We visited the botanical garden.  How do they get the orchids to grow so well?  Enjoyed the palms and the rainforest trail.  Having been told where to look for frogmouths we searched for broken off branches that weren’t and finally found two.  Aptly named, looks as if they could swallow your hand.  During the day they simply sleep.

Visited Botanical Garden this morning.  Lovely and no fee.  We made a small contribution and also patronized the gift shop.  Found strange looking Friarbird and a pair of Tawny Frogmouths.  While in a conservatory we heard the laughing of a Kookabura and went outside to find these giant terrestrial (and arboreal) kingfishers.  

Anne and I returned to the Esplanade at four p.m. to look for birds and birders.  We had heard that the four o’clockers might be there.  In any case we knew that the tide would be in and the sun behind us making for good birding.  We became optomistic finding a sign saying “Welcome the Winter Migrants” at the waterfront.  Seems the local birding club added an event to the Cairns Festival.  It’s members were great help to us identifying the shore birds and suggesting places to find birds.  

We celebrate with Cairns, we know not what, this weekend.  Yesterday morning we walked to the Esplanade stopping for most every bird to identify it as a new one for us.  Was a kilometer to the beach.  There we were greeted by a great mud flat at low tide.  There we found north Asian migrants already arrived, both birds and primates.  Rainbow lorrekeets cackled in the trees along the Esplanade, a walkway and park that extends along the shoreline in this tourist town.