Yorkey's Knob

This afternoon Tony (local expat British birder) and myself went to Yorkey's Knob (oh go on, giggle, I know you want to ;) ) which is a 20 minute bus ride from Cairns and is a good little birding spot, especially by the golf course, where there is a lagoon holding plenty of waterfowl. As usual with golf courses there are plenty of people 'ruining a good walk' and there is the outside chance of an errant golf ball coming your way but it's relatively safe.

Thanks to Tony I added four new species to my list:

Green Pygmy Goose
Rajah Shelduck
Mistletoebird
Scaly-breasted Lorikeet

With these four additions that makes 137 lifers on this trip so far.
The Mistletoebird was a right little sod - we could hear them, but they were very difficult to see but we eventually tracked down a male and female over by the football pitch and I managed to get some good (I hope) shots of the very pretty male bird, all decked out in black, white and red.

Other birds were
Yellow-bellied (Olive-backed) Sunbird
Spice Finch
White-breasted Woodswallow
Little Black Cormorant
Rainbow Bee-eater
Brown Honeyeater
Dusky Honeyeater
Australian Darter
Intermediate Egret
Little Pied Cormorant
Forest Kingfisher
Figbird
Double-eyed Figparrot
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
Pacific Black Duck
Australian Grebe
Laughing Kookaburra
Spangled Drongo

According to Tony they are thinking of renaming Yorkey's Knob because of the ridicule and giggles the name causes - it's a bit like the unfortunately named village of Fucking which is in Austria and which tourists from English-speaking nations just love to visit purely for the novelty of visiting a town with a rude name. Actually, there's a place called Twatt in Shetland. I've seen photos of birders posing by that sign.

[caption id="attachment_155" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Laughing Kookaburra"][/caption]