A visit from Juvenile Metallic Starlings one sunny morning

We have lots of birds visit our garden but we hadn't seen these Juvenile Starlings before.  Regardless of how busy we are, there is always time to listen, watch and observe the birds. These had us stumped though as to what they were. After checking all of our usual sources, such as the bird books and the online bird sites we phoned our twitcher friends, Ann and Wayne living up in Eungella and from the description we gave them they knew exactly what they were. The Man of the House had seen Starlings before but not the juveniles, and certainly not a flock of them. They didn't stay for the whole morning,  but it was nice to see them.

Now we are entertained each morning by the beautiful song of the Magpies.We may not have time to smell the roses, as we don't have any ha, ha, but we have time to  watch and enjoy the birds.

I must tell you I bought a whole fish called a Grunter at the Saturday farmer markets, a fish which is in season in North Queensland at the moment. It is an Estuary fish also known  as the Javelin fish. I don't  often  buy whole  fish  to bake so it was with a little bit of trepidation knowing that  Neil would need to scale and clean it, not one of my favourite jobs either, however he happily did it and we ate it for dinner the following night. Next to Barramundi, I think it is my favourite tasting fish. When it was full size minus it's head, I thought we would have a couple of meals off it. They aren't big fish, the larger ones being protected for breeding  purposes, and there was just enough to feed the two of us. The rule with cooking Grunter is to keep it simple, the KISS principle, as the flavour is delicious on its own. Just some lemon, soy sauce, spring onion and tarragon was all that I used  and it was delicious. I placed 2 cm of water in the base of the baking fish, so the fish wouldn't  dry out and cooked  it on a baking rack for about 40 minutes. Cooked to a turn.

Best wishes
Pauline