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

posted on: Saturday, 27 July 2013 @ 11:19am in
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[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

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 8yo has one on space and 6yo 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.

Walking on the nature trail

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

A crab with two leaves dubbed 'greedy crab' by the kids

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

Robber crab with a bunch of red crabs

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 6yo spotted and wanted me to take a photo of.  Will try to remember to attempt to identify it later

Yellow five petalled flower with narrow leaves in a star pattern

Albert the robber crab

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

Another robber crab at the house

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.