While at the lighthouse, in a moment of carelessness (there were birds on their way, ok?) I broke my camera and now find it will cost a small fortune to repair.
Then I made a phone call to my house because I knew my sister-in-law was there, having volunteered to cope with a repairman coming to fix a fuse and some electrical outlets. She burst into tears because she had just set fire to my kitchen. She valiantly coped with that, and the house didn’t burn down, but that was end of the cooker hood and we now have a kitchen with some rather odd looking warped and blackish cupboards over the stove and a kitchen that smells like burned plastic.
Also while I was away, the roof leaked in the place we had repaired a year or two ago – and our carpets (rugs to you USians) got wet. They now smell like musty rat-ridden places.
I also picked up a head cold. Yuk.
And yesterday the nose piece on my specs broke while I was cleaning them. Serves me right for buying cheapo frames.
Yuk, yuk yuk.
So I am looking for an enormous amount of money which I don’t have…
Some more photos from the lighthouse…
And J0 – I dropped my camera. Totally wrecked it, so no more photos!
This is the view looking down on the sea (those are corals). Yesterday we were treated to a hot courtship between two green turtles…
And yes, I am still doing my copy edit. Work goes on.
Oriental Honey Buzzards…
And a Barn Swallow too…
And below: Black Bazas, a flock of 60
When there are no migrants, we watch the locals – the Brahminy Kites courting, the Sea-eagle sitting on her nest, the male Sea-eagle shooing away his previous off-spring in a spectacular display of talon gripping flight, and the mynas in their bonding flights over the sea every morning in flocks that flow like water.
Above: Some Japanese birding visitors from Hiroshima : the Matsushima family
Counters at work – and it was 38 degrees (over 100F) in the shade…
Above: A view from the lighthouse
Every morning the resident Javan Mynas fly out over the sea and perform an aerial dance for our benefit.
Below: the road to the lighthouse
Today was a wonderful day – two and a half thousand raptors, mostly Oriental Honey-Buzzards, with a sprinkling of Grey-faced Buzzards and Black Bazas, not to mention Barn Swallows, Fork-tailed Swifts, and Blue-throated and Blue Tailed Bee-eaters, all on their way north….
Built in the 1860s and still manned
Below: And now,with permission, the centre of the raptor watch count – counting the birds arriving from Indonesia 48 kms away
Below: Sometimes the birds come
Below: sometimes they don’t, so …
Above: so you look at local fellas like this Common Myna
Above: Or you get a lesson at the feet of the sifu on identification
Above: or look at the Dusky Leaf Monkeys eating shoots
This morning I managed to snap them from inside the kitchen, through the open window when they were on the other side of the verandah
Nope, they aren’t rats or squirrels and they are not related to either. They aren’t even rodents. They have pointed teeth and a very ancient lineage. They are called Treeshrews, whhich is one of the worst misnomers you could think of seeing they don’t live in trees (although they do climb) and they aren’t shrews.
They are probably the most common of garden animals here in Malaysia, and yet in the national language they are described with the same word as “squirrel”, a family they don’t belong to and are not related to.