gemfyre | (extremely brief) Holiday!

I bought something touristy today. Now, I'm not into soap, it's usually nasty stuff full of things that are bad for my skin (or anyone's skin). But the stuff made up here is yummy! It has nothing bad in it and they make it in all these delicious scents and colours, all themed. There are four lines, Broome, Gondwana, Traditional and Spirit.

I couldn't decide which one I wanted so I got a sampler box, I'll have to remember not to try and eat them like chocolates. I just like sniffing them.

This from a person who usually couldn't care less about soap.

Today I went to Derby, furthest north I've ever been. Chris and Ricki went all the way to Willare Bridge a few days ago after the rains and reported loads of awesome birds. It was also an opportunity to possibly get a great billed heron and grist the hell out of Chris.

I managed to get a measly two new birds rather than the 5 or 6 I was expecting, and one of them is just a half tick. I'm pretty sure I saw a juvenille red-browed pardalote but I'm not 100% sure. The other newie was a Leaden flycatcher.

We started at gravel pit then continued on to Willare. One of the stops was a bridge over a Cockatoo Creek which had a rather large pool of water with some birds (spoonbills, egret, darter) so we stopped there. After looking around (and finding a yellow-tinted honeyeater - the first of many) I crossed to the other side and scanned the muddy shore for black-fronted dotterel, and found them. I also saw a rock in the water and quipped "It's a croc." Then I looked at another log and exclaimed "Holy crap, it IS a croc!" Two freshies in the pool. New reptile for me and awesome just to see them in the wild.

A bit later at Willare (which crosses the mighty Fitzroy River) we were warned to keep an eye out for a saltie, unfortunately we didn't see him, or any crocodile in the Fitzroy. The place was teeming with birds however. I heard a lot of calls I couldn't ID but the only new bird I saw was the flycatcher. No purple-crowned fairy-wrens, alas.

In retrospect we should have done Derby first then worked our way back. We got there and went to the wharf only to discover it was high tide. Low tide would have been much better for the birding. So we went to the tourist beareau and got some info from a very unhelpful woman. She gave us the info on the Derby Sewer Works, which was on my agenda and a bad map to another wetland. She neglected to mention this wetland was only accessible by 4WD and gave us bad directions.

We went to the sewer works, which were great, the wetland there was lovely. But it was raining a tad so instead of hanging around and potentially seeing a lot more there we decided to go to the other wetland which was 20km out of town. Took us a while to find the turnoff and after going down the track a little (and not reaching the wetland or anything marked on the map) we realised the Daewoo wasn't going to get much further. By that time it was too late to go to back to Derby and find more mangrove/tidal flats to investigate so we headed home.

80 birds for the day. Decent, but I was hoping to get the hundred today (haven't got that yet). I may have got 100 had the tide and tourist beareau been agreeable. Ah well.