Another unoriginal post

Surprise surprise. More Night Heron pictures. They'll be off down south soon anyway (and then I'll be taking lots of winter Nuthatch pictures-my other staple). Only 2 showing on the river today, a subadult and an adult. This was the species that persuaded me to buy the DSLR. So I have to take lots of pics of them you see.







A Brown Dipper was beginning its' winter hols downstream near my flat. Singing too. Quite a few small birds flitting around in the bushes today. Some had to be left unidentified but a few perched out in the open for a few seconds allowing an ID. Daurian Redstarts (the beautiful males), a pair of Goldcrest and this poorly shot female (or immature?) Red Flanked Bluetail were the most interesting.



An absolutely lousy picture I know. Better than Friday at Yunokawa where I didn't get a single decent shot of anything. Lots of Rustic Buntings there and 1 boring to look at female Russet Sparrow was new to my Hakodate list (now at the dizzying heights of 178!). They're very common in summer at nearby Onuma but this ws the first I'd seen in town.

The sport just gets worse. Now not only does it look like the gloomy shadow of England's non qualification for Euro 2008 is hanging over the season but now it looks like Liverpool will be out of the Champions League by the middle of next month. I almost daren't watch the game against Arsenal tonight.

On a brighter note, NOVA, the company I used to (a long time ago now) work for has gone bankrupt. It's even made the BBC's website and the yahoo! front page. Serves them right for being so petty, sneaky and dishonest.

Music on my ipod recently has included 'private press' by DJ Shadow, 'tye-dye' and other tracks by the Tindersticks and various tracks from George Harrison's 'all things must pass' album. I downloaded a Gang of 4 compilation..............they were crap back in the early 80's and it still sounds crap now. Amazing how many crappy contemporary bands sound like them too.

I watched 'Sexy Beast' last week. A pretty good movie in which we get to see Ghandi beat up the main protagonist of 'Scum'. 'A Mighty Wind' is next up........

Struggling a bit to find any pics to post so here's one of our pet Clownfish swimming near some coral.



I got a webcam last week. Talked to my brother on yahoo messenger this morning. It's less than 1 frame per second on yahoo.......so my fat hungover face kept freezing in the most unflattering poses. Hopefully he'll get skype up and running. It's all part of my grand plan to update my 4 year old i-mac. I got more RAM in the summer, a webcam last week, a DVD burner will come next week and I may try to install a copy (ahem) of Tiger next week too. My boring life. I'm talking about computers now.

The wife will be home soon. She works at a local department store so she sometimes gets perishable food freebies at the end of the day. Last night's score included a $25 box of sushi and some tasty asparagus wrapped in pork and deep fried in breadcrumbs (it sound gross but isn't).

So let's see. Liverpool to turn the corner by beating Arsenal tonight. And then win their next 3 CL games thereby squeaking into the knock out stages. Israel to get a result against Russia. Yes that's right. OK. It'll happen.