What to Do on a Wet Day....

Woke to teeming rain and leaden skies. A longish read, shower and hairwash, read Emails and the newspaper online (Man U lost!) and it was soon 11.00 a.m. Pam didn't fancy the wet gravel road to Adventure Bay so we went the pretty way via Lunawannah for much needed fuel. There's a metal road the ferry traffic uses to get to Adventure Bay just this side of the North/ South Bruny Neck which we took instead. We'd noticed a sign saying 'opal shop open, 9 a.m til late' and didn't resist this time. The couple, Lance and Bev, spend 6 months of the Tas winter mining in Andamooka near Coober Pedy,come back here and make jewellery. They found a beauty last winrter which they sold and made enough money to do up the house and to make a small showroom. I bought earrings.....
Along the road a few miles. Wow, a fudge shop with free samples - just a roadside, wooden, summerhouse type, building. What a gabby older lady served us. We got the 'traditional Cornish recipe' stuff and a recitation of all the different sorts. We bought the offcuts.
A temporary lull in the rain meant we could lunch at the picnic table of Two Tree Point and Resolution Creek - where Captain Cook filled up with water. He certainly got around on Tassie.

We were both out of readies and the store in Adventure Bay is the only place on the island with an ATM. Very slow, it has a dial-up connection! Just in time to see the wet tourists trooping off the tour boat, still wearing their orange gear until they got back to their cars.
We then spent some time watching the gulls and a few Crested Terns abluting at the creek moth. The very pretty Silver Gulls take a short flight before nose diving (should that be beak-diving?) into the water to wet themselves. Most entertaining.

It was too dark to take photos of the information boards at the foot of the Penguin observation steps last night, so we returned to do so. A pair of disgruntled Asians had climbed to the top without seeing any birds, they asked Pam where they were. They really should make it obvious that it's a night job.I did a crossword and Pam explored the area. I feel better to-day than I have for a week or more but still lack energy.
We still haven't ticked off Blue-winged Parrots which are said to hang around the woods surrounding the airstrip, we returned to the parking glade and walked about half a mile of the Queen Elizabeth track towards the sea. Plenty of birds but no Parrots. New Holland are the commonest Honeyeaters but so active.

That and a Pallid Cuckoo kept me on the hop.

Two Grey Currawongs - a sub species known as Clinking Currawong and almost black - really stirred the small birds, they hate them. A mystery bird which looks like our Robin and I also saw from the cottage this morning, turned up again. Pam ID'd it as a female Satin Flycatcher, pretty bird.
After a loo stop at Nairana, it had dried sufficiently to brave the gravel road to, the very aptly named, Cloudy Bay. Very pleasant drive, the presence of Highland Cattle and Llamas rather surprising. At the end, an enormous deserted bay with many interesting, historical, Aboriginal remains which we read about with interest.

On a day like to-day it looked very uninviting and yet awe-inspiring, we needed some sunshine to lighten the superb views. It was also very windy and cold - 13C. I felt that temp, and less, when I got out to photograph Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos, enormous but very wary and actively feeding, their monstrous beaks demolishing fir cones with ease.

I was also able to photo Green Rosellas in a rather more natural setting than the bird table at Melaleuca. Whilst I was doing so, a small group of Blue-winged Parrots flew over. Great. Crescent Honeyeater to-morrow please.....

My first snappable Tasmanian Pademelon looked a bit rough and, like last night's Wallaby, was blind in one eye. The absence of predators has its down side.

We shall need to be here at lunchtime to-morrow to confirm bookings for our return flight on Tuesday. The weather is due to improve so, I intend photographing around the property in the morning. We'll see.