fauna we encountered

Lace Monitor sunning on a mangrove near the beach.

Boyd's Forest Dragon.  We encountered this beautiful fellow on our guided walk through the rainforest.  The guide actually spotted it and let all of us walk by.  It was only a few feet off the trail at eye height but it was sitting perfectly still. Our guide used this as a perfect example of a strategy used by many forest animals - stay perfectly still and blend in.  It is movement that catches our eye. 

Orange-footed Scrub Fowl were quite common. They scratch together enormous mounds of leaves and lay their eggs inside to incubate.   They also have a really loud call that woke me each morning at around 3am. 

Australian Bush Turkey. We saw several of these. 

They are certainly around, we saw signs everywhere.  Apparently this was not the best time of year to see them because the weather was warm enough that they could stay in the water instead of climbing up on the banks to warm in the sun.  We did manage to spot two though.

 

You may recall the lovely scene I posted with the Port Douglas photos.  I think I said something about it being hard to believe these were crocodile infested waters but look there it is a 3 meter beauty.  We were all glad to be observing from a safe distance. 

This was fun.  Every cow in the pasture had at least one friend.  Cattle Egret.

This is a Golden Orb-weaver and it is HUGE!  The size of my hand at least.  Apparently they are not dangerous except for the heart-attack one might have if this happened to land on your shoulder.

Don't know what this little guy's name is but I got very lucky because he was under a leaf and I just held my camera down there in macro mode and took one shot and it happened to be in pretty decent focus.  Sometimes I get lucky.