Cheating????

Some sunflowers near Furano a couple of days ago.

We went to Asahiyama Zoo last week. I always felt slightly scornful towards people who take lots of shots of animals at the zoo, I mean it's so easy. But I've always been a hypocrite so here are some pictures of animals from only a few metres away...







To be honest, the zoo was a bit small and the cages were tiny. It was a very warm sunny afternoon so most of the animals were taking a nap. The star attraction of the zoo was this bored looking and sleepy Polar Bear.





The zoo was also extremely busy. The most popular place seemed to be the Penguins....





We were in central Hokkaido for 3 days, staying at our favourite hotel in Minami-Furano. It's a log building with the best food I've eaten in Japan. Normally I'm not a fan of these kind of places (you know those 'small food on big plates' joints) but here the food is just perfect, and just enough to fill you up. Lots of small portions of perfectly prepared tasty morsels.



The weather was nice enough most of the time (although it's cool and rainy down here in Hakodate). We stopped briefly at Mukawa both ways. 3 Eastern Marsh Harrier, 1 Great White Egret, lots of Sand Martin, Reed Bunting and Stonechat and of course various waders.





I think these poor record shots show a juvenile Marsh Sandpiper. It seemed smaller and daintier than a Greenshank anyway. Lots of Green Sandpiper, some unidentified Snipe, some unidentified small waders (Broad Billed Sandpiper I think but too bief a view to be sure) and lots of juvenile charadrius Plovers, probably Little Ringed Plover. All of the waders were shy and unlike last year there were no tame Red Necked Stints running about in the open.





A couple of Buzzards snapped on the roadside near Ashaikawa, shame the tail on the top one got chopped off. Near the hotel there were various common birds including lots of Asian Brown Flycatcher. These pics are not so good, I'd forgotten to change my camera settings after some outdoor night shots.





I even watched a couple of evenings of the Olympics in the hotel room. Female Hammer throwing, Americans (and others) dropping batons, an annoying Japanese table tennis player losing to a Chinese one.........not as bad as I'd been expecting, the coverage was about as biased as I'm sure it would have been in the UK. I missed the England friendly on Wednesday, can't believe Beckham is still playing. Actually I can't believe half of that team is still playing. Wasn't Capello supposed to to radically overhaul the team?

An early visitor

A second year Glaucous Gull at Kamiso last week. This is usually a winter visitor, I don't know if it had been here all summer or not or if it was just an early arrival. I was on the beach looking for waders (nothing doing there) and noticed the Glaucous amongst the regular resident gulls, like these Black Tailed and Slaty Backed Gulls.





We still have car woes so not much travelling around recently. There were several Eastern Crowned Warblers in the trees nest to the local river this afternoon, the first autumn migrants. There were also the usual skulking Night Herons.



Lots more of this species over at Kamiso, here are a couple of juveniles coming into roost.



I watched 'Into the Wild' this evening, the story of a selfish spoilt rich kid with personal issues who ended up starving to death in Alaska. An ok movie marred by that bloke from Pearl Jam contributing acoustic numbers to the soundtrack.

Chelsea have just gone 3-0 up behind me as I type. I'm in a bit of an indifferent mood as regards the footy. I watched Liverpool in Belgium the other night and was almost laughing at how inept they looked (and they weren't much better last night either).

The Canon 100-400 does not make such a good macro lens. These dragonflies are abundant at this time of year.



We're off to our favourite hotel in central Hokkaido for a couple of nights midweek (hopefully the car will be fixed before then). We even have a trip to Asahiyama Zoo planned. The best food I've eaten in Japan plus waders in Mukawa en route and (cheating I know) close-up shots of Polar Bears...........

Barrel scraping.........

Summer came up nice and hot in the first week of August, still no car available so I was stuck in Hakodate. Not many birds about yet, a juvenile Cuckoo (actual species uncertain) was near my flat this afternoon, lots of Night Herons over at Kamiso this evening too as well as several Grey Herons. Unfortunately idiot here forgot to switch the IS on.





The reason the IS was off was my moonshots last night (no IS on the tripod).



As you can see not much to photograph recently, scraping the barrel a bit. The last refuge of a blogger in Japan is a picture of food.



Some Scallop at the local sushi joint. It was taken with my cellphone camera, as was this pair of copulating dragonflies.



I watched five (!) movies last week. First up was 'The Mist' which was OK in a B-movie kind of way, 'The Descent', which was actually quite good and 'The ruins' which was also not bad at all. After these 3 modern horror movies, a sci-fi pic,'Sunshine' was up next, hmmmm.......not so great but just about watchable. In all the above movies ,which all have large ensemble casts, only ONE main character actually survives (and he wishes he hadn't, believe me).

The last film was 'Zoo'. Bit of a mistake this one. It was a documentary about the life of that bloke who died of a perforated colon after being shagged up the a** by a horse. Sorry to be so blunt in my description, the man apparently did it (or had it done to him) a lot and posted video of it on the internet. He was part of a group of zoophiliacs (people who shag animals if you're unfamiliar with the term, as thankfully I was at least until last night). I should stress this was a documentary, not actual footage of erm, man and horse. I was spared that. Unbelievably, the writer/director made this rather sensational subject matter into one of the most boring films I've ever seen. I was hoping for some insight as to why this man would choose this kind of thing as a hobby/lifestyle choice. What kind of horrible trauma led him to this? But no. Lots of soft piano music, moody shots of people staring out of bus windows and it even presented these creepy misfits (who prefer animals to people as bedfellows lest we forget) as some kind of harmless misunderstood victims. Yuk.

