Me! Me! Me!

Wish I'd had something better than a phone camera with me...

Sparrow

Wagtail

Birds under bridges

What I saw at the river

Today I cycled down to the big river. It has been several months since I went there, and I discovered that all the gulls were gone. I forgot they don't hang around there in the summer. They turn up in autumn, and stay for the winter.

I did not spend as much time there as I'd planned, because while I was cycling along the riverbank I remembered that a friend had moved to somewhere near that area, and maybe he was at home and I could pay him a visit? I texted him, and he answered immediately, saying he'd cycle down to meet me. He brought his dog. I think the dog remembered me, although I hadn't seen her since she wasn't much more than a puppy. She got all excited when she saw me. Or it could just be that I smell good to dogs when I'm all hot and sweaty after a bicycle ride.


We went back to his (very nice) new place for a drink, and after an hour or so I cycled home again along the river. On the way I took some pictures, but not very many.

One picture I took was of a cormorant flying. It was doing its best imitation of a cartoon. I must say the hornbill does it better, but still, that was a pretty good effort. The dangling foot is especially good.


I also saw a lot of crows. They were behaving in the way crows do, flying around and shouting scornfully, except for this one. I think this one is an outcast.


It was quietly fossicking in the grass, looking normal, but when it turned the other way . . .


I saw that it had a mutant white feather.

How odd. I guess that was why the other crows didn't want to hang around with it. Poor, lonely white-feathered crow.

Before I left the riverside I saw the amazing umbrella bird, hanging from a tree.


This is a baby umbrella bird. When it is older it will open, trundle down to the river, and drift out to sea (unless it is captured and sold into slavery beforehand, that is).

I know this because I have seen it before.

Storks

What wonderful nests storks have!

(It must be hard to photograph the babies, though.)

Steep learning curve

There was a nest somewhere. I knew, because I could hear the babies yelling for food, but I couldn't see where they could possibly be. There are no trees in that direction. There are houses, but I didn't think the yelling was coming from a house. It was coming from higher up.

I thought it might be coming from here, but I couldn't see where a nest could be.


Then a sparrow flew by, suddenly, and then another, and they both vanished somewhere around the top of the power pole. The babies started yelling, and then . . .

There it was!


The babies will have a steep learning curve when it comes time to start flying. No practice for them! They won't even have space to spread their wings before their first time out. They'll have a few seconds to learn the secrets of flight . . . or not.

After I had watched for a while (and got a stiff neck from holding up the camera at an angle for so long), both parents decided to leave.

First one . . .


. . . and then the other, carrying something away.


I don't know what it was carrying away. A bit of unnecessary nest, perhaps. It doesn't look like baby poop. It looks too rigid for that. I guess it was a bit of housekeeping detritus.

Maybe today was gomi day.

Cormorant on bicycle

Today as I was cycling along the small river where I often see the tufted ducks, I was surprised to see a cormorant on a bicycle.



When I went around the other side to see more clearly, I saw he was riding tandem.

Down at the river

A week or so ago I went to the big river and took some photos. There was no story. Sorry. (I have a maybe-story from the little river, but I haven't sorted through all the photos yet.)

At the big river, an egret was practicing for the 100-metre sprint.


A kingfisher posed for me on the path.


Another little bird pretended to be a kingfisher, and I took its photo. It was only after zooming in on the (not very good) photo that I realized that it was not a kingfisher. I don't know what it was, but it was very cute.


There were a lot of gulls.


At one point, the gulls all suddenly took to the air. I took a picture. They looked like the Hitchcock movie.


Then I noticed why they had taken to the air. Poor wee doggie. The river is not very deep at the moment, and he got out quite a way before realizing none of the gulls was going to sit there and wait for him.


After that I came home again. It was a cold, grey sort of day, and my fingers and toes were turning blue.

Mystery gull

On Monday, down at the small river behind the place I work, I saw a lot of gulls like the ones I usually see. But I also saw another type of gull, standing alone on a rock.


This gull was a lot larger than the usual ones, and I cannot identify it. Is it a Vega Gull (Larus vegae)? A Mongolian Gull (Larus mongolicus)?

The gulls I usually see are easy to identify. They are, of course, Larus Ridiculous, which is probably why the mystery gull did not want to hang out with them.

Kingfishers

I got lucky today. Just as I got to the little river, before my classes started, these two arrived as well. They were having a very serious and somewhat heated discussion about something.

Then they left again.



Although these birds are called Common Kingfishers, they are not very common around here. Today was only the second time I've seen any.

A lovely woman

Yesterday at lunchtime I went down to the river. I missed getting a picture of the large snake swimming across the river, because I didn't have the camera ready and it was too fast for me. I think it might have seen me coming. That was probably the snake I kicked a few weeks ago. That was probably why it was in such a hurry to cross the river.

I got a picture of the egret, though, who was fishing.


And a butterfly. There were a lot of these butterflies.


Also, there was a cormorant, trying to run on water.


And I took a picture of a duck. There are always ducks. If there were no ducks, it would feel wrong.


In the afternoon after I'd finished work, I was walking out to the bicycle parking lot when I heard some students calling to me from across campus. They were some of my students from last year.

