Mellow yellow

I'm just mad about Saffron.
A-Saffron's mad about me.
I'm-a just mad about Saffron.
She's just mad about me.

They call me Mellow Yellow,
Quite rightly.
They call me Mellow Yellow,
Quite rightly.
They call me Mellow Yellow.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

As we start to think about moving house I have been wrestling with the fact that I have literally thousands of slides. Unlike jpegs they take up a lot of space and unlike jpegs they are still there when your hard drive crashes. I decided therefore to get out the lightbox and start to do a review of what to keep and what to throw.

Problem 1 was not being able to find the lightbox. So off we toddled and bought a new one. Ooooh. I like Velvia. Is digital really as good as slides? (Discuss). Of course I threw away hundreds of pounds worth of rubbish pictures and digital allows me to buy a flash card and shoot over and over again. Nevertheless I have a sense that my "feel" for exposure was better in the old days and the light seemed clearer and warmer in the pre-digital era. That is either global warming or me getting old or neither.

The slides have brought back wonderful memories and I can remember virtually all of the shots, where I was, whom I was with and what the day was like. And of course now I want a load of them scanned so I can display them on the web. Such presumption! Why should anyone want to look at my pictures? I don't care. I want to see what Photoshop can do versus Velvia.

I suspect it will take months to plough through all of them. This is not a chore but a treasure hunt coupled with a trip down memory lane. I can hear the drone of the Coronation Street theme in the background and picture Ena, Minnie and Martha in the snug as I also look also at some of my father's old slides. Some are almost 50 years old and a kind of heirloom. Great Aunt Kate on the stone beach somewhere in Cardigan, probably Llanrhystud........ straight out of Leica Magazine?

I have been trying to work out how to get the slides scanned. Lots of people offered advice. Buying my own scanner is probably economic but definitely slow. Going to a well known outlet..... quicker and reliable, hopefully. But then Mrs. Ha took me to a small shop in Gilman's Bazaar. Firstly, I had never heard of Gilman's Bazaar. Secondly, it is a very small shop and doesn't seem to sell much if you simply look at the shelves. This is a shop with second hand cameras in the window and lots of rolls of , yes, Velvia, behind the counter. They even had a Leica M3 in the window. No high piles of Canon, Nikon, Olympus, etc but when I enquired, they disappeared into the back and produced a Canon 7D, hot off the production line. So somewhere they probably stock everything. Where, I asked, would they send slides to be scanned? Here, they said. Convert them into 6mb jpegs for HK$10 each. That is the going rate. At this point Mrs. Ha was multiplying the cost of one scan by the number of slides I have and thinking this was more expensive that a trip to Cartier. I promised I would be selective. And so the adventure with the lightbox began. When I get back from Singapore I will go back to Gilman's Bazaar and give them 50 to scan and we shall see what miracles they can work.

You have been warned. You may get to see Great Aunt Kate, on the beach in her world war one army great coat trying to keep out the bitingly cold wind of a Welsh summer. "Laughed? I nearly bought a round " as they say in the Valleys.

The long hot summer of 09

Well it is about 33 C here today and it felt it this morning when Holmes and Hardacre trooped off to Long Valley to search for the elusive............ well anything really. Skittish. That was the word of the day. Well it wasn't Martin H's word when he discovered H2-Oh! had seen and got pics of Pallas's Gropper, when he had failed to lure the little blighter in. But yes, it was well nigh impossible to get within 100m of the egrets, waders, snipe etc before they flew away. JH saw a Grey-headed lapwing and AH didn't- too busy peering down the viewfinder. There was an obliging Fan-tailed wobbler and we saw a pair of Painted snipe. The PS is one of those unusual birds where the sexual dimorphism results in the female of the species being gaudier than the male. Anyway, any day when you see PS can't be all bad, now can it?

The 2 Hs were beginning to suffer from the heat by mid-morning. As they rambled they rambled. I distinctly recall mentioning The Curse on the House of Moriarty (The Hampstead Building Society). Intermittent downpours were a welcoming cooler but only served to make us steam more afterwards. JH was pointing out a flock of munias (yawn) when an LBJ took up the rear. It was the said Pallas's grasshopper warbler and it skulked a while as the flock moved on and then took off on its own. AH took some "record shots" - that is photographer-speak for shots that don't turn out as well as you hoped but these were genuine record shots. JH insisted that I credit him for standing behind me. And he did a fine job of it. Thank you JH. I am sure there will be better in Yunnan. After that the excitement died down and we decided that the heat was going to win. I rambled on about sponsoring Liverpool next year and JH admitted to being a closet 'Pool fan as a lad, when Shanks bestrode the globe like a colossus. Football is not a matter of life and death, he said. It's much more important than that. This is my 2nd favourite footie quote after Best's response to the question, where did all the money go George? "I spent most of it on women, booze and fast cars and the rest I wasted." I of course never supported anybody but Hereford aka The Mighty Bulls, with just a tiny passion for Leeds. I think I sobbed when Sunderland beat them in the cup final. Well we did make it back to the cars with JH rambling again about how our waggies were really Amur Wagtails. Extraordinary what you learn when you are out with an educated birder. And just in case you are interested this is the PGW.