Er, not much to say after that but I'll try. I've been harassed by a pair of Large Billed Crows this week. Every time I walk up the river they scream at me buzz around my head. I have to keep my eyes on them all the time, if I don't they fly really close and these things look mean. I suppose they've noticed me poking around looking for photographic opps and have marked me down as a threat, presumably they have young nearby. I bet even those sick weirdos on that documentary last night wouldn't get frisky with a Large Billed Crow.

A quiet end to a quiet month.......

A very young Night Heron (judging by the fluff on top of its' head) on the river this afternoon. I haven't done anything of note since my last post, indeed I've barely left the neighbourhood. Not much in the way of birds around of course, July being July. Grey Wagtails are the most interesting (after the Night Herons of course).

I'm struggling for pictures. As you can see from the following selection.







A baby Spot Billed Duck, a turtle of some description and a Bullheaded Shrike rescued in photoshop.

There was a huge storm and rather a big earthquake last week. Both at night, both woke me up. I also watched the movie 'doomsday' which was laughably bad. I mean it was just stupid. After all those decent/semi-decent post-apocalyptic thrillers like 'Children of men' and '28 days later' the director/writer obviously thought he was onto a winner. Throw in some pop culture references, some 80's stuff (Mad Max and the soundtrack), cannibals, a cute lead actress, Bob Hoskins and wotisname Mcdowell and that posh guy from Star Trek Deep Space 9........it had to be a goer right? Nope. What a load of crap. I have 'The Ruins' up next.



A couple of posts ago I sneered at the stupidity of putting up anti-drug posters in a land where hardly anyone uses drugs. Now we have this anti-gun poster. I don't have the figures handy but I'd bet Japan has the lowest gun crime rates in the developed world. Perhaps the poster is suggesting we shouldn't shoot robots.

My wife got the Canon 450D today. It's nicer than mine (the 400D, the previous model) and no, she won't let me use it. I did however persuade her to add a nifty fifty (a cheap 50m F1.8 lens) to the shopping cart (it was only about $80) which I'll use to take some shots of the big festival in Hakodate this weekend. It's at night so I'll need a fast lens........




Roll on August and the arrival of the waders.........

A Big Moth in front of my apartment

It's been a while since my last post. Not that I've been doing much exciting or anything. This big Moth was on the wall just next to my front door this evening. The sticky summer heat continues and I haven't been out much. The Black Browed Reed Warblers were still singing at Yunokawa earlier this week.





Out at Ono the summer birds were all still around, Night Heron, Chestnut Eared Bunting, Lathams Snipe and lots and lots of Stonechats. These pics were on a very grey afternoon a few days ago, the 'highlights/shadows' on photoshop almost rescued them.





My new imac is great. I've been watching a lot of live cricket, my first live cricket for six years believe it or not. Looks like England are in big trouble at Headingley. It's the first time I've ever seen Monty bowl.......

I've decided to go with Aperture over Lightroom to process my photos before I do my final edits in photoshop. Actually all the above were still processed with DPP/Photoshop as I'm still not 100% sure of all the commands in Aperture........but by the time I do my next post I should be up and running.

The wife is very busy so no car (plus it makes a horrible squealing noise, we need to get that checked). Not many birds either, no footy to watch. Thank the lord for the new imac then.

A July day

Today we ended up in Yunokawa, on the eastern edge of Hakodate. The river there used to be a regular birding haunt but a lot of the habitat has been destroyed over the last few years (recently due to a huge construction project, a kind of shopping mall I think). I was expecting the worst but actually there were still lots of birds around. The riverside was heavily overgrown and held lots of birds. I'm unsure of the plans for the riverside, maybe the birds are making a final stand before the vegetation goes. Or let's be optimistic, perhaps they'll be left alone......

There were 3 or 4 Black Browed Reed Warblers singing in the long grass and reeds. Tricky to get a nice clear shot.......





Also around were Cuckoo, a lone singing Grays Grasshopper Warbler, Stonechat, Black Faced Bunting, Bull Headed Shrike and Kingfisher.





I like Black Browed Reed Warblers, they're kind of cute and cheeky. Their larger, noisier and commoner cousins aren't so endearing. Oriental Reed Warblers are abundant summer visitors (there are even 7 or 8 singing males on the small river near my flat) and they are especially common at Yunokawa. I still haven't managed a decent shot of one yet, here's the best effort from today.....




Still getting to grips with some of the new software on my new imac. Aperture or Adobe Lightroom? I'm still using DPP as a RAW converter and Photoshop as an editor but I need something to manage my library...............

Sorry that was a bit boring.

My wife has decided she wants a DSLR later on this summer. She has picked the 450D........so she's going to have a newer (and slightly better) one than me. Not to worry, when I've finished paying off this imac the 50D should be out. I'd better not mention that fact yet......

A bit sad Crouch has been sold. He's not that bad a player (and better than Kuyt and Voronin) to have on the bench. Benitez stuck by him when he had that awful lean patch after he arrived and then when he started playing OK and getting goals he started ignoring him. Benitez has signed 2 more players this summer but I've never heard of them and can't even remember where they're from. I'm losing interest to be honest. Still, at least Kewell has finally left.

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...........