March 2019

March 2019

 The month has been dominated by the senseless shooting in Christchurch. It shows what damage can be done by one idiot in the community...it galls particularly he was not from New Zealand. Jacinda Ardern won international praise for her genuine handling of the situation BUT her Government and those of the last 30 years have been slack with gun laws and innocents paid the price. Nobody in civilian life needs an automatic or semi-automatic rifle. 

I don't think the perpetrator thought too much about the aftermath...50 years on your own in a small concrete room with the threat of other inmates performing their own versions of plastic surgery!!!!!!

Live in a Moslem country and you soon learn tolerance. I thought this cartoon summed up the mood.

The weather through March has remained mostly hot and humid. There are occasional thunderstorms but watering the garden is still the order of the day.

The dry weather has bought out the flowers in the back yard with splashes of red all around.

Since before Chinese New Year the house viewing had dried up...there was nothing in a month but since then it has moved forward with three viewings this week. One woman was keen and penciled in a repeat visit but that lapsed. Another male viewed the house by himself....he seemed to stare intently at certain things like he was an expert on ceiling painting. Surprisingly the agent said a day later he was interested. He finally put in a ridiculously low offer....which was kicked rapidly into touch. I said to Helen at the time...no female involved...be suspicious. The agent concerned asked us to consider the offer given a soft market....when he was told not to be ridiculous he could have won the Tour de France pedaling backwards.

I try to shoot two to three times a week and going to two main places....Air Itam where the owl attacked the lizard or Penanti where the bee-eaters nest. The latter was half bulldozed at the end of last year and I thought I had lost it.

At Air Hitam the Kingfishers still probe a nesting site, the Stork-billed Kingfisher waits for the fish farm proprietors to go indoors and helps himself to lunch, the Prinia sings happily, the female owl was back in the nest after the lizard attack. The morning sun shines directly in to nest cavity and she wisely blocks-off the sun with her wing. If she re-laid eggs the chicks should be hatching soon. She was out of the nest last week but returned later.

On the same tree a pair of Brahminy kites are building a nest and one was dismantling a rat one day above the owl nest cavity.

There are also a handful of Dusky-leaf monkeys there, but they are always difficult to get clear of the trees and they are quite shy......except for this centrefold who posed on the aerial walkway in the early morning sun.

It had been quiet at Penanti, especially as the kingfisher pair seemed to have unfortunately gone elsewhere. I was waiting to see if the Blue-throated Bee-eaters arrived to nest...which has been in early March in past years. Right on cue they arrived. When I first went to the location there were 80 -120 of them...now perhaps 20 only.....but they are active if you can get them in the right location. They have been hunting, mating, fighting, preening and digging. They are such sleek and beautiful birds but if they get angry...they get very aggressive.

One morning I also went to check on the Chestnut-headed Bee-eaters nesting at the temple complex. The place was as lively as ever, and these little guys are a joy to watch. It is difficult to photograph them though with man-made items in the picture.

I did get a shot of a less common bird in a nearby tree...a Black-headed Bulbul. I like some bird names...the head is dark blue. There is a plain-throated sunbird with this mundane name. The plain-throated refers to a patch of feathers in the throat region that is not a brilliant iridescence like the rest of the neck and head.

On the market front I have sold two images via the German Bird Image agency. The hummingbird is sold for the third time.

I also had a first in my international exhibitions....getting an acceptance with a shot from my point and shoot camera. Stand up little puke and thanks to sister Lynette for the summons at the time.

I have also had an image shortlisted in the  ANZANG competition....the antipodean equivalent of the BBC.

Back at home I get bossed around by the little furry one. She comes in and gives me the evil eye to take her to the beach. She gets very excited and is very grateful.....more-so than most humans you help Several fishermen call out to her and she is making a number of friends with the workers going out to the island under construction. Some sunrises are also good to witness.

The marina silts up quite badly and at the present time they have a contraption disturbing the silt with a big corkscrew and sucking the silt out to sea.

In the quiz this year the team has not been out of the placings but only three wins to date. Sometimes it is frustrating because a right answer is switched for an incorrect one at the last moment.

Looking forward to the next month. Nikki arrives for a few days in April and she and Helen have a culinary journey planned. I will be running a course at Fraser’s Hill for most of that time ....the time and dates were out of my hands.

February 2019

The shortest month has gone by and here it was a hot and dry one. Penang has been immune from water shortages since we have been here but there are problems brewing if we don’t get rain soon. The situation seems similar to 3 years ago when the first three months were almost completely dry. The unceasing heat is rather debilitating at times.

You can see the normal water level on the main Penang reservoir.

