birds – dangermouse.net

More Japanese birds

Today I worked on the next Darths & Droids strip, then got stuck into finishing off processing and uploading photos from my last day in Tokyo. I also went through and found all the photos I’d taken of birds, and identified all the species. Some of them were a bit tricky, since I only got shots from a distance with my phone. But I’m pleased to say that overall I added seven new species to my list, plus a Eurasian coot, which I’ve photographed in other countries but not Japan.

Including brown-eared bulbul:

Eurasian teals:

Tufted ducks:

And common pochard:

At lunch I took Scully for a walk to the hardware store, where I had some new keys cut for the new lock that will be installed on our new door when the fire safety people come to replace our old door on Friday. Unfortunately when I got back home and tested the new keys they didn’t work! The supplied keys have six places where the metal has been removed to set a new level different from the blank. But the cut keys only have metal removed from the five spots closest to the back of the key. There’s a whole spot nearest the tip of the key which wasn’t ground down. So now I’m going to have to go back and either get them properly cut or my money back and go somewhere else. This time I’ll take the actual lock with me and test them in the shop before leaving.

This evening, fried rice for dinner, followed by three ethics classes.

Board games and Japan prep

Friday was online board games night with my friends. We played Can’t Stop, Ticket to Ride, Just One, 7 Wonders, and then a game of Castles of Burgundy. I didn’t won any, but came second in Castles of Burgundy behind the guy in our group who usually wins everything, so that felt like a victory.

Before that we went up to the fish & chips shop for dinner, eating casually while we walked home with Scully. I didn’t do much else on Friday, except pick up the groceries that I’d ordered online. But I got a surprise message from the supermarket, telling they were sorry my order had been cancelled because of an error in their online system, and saying they’d refund the full amount and give me a $20 gift voucher. A bit later I did indeed get sent a $20 voucher. I’m now waiting to see if they will also refund the total order which they tell me was cancelled, but which I actually picked up.

While walking Scully at lunchtime I spotted a grey butcherbird sitting on the overhead train wires near the station. We were walking on an overpass over the rail line, so I got the photo from a higher elevation, which is unusual for most birds. Its plumage looks a bit dishevelled for some reason.

This species is moderately common around here, but usually seen high in trees where it’s difficult to get a good photo—or more often heard with their distinctive call but not seen at all—so I was excited to get such a good view of one for a change.

Today, Saturday, I went on my usual 5k run in the morning. My times have not been great lately, because of the warm weather and high humidity. I’m looking forward to autumn and cooler weather.

For lunch we went to a Thai restaurant with my wife’s family for her mother’s birthday. Not a large group, just seven of us. We shared some delicious dishes. We used to eat Thai quite a lot as there had always been very good Thai places near us, but the best one closed down some years ago, and there isn’t one we like much nearby any more. So it was good to have some today.

The other thing we’ve been doing is organising for our trip to Tokyo next weekend. I booked another couple of restaurants. Normally we don’t bother booking any eating places in advance of a trip, but Japan is tricky for vegetarians and places that offer vegetarian food are often extremely busy with tourists, because visiting vegetarians all end up going to the same few places.

I’ve also got some things to print out, like our travel insurance details, hotel booking receipt, and other miscellaneous stuff. And I have to double check I have a usable Tokyo train map on my phone. Although I suppose Google Maps will do for route planning.

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A beach break for lunch

Today I had to refuel the car, and decided to take Scully on a drive to Collaroy and Fisherman’s Beach, next to the golf club there. Of course I stopped for a couple of pies at The Upper Crust, one butter chicken, and one Mexican beef. Excellent as usual.

It was hot and sunny and I expected to sit on the grass under the shade of a huge Norfolk Island pine tree that grows there. You can see it on the left edge of this photo:

But when we got there, there was an older couple already sitting there, with their dog. The patch of shade is fairly small, and Scully didn’t like the look of their dog, so we had to move along the beach a bit to the other side of the golf clubhouse and find a shady bench for me to sit on.

At least this spot gave me a good view of some Australian pelicans who were sunning themselves and drying off their wings. Among a swarm of silver gulls.

I also saw Australian ravens, masked lapwings, noisy miners, common mynas, Australian magpies, welcome swallows, rainbow lorikeets, and one grey butcherbird, all of which I recorded in eBird.