"BADAUNT!" they screeched, excitedly.

"HELLO!" I shouted back. "HOW ARE YOU TODAY?"

They had forgotten how to answer that one. Instead, they bellowed, surprisingly,

"BADAUNT, YOU ARE A LOVELY WOMAN!"

"Er ... um ... THANK YOU!" I replied. I wondered where they had learned that one, and felt rather embarrassed. Why couldn't they just greet me in a normal way?

Then I thought, But of course! It's because I AM a lovely woman! Why wouldn't they want to say so?

And then I blew myself a huge raspberry.

First day back, and eyelashes

Work starts tomorrow. I am not ready, and should be panicking, but I can't be bothered. I think I must be turning into a calm person. I am going to print out the class lists, make sure everything is in my bag, and have a good night's sleep. Tomorrow I will ad lib my classes.

The first day back is always a bit of a mess, anyway. Every time I make proper lesson plans for a first day back they get sabotaged by unexpected paperwork or sudden requirements or last minute changes to the curriculum, and I have to adjust them. I will take my last year's plan and adapt it to whatever happens.

So instead of making fantastic new lesson plans, I have spent the day looking at more pictures from our holiday. Here is one to go on with, from the bird park. It is not a great photo (focus in the wrong place, dammit), but it is rather charming, despite the dirty face and sticky beak. And look at those eyelashes! I don't think I ever noticed eyelashes on a bird before.

Do all birds have eyelashes?

More hornbills

Every morning the hornbills flew down from the forest to these trees.


From there they flew across in front of our balcony.


They landed in this tree and some others like it, and gossiped for a while.


Then they came down to the feeding platform.


After they'd eaten, they hung around the trees for a while longer. Then some of them flew back across in front of our balcony.


Not all of them, though. Some stayed for a while, to admire the sunset.


Or to join us in the restaurant.


"Isn't anybody going to bring me a menu?"

From the sublime to the ridiculous

We got back to Japan last night. It has been cloudy and humid today, but not too hot. In fact the weather is much like it was for a lot of our time in Malaysia. It was a rainy sort of trip.

This did not matter all that much, though, even at the beach. There it rained most days, but not for long, and the sun was out for long enough to swim and go for walks and so on. Also, we had lovely accommodation with a great view from the balcony of our fourth floor room (that's fifth floor if you're American). And of course there were the hornbills, which made everything fine and funny.

On the second morning on the island, for instance, we woke up to rain. I made myself a cup of tea and took it out onto the balcony, which had a roof. As I sipped my tea, the rain stopped, and this was what I saw.


A little while later my tea was almost finished, the rainbow had gone, the first hornbill flew past the balcony on its way to the feeding platform – and life suddenly turned into a cartoon.


What more could you ask for from a holiday?

K.L. Bird Park

We went to the bird park today, and it was WONDERFUL. I have taken a lot of pictures and will post some after getting back to Japan, but for now let me just say that K.L.'s bird park is definitely worth a visit if you're ever in the area. I could have spent the whole day there. At the restaurant in the park, we sat outside and were entertained by a couple of hornbills and three smaller birds that said Ne! a lot, making us laugh every time they did it. They also whistled and made other noises. I don't know what they were, but they were very friendly. I got the impression that if they REALLY wanted to, they would talk.

Also, a ground hornbill played grandmother's footsteps with us. At least I think that's what it was doing. It followed us along a path, and whenever we turned around, it stopped and tried to look innocent.

Other birds we saw: eagles, owls, pelicans, flamengos, egrets, emus, storks, ibises ... and I'm sure I could list a lot more but it's been a long and hot day and I'm ready for a shower.

Swans

"It would work better if you put the food directly into our beaks."

Stilts

The stilts at the bird park were little birds. I have never seen stilts before, and had always imagined them to be larger. But next to the ducks and ibises they looked delicate and spindly.


I was charmed and also a little worried by their legs, which looked like they might break at the slightest provocation, like if a bit of food was thrown too hard.

(Also, as everybody knows, bird knees bend the wrong way.)


But it was their faces that got to me. What funny little faces those birds have!

Hornbills

According to Wikipedia, "hornbill behavior in captivity is described as high-strung."

One of the hornbills we met at the Bird Park was showing signs of being high strung while we were there. Actually, it looked as though the top part of its bill was injured, and the keeper told us something we did not understand – that it had been in a fight with the other one? I didn't catch that.


Anyway, we fed it a little fruit.


After that it lost interest in us. We were apparently so boring we had caused it to collapse.




Later, when we passed through this part of the park again (it was so much fun we did it all twice), the supposedly collapsed hornbill was furtively attempting to get bits of food out of the slightly opened drawer you can see in that second picture. And succeeding, actually, until his (or her) keeper noticed and closed the drawer. I did not get a picture of that, though. Sorry.

I do not know whether this hornbill was the male or the female, but apparently the male is in love with the female, but she thinks she is a human being and is in love with her keeper. (And the male dislikes the keeper intensely, seeing him as a rival.) Because of this doomed love triangle it appears highly unlikely that this pair will break with convention and breed in captivity.

The other hornbill was in a different enclosure (emotional tensions run too high when they are together), and posed for me to take a picture.