Christmas Island: nature trail and Albert the robber crab and friends

It's been mostly overcast with bouts of rain so the last week has been kind of slack and kind of relaxed.  We've been three times to two different beaches (though I didn't take photos of the second beach partially because it was late when we went and I wasn't sure how good the photos would turn out in that light, and mostly because I was going to be swimming as well, could have given it to my dad though), one loopy nature trail (which was slightly longer than I thought but a decent walk nonetheless, and we didn't go to the lookout because it was probably too long a hike for the kids) and a few epic Minecraft sessions.  I haven't got as much art done as I was hoping but bits and pieces are getting done.  The kids have been watching a LOT of Pokemon, a couple of other movies and reading books borrowed from the library (independently during the day in the case of the bigs; they each have a book on dinosaurs and Tao has one on space and Ru has a cookbook in addition to books selected for bedtime stories) as well as playing outside on the play equipment Nanny and Granddad are spoiling them rotten with, and looking at the fish in the pond.

Checking out the canopy.  It's a race to the top for rainforest trees and the undergrowth is usually non-existant to sparse

Red crabs eat mostly leave that have fallen from trees (which is why there's not a lot of leaves on the ground where they live).  This one was carrying two back to its burrow, prompting the kids to call it "greedy crab" as the others they'd seen were only carrying or eating one at a time

A small robber crab with some medium-large red crabs on an old fallen log.  And some kind of weird fungus thing.

A pretty flower that Ru spotted and wanted me to take a photo of.  Will try to remember to attempt to identify it later

Albert the robber crab that lives under the house, with a beer bottle for size comparison

One of four robber crabs chased off by Albert.  Those are not small pots it's standing between

ps - apologies to people on 1366x768, I know the photos are overflowing into the sidebar.  It's a css thing and I can't fix it til Ii'm back in Perth as I don't have the key pair on any of the kids' laptops and lish is very slow and painful from here.