Back home, I worked on my ethics lesson plan for this week, on the topic of “Prizes and Awards”. I have questions like:

Why do people or organisations give out prizes and awards?
Do prizes sometimes get given to the “wrong” person?
Why are some awards, like Nobel Prizes, Olympic Medals, Academy Awards, so famous?
Is it fair that something or somebody that wins an award will become more popular?
Should awards always go to the best performer, or should effort and improvement also count?

Oh, and new neighbours moved into the apartment across the hall from us today, after our old ones moved out just last week. This seems a very quick turnaround given that our old neighbours were told they had to leave because the owner was intending to sell the apartment. We never saw anybody come in to inspect the place or any prospective buyers or new renters. And then suddenly two young women showed up today with furniture. I’m wondering if these woman actually offered a big rental increase and the owner decided to just tell the previous ones that they had to vacate. 🤔

New content today:

Planning to eat out this week

Today we didn’t do very much. It was a kind of rest at home Sunday. My wife took Scully for a walk in the morning while I worked on some more comics. I’m trying to get ahead with a buffer while I can. I also planned out some more ethics class topics for the coming month, deciding to do topics on Bio-engineering, and Opinion versus Fact.

There’s really not that much else to report.

Oh, we went for a walk together with Scully after dinner, in the cooler evening. We did the big loop around the harbour shore and I did a bird count using eBird along the way. I commented to my wife that I’d counted 16 species tonight, which is higher than normal (usually around 12 or so is more normal). And I started mentioning some rarer species that I have seen occasionally. I mentioned that I’d spotted a pelican (Australian pelican) only twice in this area. As we left the waterfront and started up the hill back home, I ended my count at 16 species.

And then halfway home I looked up and saw an unusual bird circling in the sky. I thought at first maybe it was an ibis (the most likely option for a large white flying bird in this area), but then I realised the shape was wrong… It was a pelican! Seriously! Just a few minutes after I’d talked about them being so rare to spot here.

In other bird news, there are a lot of baby brushturkeys around at the moment. Their eggs have obviously hatched not long ago and now the little chicks are running around all over the place. The parents abandon them and the chicks have to fend for themselves immediately. Fortunately they’ve very well camouflaged and stick to undergrowth, so they generally do pretty well. Definitely, given the population explosion around here in recent years.

On to the headline topic: we’ve made plans to go out for lunch tomorrow. We’re going to walk down to the newly reopened ferry wharf and catch a ferry across the harbour to Balmain, and find a nice place to sit and have lunch before making our way home again.

And on Friday we decided to do something fancy and try a new place. There’s an Italian wine bar/restaurant which is highly rated and has outdoor seating so we can take Scully: Enoteca 128. It looks pretty nice! We have a booking for dinner on Friday.

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A walk in Lane Cove National Park

This morning I had some free time, and my wife took Scully to work so I could use the opportunity to travel somewhere where dogs aren’t allowed. I decided to hop on the Metro and take a train to Lane Cove National Park.

This is a tiny national park entirely within the metropolitan area of Sydney. In fact, I only had to ride the train two stops to get there. It follows the banks of the Lane Cove River, one of the tributaries of Sydney Harbour. I know the main entrance area and thought I could walk there down the main road from the train station, but about half way there the road narrowed and the footpath disappeared, and there was no way I could continue without risking being hit by cars, so I had to backtrack and use an alternative route into the park.

But once there, I was greeted by the river, with forested banks on either side.

I’d taken my dSLR camera with a 100-400m lens for shooting birds. I wasn’t disappointed. There were many around, and some fearless. Here’s a suplhur-crested cockatoo:

This Australian brushturkey came right up to me. I took this photo with my phone, not the SLR.

An Australasian darter:

Australian golden whistler:

And I think the photo of the day, a superb fairywren:

I also got photos of a white-throated treecreeper and a brown gerygone, two species I’ve never photographed before, which was good, but unfortunately both photos were a bit blurry and far away, so not really worth showing off. These little birds move so fast it’s ridiculously hard getting a camera aimed at them before they move.

I emerged from another part of the park and walked to a different station to get a train back. I actually stopped on the way to the station to get lunch at a Thai place – the same premises where I used to get lunch when I was working for Canon, but they’ve changed owners and name and now the food is different. But still pretty good.

Here’s a map of the walk, as recorded on Strava.

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Definitely spring flowers around

Adding to yesterday’s observations, today I noticed some cherry blossom trees in full bloom, with bees lazily collecting nectar. Spring definitely felt in the air as we got up to 21°C today, and tomorrow should be even warmer. It was lovely being out and about.