Typhoon tea

Plans to go abirding have been derailed by the latest typhoon - Typhoon Washout. One of the compensations is to see how the kites cascade and swirl in the wind, like some form of corkscrew roller coaster. Anybody who believes they don't do this for the sheer hell of it should just watch a while and be converted. We had a noisy and sleepless night as the wind crashed against our windows and the rain rattled down, with the occasional lightning but no thunder as I could tell. Our house faces NNE and the typhoons tend to come from the NE so we get pretty much the full brunt.

These were the skies this afternoon as we went down to T3. Shortly afterwards the heavens opened again but briefly. I tried one as taken and one in B&W, courtesy of photoshop.

Lazarus

I thought I was dead but actually I was just brain dead from work. Life has been in totally the wrong rhthym. But I do still have a camera and I do very occasionally take photos. In Blue Peter fashion, here's one I prepared earlier



This is a male Hierodula patellifera. It is a Praying mantis and it was captured by my lens as recently as last night. Quite a strange chap. He just kept walking round in circles and seemed fascinated by the flashgun's pre flash. Looked at it every time so when the actual flash went he was staring right down the barrel of the lens.

Here is another rather flashy visitor.



Hypsopygia mauritialis is a Pyralid moth. Not uncommon.

In a few months time we - Mrs Ha., Lulu and I will move to a new home in Sai Kung and I can start recording what occurs around the new abode. We even have a microscopic garden, in which I can play. Lulu? Ah,let me introduce Lulu:




Like all good hounds this 3lb ball of Pomeranian fluff is deciding whether to bite the mat or Mrs. Ha's bum. She made a good choice.

I may post again sometime in 2009.

Kenya continued

Every safari has its highlights and lowlights. For me there were a few real highlights. The group of Montagu’s harriers on the ground at Samburu was quite exceptional. We spotted one, then two and finally we found 5 sitting amongst the wispy grass. There were 3 females and 2 males. With the sunlight softening and falling they looked quite beautiful and as they allowed us to approach reasonably close and flew barely 50m when we crossed the invisible line of tolerance, I suspect they were on migration and simply too tired to care. I have seen Monties before. My first was in Spain about 15 years ago and I had even seen an occasional bird in the UK but never at such close quarters. If you look at the images at the bottom of the previous post you can see just how good they look with the yellow eye gleaming. The male is a particularly smart bird and I have an image of one flying away from us.



There is a real chance of confusion for the inexperienced birdwatcher. Male Montagu’s and Pallid harriers are easily confused if you don’t get a good view of the wing markings. The shape of the black marking on the outer primaries / secondaries is less extensive on the Pallid and comes to a point. The Montagu’s has a black bar on the inner secondaries and underneath has beautiful chestnut streaking. The Pallid is a clean bird, often described as ethereal. It does have a ghostly pallor as it quarters across the grassland. My photo above shows the shape of the Montagu’s black wing tip markings and the secondary bar.

Females are more cryptic and my previous post showed a female Montagu's. Here are 2 female Pallids (or actually the same bird in different poses). Look very carefully at the facial markings.






Particularly noteworthy is the pale necklace that shows from above the ear coverts to the neck.

Just to reassure you that Kenya has bugs and indeed larger beasts, here are 2 more pictures from the trip. The moth is Bunaeopsis oubie of the family Saturniidae and the other is a cat.

On the road with Mrs. Ha in Kenya or MAMOBA!!

I had heard the expression “Miles and miles of bloody Africa” before but did not know that it came from Hemingway. Given in my Google searches as “MMBA”, I prefer “Mamoba”. It has more of a Kiswahili ring about it. This certainly captures the spirit of the vast, open, grassland landscapes of the Mara but to me it encapsulates also the clouds of thick, clogging dust, the corrugated roads that make your spine feel like it has a road-drill vibrating inside it and the swirling, pebble-glass haze of heat that distorts your vision. We visited Samburu and Masai Mara, two very different places.

Samburu is a bird paradise but you have to earn your rewards. A sort of BirdMiles scheme perhaps? We flew in from Nairobi to the Samburu airstrip but our lodge was still nearly 90 minutes away. The road was rutted stone, bone-jarring every inch of the way. By the end of a day in the field the sandy grime matted the hair and clung to the clothes, forcing its way in to your eyes, nose and throat. And heat. Endless gulps of bottled water kept us hydrated as the sun slowly baked the sardine lid roof of the safari bus. Thank heavens we had the bus to ourselves.

