paper bark swamps, with my Bushman’s handling the many insects without any problems.  With so many birds about, the usual hour and a half to two hour tour extended to well over two and a half hours.

We played our usual game of bowls on Tuesday evening.

Today we were joined by John and Brenda for a very enjoyable lunch at the Yorky’s Knob Boat Club.  Not having seen then for six years, there was plenty of catching up and talking undertaken.  The restaurant is on an outside deck and a blue wing kookaburra decided to check out the menu while we were there.  After perusing the food on offer, he suddenly took off, parted my hair and removed a large piece of hamburger from a plate at the next table.  For some reason, the young man who lost his lunch couldn’t understand why all the other diners laughed!