Time to get out and go exploring

After a few dry (no swimming) days at the beach house, it is fair to say that Eli was starting to go a bit crazy. So, one afternoon we decided to go exploring, starting with the mangrove boardwalk... Eli brought his camera along, so these are the photos that he and I snapped. We first searched for crabs in the mangroves...and we saw hundreds of them. They were only small, the biggest being about the size of a 50 cent piece, but Eli wanted to photograph every single one of them, so our progress along the boardwalk was pretty slow. That's not a bad thing though, because it meant that we also saw a roosting sea eagle, mud-skippers and heaps of other bugs and spiders too. One of the highlights was seeing some of the crabs actively feeding, like the one in this video.

While we were on the mangrove boardwalk we heard, and then saw, a fruit bat roosting site that seemed pretty close, so we decided to investigate.We knew we were getting close when we smelt their characteristic 'fruity' smell - Eli hadn't smelt it up close before and wasn't a big fan of it at all. They were also really noisy, as you can tell from the video, so we didn't linger long...

We next decided to head further away from the water - there were a few mossies around - so we headed up to the lookout above Noosa Heads - here's a photo of the northern beach at Noosa, the mouth of the Noosa River and the North Shore (where the 4WD vehicle is).

On the way back home we thought we'd drive around the headland to the entrance to the National Park - a place where we often see koalas - and lo and behold, there was one in a tree right at the entrance to the park. It made for a perfect end to our little zoological adventure (and it helped Eli get back into his normal good mood again!). Mission accomplished.