Posts by ChrisW
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Then the lower cloud arrived and lo, naked eye visibility, camera visibility. This about 10 mins after maximal eclipse, the sun crescent doing a lovely rotation around the moon from right to left.
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Capture: Two Tripods, One Night, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
to experience a weirdlight eclipse dappled carpet
Well I tried with poplar trees, but that high cloud too thick, the shadows too fuzzy, the sun too fuzzy to project through the pinholes. Had to make do with the sunbursts.
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Capture: Two Tripods, One Night, in reply to Nora Leggs,
I don’t think the birds even noticed this one
City birds keep different hours -
I headed inland, hoping to get out from under the edge of the cloud, but still the solid high cloud screened the sun. Good viewing though with solar-filtered mini-telescope of a sextant. Certainly the rural birds were loud in their evening calls preparing to settle, here at 10.27 am, a few minutes before maximum exclipse. -
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Stephen Judd,
I think you’re over reacting.
I think that's a bit rich coming from ...I think I detected a note of intentional irony.
But Russell labelled the original as "idle bigotry". Perhaps instead it was rather more threatening - not idling, but revving up, eagerly awaiting a green light?
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Speaker: Music: The Vinyl Frontier, in reply to Grant McDougall,
but I'm jamming with a drummer called Tim Player
You could discuss the connections between music collecting and books with him - he had a good second-hand bookshop in Gisborne for a few years, pity it and he's moved on.
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Capture: BOTY Potty., in reply to Islander,
Sounds impressive, thanks Islander - I'll keep my eyes and ears out for pari chest-thumping!
Here's another capture through the kitchen window, not this Spring but last April in that opposite season of mellow fruitfulness. Those silvereyes may be looking sweet and almost cooperative, but there was plenty of scrapping too! I call them figgin' silvereyes. But they're OK with me, I'm happy to share the figs.
All fig-eating birds seem to have a helpful behaviour, of focusing on one or a few at a time, eating each one thoroughly while leaving most other equally ripe ones untouched - in contrast to grapes etc where they'll take a peck or few out of as many as they please - and I've seen the same in Turkey with a different suite of bird species.
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Sorry, Islander - perhaps I needed a winking smiley. Indeed they're the very same paradise (shel-)ducks, linked through an apocryphal story of a visiting American who pointed out his new-found knowledge of these birds after mis-hearing a broad NZ rendering of 'paradise ducks' for a pair of them. It doesn't work so well on the page or screen.
But your "pari" for them where others might write 'parry' has potential for a mixed up pair. Last spring I did indeed see from this same seat what seemed to be a female paradise duck challenging another for pairing rights with a male who looked on with apparent indifference, leaving me wondering what the net result was.
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Capture: Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Maybe no flowers in your capture, but the grass has riz.
Spring in your dog, in the clear air through my kitchen window this morning, the new greens of Spring foliage alternating with the old evergreens. -
Facing the light to show off its fine feathers.
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White-faced heron in its nuptial plumage for spring - further up the dice duck's backdrop tree this morning, had to go outside for this one.
