October 25, 2013 - Lots of lifers today!!

Finally I have a keyboard and internet in my room for the first time.  All week I have been standing outside the hotel (a decent place) and using the Cairns Community internet (available on the Main Street, the Esplanade and typing the posts in on my iphone late each evening and so could not say how the "same" as home everything was but at the same time it was very different.  This place feels al lot like Key West and is very pretty also.  But the internet is not available in the hotel rooms.

Tonight I am with a group birding outing/tour of six days and am staying at Kingfisher Lodge for tonight and tomorrow night.  This place is in the Atherton Tablelands about 120 km from Cairns and it is about 700 meters above sea level.  It is very nice and it has internet in the rooms YIPEE!!  So out in the middle of no where, there is technology which I guess is par for the course.

We just returned from supper at the Highlands in Julaten and it is similar to the open air places we ate in Ecuador, very nice with lots of jungle sounds coming from the darkness.

I wish I could send  a photo and maybe tomorrow if I have time I will try to figure it out.  I have a lovely photo of a Laughing Kookaburra I took today.

Today we had higher elevation birds, all lifers such as the Koel, the Blue-faced Honeyeater, Noisy Pitta, Little Shrike Thrush (very pretty), Cicada Bird, Scaley-breatsted Lorakeets, Pheasant Couchal, Crested Pigeon, Australian Bustard, Varied Triller etc.  So many new birds and some are very pretty in a restrained way and others are just spectacular in every way.  We also saw Agile Wallaby and Giant Skink.   The Skink was quite large and tonight we had some type of domestic gopher/guinea pig that were fat and big.

It was an extremely hot day and since we are high, the evening cooled off enough for a light sweater on top, since we ate outside.

Right now I can hear the sounds of the jungle and every few minutes it is a different call, cry or sound .  Thank goodness there are no Howler Monkeys or else there would be no sleep for me.

Today, like all the other days, has been great and we have breakfast tomorrow at 6 am so we can go birding.  Pretty sweet.