I took Scully for a drive to Allambie at lunch time, where I got pies for lunch. It’s a bit of a drive, but they’re the best combination of excellent pies and reasonable distance. And it has the advantage of being very close to a playing field where Scully can run around and get some exercise. It’s a soccer/rugby field and often very muddy after rain, but it’s been sunny for the past two weeks and the ground was nice and dry today.

Today marked the 14th day in a row where it hasn’t rained! It’s been so lovely not having any rain. It’s a constant refrain among people I meet on the street while out walking Scully: “Thank goodness for this lovely weather and no rain.” “It’s so nice that it hasn’t been raining.” “It’s good to get some sunny days in a row.” You can really tell we’ve had a ridiculous amount of rain in the first part of the year by how many people are super happy and excited by the fact that it hasn’t rained for several days.

And an amazing thing happened this morning. I was just pottering around and heard an awful raucous screeching outside, which at first I thought was a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and then as it continued in a distressed manner I thought it might have been a cockatoo that had been caught by a cat or something. I raced to the window to see what I could, and realised it was indeed a cockatoo, but not a white sulphur-crested one… it was a yellow-tailed black cockatoo! And not just one, but three of them! Feeding in a banksia tree right outside my living room window.

This is a rare species in this area, so close to the middle of the city. I’ve only ever seen them around here once before, in 2017. I raced to get my SLR camera and take some photos, but when I pulled it out the battery was dead, and the spare battery was dead too! So I quickly put one in a charger and hoped the cockatoos would stay there long enough for the battery charge up a bit.

The cockatoo making all the noise—and it was an almost continuous screeching, over and over and over without interruption—must have been a newly fledged juvenile, begging its parents (the other two) for food. I watched them and waited impatiently for my camera battery. After a few minutes I tried it, and it hard just enough charge for me to grab some photos!

Pretty cool!

Tonight I started the new ethics topic on Fishing. I have plenty of questions, which is good, as I ran out of time before getting to the end in the classes.

And for dinner I made a quiche, trying a mixture of half butter and half margarine in the pastry, to try to cut down on the saturated fats a bit. It worked okay, but was a bit sticky to roll out. I’ll see how the second half goes after it’s been refrigerated for longer.

New content today:

A day for fish & chips

It was cool and cloudy and drizzly this morning. I spent time working up one of my next classes for this week’s ethic lessons. It’s a simpler version of the “Philosophy of Ethics” lesson I did last year for the older age group, so I could adapt a lot of the material. For the older kids I’m doing a topic this week on “Confession”, which I still need to write up. As in confessing for any bad acts, but we’ll also touch on Catholic confession too.

For lunch I took Scully for a walk through the drizzle to the fish & chip shop and then we went down to the water by the ferry wharf to eat.

The rain stopped while I was waiting for the food to be cooked, and the bench in the park had dried out a bit by the time we got there, so I had somewhere to sit. And while sitting by the water, eating fish & chips, I could hear lots of birds.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos, noisy miners, and kookaburras. I think there was also a galah. Yes there was a gull or two as well, but it was interesting that the most obvious birds in the area here by the harbour shore were cockatoos.

Not much else to say about the day, really.

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First day off, hot and smoky

Today was the first free day of my Christmas break. I took Scully for a long walk early in the morning before it got too hot, because the forecast was 35°C. it didn’t get that high, however, because of a combination of overcast that made the day very steamy, and the distinct smell of bushfire smoke that drifted in late morning. The smoke made the air very hazy (news story here), but it wasn’t local. It had drifted on the wind from a large bushfire near Narrabri, some 500 km north-west (news story here).

But the walk was before the smoke. It was cooler, but still hot and humid enough to mean I was drenched in sweat by the time we got home, at 9 o’clock. Along the way though I was excited to spot a striated heron! These birds are not common in the area. According to my eBird stats, this is only the third time I’ve seen a striated heron around here since late 2020. I tried to get a photo, but I couldn’t get very close and my phone wasn’t up to zooming in that far with decent quality. But still, this is my first photo of a striated heron! It’s the 127th Australian species I’ve photographed.

For lunch I took Scully for a drive instead of a walk. We went to the Allambie Heights pie shop, which I’ve been craving for a few weeks now, but it’s a bit of a drive so not something I can do any old day. And when we got there, they had special Christmas pies!

