Nicks Birthday

Wow, I am behind with this blog....the usual daily routines are taking over and occupying most of the days and evenings now. I am almost on top of the washing!. Chores remain the same where ever you are in the world!.







I have been meaning to summarise Nick's Birthday as we had the most wonderful day. Originally we were going camping but the forecast for the weekend was not so good so we decided on a weekend in the city. The plan was to not tell Nick where we were going. However the cat was let out of the bag well before we were even dressed. We caught the bus to Circular Quay and then the ferry across the harbour to Taronga Zoo.

Taronga Zoo is almost 100 years old and is on the Northern shore of Sydney harbour in the suburb of Mosman. It has its own ferry wharf which makes the journey across the harbour from circular quay the preferred method of transport. The zoo has all the usual zoo mammals and reptiles with, perhaps, a slight preponderance of spiders and snakes. The boys loved it!





We decided to treat ourselves to a lunch at the restaurant there and for the first time saw Kookaburras in a tree not to far away. I have since read that they are quite common and it is easy to recognise their laughing call. Well I got this shot after about ten minutes and our food arrive. Oliver was sitting on the outer edge of the table when there was a loud clank like noise, right in front of us sitting on Ol's plate was the Kookaburra I had photographed. They are big birds with chunky beaks and very fluffy dense plumage. I just wished I had the camera in my hand then. Both Ollie and I jumped and half the restaurant turned to see the bird escape with a whole fish finger. Have since learned that they often scavenge. Hmmm,not so exciting after all!. Nick has ticked another bird off in his book though, the twitcher in him has recently re-emerged. Oliver also spent a lot of his time at the planning strategies on how to pick up a lizard. At our apartment in the garden he has been managing to catch them by the tail, however these ones are about 5cm long. The ones on the paths in the zoo looked at least 50cm long potentially with teeth. This didn't seem to deter him though as you can see.





By the time we headed home the sun was shining again and the return journey across the harbour was just perfect. We had sushi for supper, there are some good restaurants with take out at the top of our road and we also had the chocolate cake the boys had made their Daddy for his birthday, great combination!