Helen has had a full book plus some with her teaching on two or three days she has had afternoon classes as well as full mornings. It was starting to give her no time to do other things she wanted to do so with the normal turnover of students she has readjusted to avoid the afternoon classes.

The month has been dominated somewhat by the 15-day Chinese New Year. A lot of money is spent on getting things fresh for the coming year so there seems to be a vacuum of activity in the aftermath. Consequently, after a relatively busy January we have not seen many inspections in February.

The fine weather is generally good for nature photography. My star venue appears to be in its death throe. It is extremely quiet there although I am keeping my eye on a kingfisher’s nest and the potential arrival of the Blue-throated Bee-eaters. There has been the occasional visit by Chestnut-headed Bee-eaters but this year there is no attempt to nest there. My main thrill is an occasional Red Jungle Fowl passing by and parthenogenic lizards scoping the landscape. 

I did get the Chestnut-winged Cuckoo out in the open and his species has eluded me at this site for years.

Most of my attention recently has centered on Air Hitam Dalan which is a small conservation park almost exactly opposite our home in mainland Penang. It has been good to visit once a month in the past but now it is the main site.

I get there before sunrise and watch the Open-billed Storks take off in the colourful sunrise to forage in the rice fields.

The Asian Openbill or Asian Openbill Stork (Anastomus oscitans) is a large wading bird in the stork family Ciconidae. This distinctive stork is mainly found in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. It is a greyish or white with glossy black wings and tail. The adults have a gap between the arched upper mandible and recurved lower mandible. Young birds are born without this gap which is thought to be an adaption that aids in the handling of snails, their main prey.

This stork has appeared in greater numbers in Malaysia in the last few years. It loves eating the Golden Apple Snail that was introduced into parts of Asia for a failed escargot industry. It is a major pest as it eats the rice crops and farmers should support the storks who are the snail’s main predator.

There is a fish farm adjacent to the forest remnant and this attracts some of the local pescatarians.  I have some good shots or three species of kingfisher in the vicinity. 

The tiny Yellow-bellied Prinia also likes to find the highest point in a bush and sing to the world.......even managed with a moth in his beak. 

Various kite and heron species also wait for their breakfast.

The flying kites, Brahminy above and Black Kite below

There are always Long-tailed Macaques around somewhere there and I was lucky enough to get some teenagers playing in a flowering tree with a subdued sunrise behind them.

My main photographic coup was to get the moment a Spotted Wood Owl hits a monitor lizard with armed talons. A pair of owls had taken up residence in a tree-hole and it was being raided by a monitor lizard.....who are experts at climbing trees. The chances of such a shot are very slim as I only had a 0.3 second window to record any such attack and the sun and background had to cooperate also.

The next two shots in the sequence. Each shot is 1/10 second after the previous one. The camera is in 'machine gun' mode. The owl is not sitting on the lizard it is an aerial attack.

On the home front Coco is always excited to go to the beach in the morning. I also enjoy the sunrise from a different perspective. 

There is a small temple at the end of the beach and each year during the Chinese New Year festivities they light a large array of giant joss-sticks to predict, via their burning pattern, what the financial climate with be for Penang during the coming year. The sticks are divided into four to predict each quarter. The first one will be good but the next three with be indifferent. Coco was interested to see what was going to happen to her investments.

From the same beach the workers leave to go to the island being constructed. They are currently building a bridge across to it.

Penang played host to the RMS Queen Mary II during the month. It slipped into port in the dark so I was determined to get a shot of it leaving....reportedly at 5pm. I waited along the waterfront with the dogs and the Munias and watched the fishermen.  Finally, just before the sun set the graceful but solid lady, built for the trans-Atlantic route slowly steamed out of port.

On one day when Helen had a cancelled lesson we drove down to Taiping. I had heard there was a nesting hornbill family in the Rain Trees adjacent to a park. The park was designed by the British on an old tin mine and it is indeed beautiful. The rain trees are well known as they have arched over and formed an avenue adjacent to the lake. Some have arched over too far and have subsequently closed the road. We did not find the hornbills but had a nice trip.

In the pub quiz we have not finished out of the money this month with a first and 2 seconds. There was no quiz in the midst of the Chinese New Year celebrations.

One thing that is concern generally in the location is the insane amount of building going on

I have no idea where the potential buyers will come from and it begs the question as to whether there is any town planning.

The front building is on our estate and they have a monstrosity virtually in their back yard.

After being shortlisted again for the NHM (ex BBC) wildlife award....I missed out again. Out of the 46,000 entries this was deemed the winning shot. .....which could have been shot at the local zoo......and NOT a shot at long odds.