These are more expensive than the usual menu, and contained roast turkey, brie, and cranberry sauce. Of course I had to try one! I also got a Thai chicken curry pie to round out lunch. Both the flavours were excellent – this is a pretty good pie shop.

The temperature continued to climb and reached a maximum about 6pm. It’s cooling down slowly now, but there’s a cold southerly change coming through about 11pm tonight, which should bring thunderstorms and cooler temperatures. The next few days are forecast to be much cooler, thankfully.

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Early morning birding

I forgot to mention yesterday: In the morning I usually take Scully on a walk and yesterday I took her on a longer one to avoid doing a big walk in the heat of the middle of the day. We went by the harbour shore, and for the first time in a while I did a bird count using eBird. Normally when I do this around this area, I can accumulate about 10 species observed. But yesterday I managed to find 18 different species, which is notably high. Sometimes I get 14 or 15, but 18 is close to a record for a single observation near my home. I won’t reproduce the list, because you can see it on eBird here. Looking for birds early in the morning definitely helps, as they are harder to find in the heat of the day. And summer means the Pacific koels are around (they migrate north for the winter). There are also channel-billed cuckoos, which have been around lately, but I didn’t happen to see any yesterday.

Today I dropped Scully at doggie daycare in the morning, and then I went to my dentist for a regular cleaning and dental hygiene appointment. The hygienist was pretty happy with my teeth and there were no concerns, so that’s good. Afterwards I celebrated with a roasted vegetable pie for lunch from the nearby pie shop.

Being out without walking Scully, I took the chance to drop into the brand new library that opened up not long ago in a new development nearby. It’s a branch of another library that I’m a member of, but when I showed them my card they said it had expired. I wasn’t on their system at all! I guess this goes to show what the Internet has done. I used to borrow books frequently, but of course that dropped off some years back. And… this isn’t the first time that my card has expired through lack of use! Some years ago I went into the library and tried to borrow some books only to be told my card had expired. I feel kind of embarrassed that this has happened to me twice now!

I’m also getting ready for the next Dungeons & Dragons game, which I’ll be running for my friends on Friday evening. It should be the climax of the current adventure (which started with rumours of the return of a dragon and continued with the party recovering a legendary dragon-slaying sword…), so hopefully lots of drama and fun!

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Turkeys, turkeys, everywhere

Around where we live it’s easy to find Australian brushturkeys. Here’s a photo I took of one a while back:

They’re big birds, and have become more and more common in this area over the years. They scrape for food in leaf litter, and this time of year they build large mounds of litter and mulch to incubate their eggs, using the warmth of the decaying mulch rather than sitting on the eggs. So they move around a lot of leaf litter. And this year in particular I’ve been noticing that a lot of the footpaths we walk on around the neighbourhood are constantly being covered in a layer of leaf litter, sometimes so thick that you almost have to wade through it. While the adjacent garden beds are scraped clear of mulch and have large patches of bare soil.

There’s been a bit of this in previous years but this year it’s particularly bad. I’m guessing a lot of residents are constantly scraping or sweeping mulch back into the gardens and off the footpaths, or maybe their are council workers going around and doing it. I’m starting to wonder how much of this the gardens can take before the birds become real pests and start having an adverse effect on plants. Being native birds they’re a protected species, so there’s nothing anyone can do about them, legally.

In other news today, I received my Kickstarter copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics #100: The Music of the Spheres is Chaos. This is a wacky dungeon adventure with some cool bonus stuff because it’s the 100th adventure in Goodman Games’s series. Should be fun!

And tonight was another project tutorial session at the university for the image processing course. For dinner beforehand I tried a new burger and wings place. I had the chicken burger with peri-peri sauce, which came with a side of chips. It was pretty good! I’d go back here again some other time. Though not this semester since I’m still trying to eat somewhere different and new every week.

And after the project session with the students, the professor, who’s an old colleague from the previous jobs we did together at Canon, asked me if I wanted to fill in for him in teaching the next 18 months worth of his courses, as he has an offer to do some outsourced research work which will take up all his teaching time. This means I’d be organising the courses and giving the lectures for the courses – which involves some time commitment, but also extra income. And it’s a great opportunity to do some more university level teaching. So I’m very interested! I just need to see how many hours a week of work will be required, and fit that into my current Outschool schedule.

So this is pretty big news, and I’m a bit excited!

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