42

A selection of waders from the last few days. I'm 42 today, time marches on..............

I got up early today (my 42nd birthday) and went to Kamiiso. There were 7 species of wader. Most interesting was this Grey Plover.

3 Mongolian Plover, 1 Bar Tailed Godwit, 1 Sanderling, several Common Sandpiper, 1 Whimbrel and lots of Red Necked Stints were the other shorebirds around.

I met Kim a few times recently, he saw a Marsh Sandpiper yesterday to add to Temincks Stint and Curlew Sandpiper, all these would have been local ticks for me. My local list is on 196 now and I'm eyeing the big 200 so three new birds would be nice......

In the afternoon we headed out to Shikabe. Several years ago on this date I saw lots of Common Terns close inshore at a particular spot and have gone back every year in the hope of photographing them. They've never been back needless to say. I did find this tame Grey Tailed Tattler though.

And here's a short handheld video...............

There were also a few Japanese Green pigeon here too..........

We headed to Shikabe to the well known spot for this species but they only came close when I went back to the car for something................I had to be content with dodgy flight shots only.

At Onuma the forest is still dark and full of mosquitoes, I got bitten on the only part of my body not covered with repellent (my index finger joints). Here are a couple of high ISO shots from deep in the greenery..........

Last week there wasn't much around except the inevitable Red Necked Stints.

How cute is this?

And here's a BIF shot.

This may be the last batch of Stint shots of 2010...........

Yesterday was annoying as hell. Liverpool using to Man Utd was bad (oh and f**k right off Fergie, O'Shea should have got sent off). I also tried booking a flight back to the UK using mileage I've accumulated over the years. Without boring you with details suffice to say the airline in question (Delta) make it as tricky as possible to do this, I can't even do it online. That was bad too.

So 42, wasn't that the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything? Wisdom awaits perhaps.

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