Day Two - Cairns Botanic Gardens

Started the day with a cooked breakfast at the motel and went to the grocery store for some supplies. With that done, we headed out to the Botanic Gardens. Wandered through the rainforest and checked out the tropical gardens and of course did some bird watching. 

First lifer for the day was the Little Bronze-cuckoo and then the White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike. Further into the forest we spotted some Australian Brush-turkeys and soon after that the Orange-footed Scrubfowl which was well spotted by Lil Sis. Found some cool spiders, lizards and butterflies too. It’s quite hot up here and trekking around through the forest you definitely feel it.

Around lunch time we headed over to Centenary Lakes, where we saw our first Olive-backed Sunbirds (kind of like Hummingbirds) and amongst the mangroves we spotted heaps of Fiddler Crabs, which were being hunted by Mudskippers, Striated Herons, Collared Kingfishers, White-faced Herons and Great Egrets.

A sneaky Mudskipper hides in a tiny pool, ready to pounce on unsuspecting Fiddler Crabs

Next we checked out the Giant Bamboo and then headed to the fresh water lake. Saw some Radjah Shelducks and Brown-backed Honeyeaters. It was around this time after standing by the water with my spotting scope for quite some time, that I wandered back to where Mum and Lil Sis were and they told me about the warning signs they found; Beware of Crocodiles.
I hadn’t even considered it, I guess I’m just lucky they weren’t hungry.

Striated Heron

Radjah Shelduck

We drove back into town and went back down to the Esplanade, where the tide was out, exposing the mudflats and that means waders, yay! Got the old scope out again and found some but they are so hard to identify, all I came up with was Bar-tailed Godwit and Eastern Curlew. Did manage to find some Nutmeg Mannikins though.

Headed back to the motel to regroup and then went to the Cock & Bull for dinner. It’s a cool tavern where the walls are covered in trophy heads, including a moose, a deer with an eye patch and a pig with goggles, and is also the headquarters for the Game Fishing Club so there were some huge Marlin on the walls too. Chicken schnitzels all round and they were yum. Then we went for a quick drive around town before heading back to the motel.

Big Sis

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