192) Daintree

Papaun Frogmouth

Our last major stop in the Cairns area was the Daintree National Park. The easiest access is via boat on the Daintree river - we joined Murray of Daintree Boatmen for a morning looking for river exotics like this sleepy Papuan Frogmouth, camoflauged to look like a branch with bark, complete with lichens!

Shining Flycatchers were in abundance..

 ..though the jet-black dimorphic males were pretty darn twitchy!












Great critters like this Amethyst Python hung out in the trees over the water.  Murray let us sneak up on the python, rather than the python sneaking up on us.

 A regal Nankeen Night Heron disappears from sight when you get more that a few feet away.















The high morning tide made some species like the Little Kingfisher less likely (we got a good view of one but I missed the photo) but also enabled Murray to take us way up a tributary where the water is usually too shallow to take a boat. We were searching for this amazing Great-billed Heron, who gave us good looks but was determined to present his tail-feathers to us! There was a nest nearby so we didn't want to be too intrusive.

 An interesting 'sculptural' photo--he (or she) had had enough of us and headed upstream

 Back in town, we went to breakfast - this raptor, a Pacific Baza, landed on a line right there in town!!  We like his red pajama-striped belly and jaunty crest.  They are also called Crested Hawk, but like the name 'Baza' better
















We headed out to the coast where there were reminders that we were in stinger country. Swimming nets (to keep jellyfish out)., first aid stations along the beach. There are seven species up here which range from painful, to really painful to often lethal.....

We didn't dig out our board shorts...











 After a few wrong turns we found the correct esplanade near the beach where two Beach Stone-curlews hang out. Wonderful birds but threatened - these two were sauntering about the tide flats...  Their habitat is 'open, undisturbed beaches' an un-common combination of conditions, at least pertaining to the middle word.

These tide flats were an unexpected place to find sacred kingfishers, but there they were (no, not the people with bins glued to their eyes, what they were looking at, silly!)

 A lemon-bellied flycatcher, these birds live only in northern Australia--we saw them also at Kakadu in the NT

Another wet tropics bird , the Blue-winged Kookaburra. I really want to get my hair to look like this - frighten the students!

OK - maybe this appeals to a certain demographic but I decided not to quit my job and go join up! (A billboard in Cairns advertising for mining jobs)