Clouds Birds Turtles and Battleships

If you are a teenage boy - and I'm pretty sure that there are no teenage boys who read this blog - or if you are a male who likes 1.  Science Fiction  2.  Crap movies where American bad boys come good and save the world, and 3.  Crazy special effects and violence - then the movie 'Battleship' is for you!

It is definitely no 'Armageddon' (doesn't EVERYBODY love that movie???).

The science dude (who looked like he stepped out of The Big Bang Theory) was a shining beacon of reality and provided us with some light relief.

I guess you can tell that I am not a fan of this movie.  Glad I saw it, just to see what the hype was about, but wouldn't recommend it.

This morning, we were woken at around 5.30 - ish by thunder and lightning and heavy rain on the tin roof.  It was brief but it was loud!

The ground here is still sodden from the floods in March, so any rain that we get, lies over the ground in large puddles beside the roads for days.  This morning's storm has done just that.

So the clouds were forming over the city all day.  They would build up in dark grey clusters looking like a huge storm cell about to dump on us, but would then disappear just as quickly without a drop falling from the sky.

We decided to drive up to Scenic Hill again and try for some cloud shots from up high.

I also used this one for day 2 of the May Photo a day challenge  'Skyline'

A tree growing out of a rock!

It was nice up there, but too wet to be climbing over the rocks looking for Hermit's Cave (which I would have liked to do, because I never actually got to see it when I lived here).

Afterwards, we went to BGWLBH's parent's house and took them for a drive out to Tabitta, hoping we could find a way in to Barren Box Swamp from that end.  No such luck.

What we did see, on the way, was a number of Whistling Kites flying around high in the sky - and by 'a number', I mean 50 or 60 in about a one square kilometre area.

At first we thought they were over the garbage tip, but we turned up that road and the kites were not that far up the road.

So we stopped and I tried to get some photos.  They were very high in the sky, so the only lens that could capture them was the long 400mm and I couldn't open the lens wide enough to get more than four kites in one shot at a time.

It really was a spectacle to behold and I was disappointed that I couldn't capture it in camera.

So we drove on.  BGWLBH came to a sudden stop because there was a turtle in the middle of the road.  (I LIKE TURTLES!)  So we pulled over to the side of the road and rescued him.  We made sure to put him on the side of the road that he was heading toward and I got a photo (of course).

He was lookin' at me, but he wasn't comin' out!

Not much further up the road there was a Black Shouldered Kite hovering in the sky looking for food, so we stopped again.

I got out of the car and aimed my camera toward him and he suddenly turned and flew straight towards me!  He hovered above me briefly.  Long enough for me to get a few quick shots in and then he flew away!

As you can see, he was beautiful!  I've never seen these in Queensland where I live, so I'm going to take every opportunity for photos that I can.

That's about all I have to share for today.  We've been out for most of the day, so I haven't had much opportunity to play with my photos yet.  Perhaps I'll have a chance tomorrow.

A day filled with clouds, birds, turtles and battleships ... and now sleep.

Nite all.