Mara is cooler. Our lodge airstrip said we were at 5,500’. Much better tracks, smoothed by the greater commercialism of dozens of vehicles criss-crossing the grassland, desperately trying to sate the clamour for the “Big Five” from eager voyeurs. Fewer trees. More open landscapes with lush greens shading to arid browns, truly breathtaking. For us, Mara meant fewer birds but a greater chance to relax and enjoy the Kenyan experience as you see it in the glossies and on the endless wildlife programmes. But don’t expect a “kill a minute”, Big Cat Diary style. Game drives are leisurely affairs on the whole, gentle giraffes chewing on acacia thorns or lolloping along at a measured pace; herds of buffalo, grazing contentedly then staring directly at you as you approach, unsure whether to back off or snort and snuffle aggressively; timid gazelles, aristocratic elephants, demanding respect and trumpeting occasionally to remind you and each other, who is where and who is in command. Contrast the cool, polished Topi of the Mara with the tinder dry Oryx of Samburu. There are of course sudden changes of tempo in Mara as a bus finds something special. Lion, cheetah, black rhino……in 3 days no sign of leopard anywhere. Anything feline provokes dust storms of F1 style driving as the drivers try to out-position their peers so that their clients have the best vantage point and photo opportunity. High stakes here as end of tour tips tend to be correlated with success on the savanna. Our experience was that the lions were invariably asleep (although we did witness one brief copulation) and the cheetahs more active. We saw one aborted hunt and two days in a row we found the same mother and cubs, providing us with fine entertainment. To Mrs. Ha’s relief none of the cats decided to use the vehicle as a vantage point. I think it was Jonathan Scott, who once had the privilege of being underneath a stream of Cheetah pee as he sat inside the Land Rover or Land Cruiser and the cheetah walked across the roof, relieving itself as it did so.

No balloon trips at Samburu either. Mara is cool, Samburu is the spiky teenage rebel. Mara is the Range Rover whilst Samburu is the Defender.

And I learned a lot about photography. It is a cliché that photography is all about light. Cliché it may be but nowhere is this truer than on an African safari. I had done some bird photography in Kenya in 2005 but this time I was much more aware of quality rather than quantity.

I used almost exclusively my Canon 400mm F4 DO lens with a 1.4x TC on a 1D mk III body. This on a bean bag gave excellent results. It is amazing what 2kg of rice can do to your photographs! In poor light I did a few times shoot at ISO 3200 with acceptable results. Such is the quality of the Canon sensor.

I learned that the soft light of morning and evening can indeed give a warm, luscious tone to a picture but it can also play havoc with whites, caught by the sun. Spangling or dappling effects can create sharp contrast that the human eye can cope with and a digital sensor can not. Try getting a cheetah correctly exposed in late afternoon sun and see what I mean. At times I had to use -2 2/3 compensation to hold the whites and stop them burning out. Yellows were especially challenging. The Yellow-throated longclaws were particularly hard to get right and I deleted far more images than I kept. There were recurring problems with highlights on acacia thorns, elephant tusks and bird legs, all of which reflected a great deal of light. Getting unobstructed images was often tough with grass and thorns obscuring part of the target. Over time I disciplined myself to take fewer pictures and be more selective on when to squeeze the shutter button. Sometimes it is simply better not to take the picture. A few horror moments also reminded me of the need for “re-set hygiene”. Simply put, after shooting I always returned the settings to AV, F5.6, +/- 0, Single shot, “silent” shutter mode.

The real eye-opener for me was the way Mrs. Ha took to photographing birds. I set her D30, 400mm F5.6 combination to take small jpeg files (I took RAW and jpeg combined) and she rattled off a huge number of images. Yet she deleted ruthlessly and her eye for composition is better than mine. She soon was in the swing of jostling me for the optimum shooting position and getting the driver to move a yard this way or that to get the light “just right”. Good on you, my love!

Our guide was from Nature’s Wonderland Safaris. I will provide unbiased references on request. A few logistical comments. We could not get our preferred lodge at Samburu and ended up at one in Shaba. There are 3 adjoining reserves, Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba. As I mentioned above, Shaba is not close to the airstrip, the roads are grim and there is little “big game” Shaba side. You go to Shaba for birds. We stayed at a lodge that was to put it kindly, tired. The rooms were ok but hot with little airflow and the “aircon” only a noisy fan. After a bad first night we were told we could leave our windows open at night (contradicting what we had been told the previous day) and this gave us much relief. The food was ordinary. But the restaurant did boast a Shikra sitting on a branch next to the breakfast buffet on day 2. The grounds also held Giant kingfisher so not too shabby! After a fairly tense exchange with our reluctant guide, whom I had told to drive us on a route that would allow us to pass a lodge (any lodge) for a toilet break at some stage in our 12 hour all-day marathon, we found the lovely Ashnil Samburu Camp. 25 minutes from the airstrip in beautiful surroundings we were welcomed, walked around and shown the rooms and we rapidly wished we had stayed there. It is newly opened and had not a single guest the day we visited. Well worth a look.

At the Mara we stayed at Keekorok Lodge. This was a big improvement on our Shaba experience. It was very busy, many groups seemingly from France and Japan with a few Brits thrown in, presumably spending their last pounds before the currency and country sink without trace under GB’s “leadership”. This lodge is comfortable, well equipped, friendly and has lovely grounds. It is 5 minutes from the airstrip (2.2km the sign says). We enjoyed our stay here but again the food was pretty ordinary and none of the meals started on time. This is not a problem at lunchtime but if you want a 6.30 breakfast before you go off on a game drive it is annoying when the service starts at 6.45. However tea, coffee and biscuits are available from 6.00.





Mr. and Mrs. Montagu' S Harrier


To be continued