Flaming June?

As the rain teems down for another day, here is a stream in flood, taken in colour and converted to B&W.

Kite flying

A rare combination of sharp image and blue background!

The Feeder

I hope you agree that the colours on this are beautiful.



You can see a larger image here:

http://upload.pbase.com/image/81341811

The Kiss

Too hot to hang out

The upper photo is one of HK's commonest birds, the ubiquitous Chinese bulbul. At the moment they are feeding newly fledged birds (which lack the prominent white head markings). This one sat on the glass panel around our sun terrace for ages whilst I took piccies. Note to amah - clean glass please!

The second is a hawkmoth the size of a saucer. A rather snazzy thing called Clanis bilineata. Most moths in Blighty have a vernacular name. Here in HK virtually none of them does so it forces you to learn the latin. An excellent discipline. Hawkmoths belong to the family Sphingdae and pretty darned sexy they are too. There is, believe it or not, a hawkmoth that squeaks. Isn't nature wonderful?

On another bird note, I invested almost HK$3,000 in an old book this week. I trawled www.abebooks.co.uk and confirmed it was a fair price (at Picture This) and bought "Shangai Birds", which Fumier will be disappointed to learn is not a more northerly version of Suzy Wong but a fine 1929 tome by E S Wilkinson, being an ornithological treatise sub-titled "A study of Bird Life in Shanghai and the Surrounding Districts".

I love these old books and seeing how our knowledge has progressed (or not) since days gone by. This was clearly still the era of 'sportsmen collecting birds'. That is to say, people shot the birds to identify them. Nowadays we prefer binocs or cameras unless we are Maltese or Italian. I learned as early as page one that there are some delightful collective nouns that seem to have fallen from use. When was the last time you heard someone refer to a "dopping of plovers" or a 'sedge of herons'. A 'desert of lapwings' was new to me but presumably in Malta it is spelled 'dessert'. How about a 'whisp of snipe' or a 'sord of mallard'. From a self-confessed layman this is a pretty good effort at documenting local natural history.

My wife, the adored Shirley, does not understand why I collect old books when you can go to Dymocks and buy a new one. She is even less understanding when I pay hundreds of pounds for old first editions, especially the New Naturalist series. I balked at paying a grand for a fine hardback copy of British Warblers though. It is a good job she doesn't know what the new camera body cost but she did ok as out of sheer guilt (and love) I bought her a new handbag at Bottega Veneta (or whatever it's called). Ho hum.

Weary Sunday

I have been to London and back since Wednesday night. Landed Thursday a.m., worked 2 days then flew out Friday night and home Saturday evening. My body is complaining. I slept most of the morning asleep and whilst my wife was lunching with the girls I watched 2 programmes from the Beeb.

I received my new DVD with 6 episodes of BBC natural history at its best. I found this thanks to Craig who tipped me off when I mentioned a programme about otters. The episode in question is indeed on this disc and its wonderful. Just the thing to curl up to watch when its dull outside and you can't be bothered to do much anyway.

For me the bonus was a programme on The Wye Valley. Why Wye? Because I grew up in Herefordshire. The Wye runs through Hereford and I lived in a village, 4 miles from the City, where The Wye meets The Lugg. It has so many memories for me. The programme covers 4 interwoven stories through the seasons: cider production, bee-keeping, fishing and of course, especially for Fumie, sheep farming. Get down Shep! Wonderfully idyllic stuff, gorgeously filmed. Peaceful, radiating affection (not just the sheep), a true antidote to the noisy, violent, disturbing balderdash that hallmarks so much of TV these days.

The picture today is a Black kite, taken from my home here in HK. I chose it because I don't have any photos of Red kite, my favourite bird (known in Welsh as barcud). The Wye Valley programme featured shots of this iconic bird, brought back from the brink of extirpation in Britain. Ah well, lazy days aren't always bad.

A bonus bird as there's nowt about in HK

This is a Yellow-billed stork taken in Kenya in September 2005. Gorgeous early morning light. Hand held, taken from a boat.

Dragonfly

This little poser was photographed at the Lions Nature education centre today. With a free day (after my Tai Chi lesson at The Club) I had hoped for better things but a combination of tiredness on my part and grey skies meant the chances to shoot well were low. I am however working on a nice spider picture for the ladies!

Wet, wet, wet

Hong Kong has been wet for a while. Long downpours of stair-rod rain. I took refuge in Seoul for the first 3 days of the week but although I have had a free weekend I have not ventured out other than to go to The Mandarin Grill lst night. Late this afternoon the rain stopped and I grabbed my new camera to record the clarity of the panorama (with not a Dimbleby in sight). No birds or bugs but it is uplifting to stand on the terrace and look out at this.

For those of a technical bent, this was taken with the new 1D mk III and shot as a RAW file. I processed it in Photoshop Elements 5 which now has a new RAW converter downloadable here. This is a much more powerful tool than the old converter and is well reviewed here. With all this wet weather I should have been mugging up on Photoshop as I have barely scratched the surface but I have not applied myself diligently. Instead I am almost at the end of the Ring of Bright Water trilogy. I continue to be impressed at Maxwell's writing even if the content is sometimes less than cheery.

So sorry folks. Nothing too much this week, just a view from the terrace.
Toodle pip.

Shirley's demons

I called this Shirley's demons because every time I show my wife a new bug she recoils in horror. Of course, I make sure I have a regular supply of images on hand. She does however tolerate damselflies. Progress!