ooops etc

The Night Heron was around again today. It's been a hot sticky week or so and I've actually even been busyish work-wise. Summers are usually pretty humid in this part of the world (although Hokkaido isn't as bad as Honshu and further south). We haven't had a really hot one for a few years though (by hot I mean it's difficult to sleep at night and I even think about buying an aircon system). August is always hot but the heat seems to have come a bit earlier this year. Hmmmm.............









An adult was flapping around but not close enough for a photo. Nothing else of interest, July tends to be a dull month for birds. My main wildlife experience today was ants. Crawling over my toes and up my shins, biting merrily away. It was too hot today for long pants and I broke out my sandals too.

Like I said, not many birds around. Here's a young Heron from last week, just outside Hakodate. And a Red Cheeked Starling fledgling being fed by its' mother.






Here a couple of funny things I noticed last week.



Speaking as someone who dabbled a lot in his 20's Japan is the least druggy country in the developed world. Dunno why they feel the need for this crappy poster with the pointless mangled Engrish. Or maybe the person is saying 'nooooooooo, I've lost my stash, nooooo!'




Not an encouraging name for a concrete company, especially when it's emblazoned on its' mixers.

I got a new i-mac a couple of days ago. My trusty old G4 lamp was feeling the strain a lot recently so I'm letting it take early retirement. the new model has a big screen and webpages look different (sometimes everything is squeezed into the middle with huge wide margins either side) and my thumbnail photos on this blog look awfully blurry (although they are ok when I click onto the full size). I also have Aperture and Adobe Lightroom primed and ready to compare, Photoshop actions that won't freeze my computer, RAW files that open 5 or 6 times faster and can be converted much quicker than my on my old computer, BLURB software to make some photobooks........oh the excitement is killing me.

The built in webcam can even take snapshots like this.



The G8 summit starts tomorrow. Huge waste of taxpayers money for 3 days of hot air. Luckily it's just far enough away for me to avoid the overzealous security and racist Japanese cops assuming all foreigners are 'terrorists' or something.

Anyway..........back to my new toy...........