While on safari, it truly is amazing how close you can get to the animals while in your Land Cruiser. This lioness, with the rest of her pride, had obviously had a busy night hunting and were content to just hang out on the rocks as we passed by. Beautiful animals!
OK, so it’s not exactly the way Disney would have you see it – but it is the REAL circle of life. Nature’s cleaners were everywhere as we travelled through the parks in Tanzania.. The White Backed Vulture on a carcass:
The (constantly – albeit slowly – growing album is on my FOTOTHING
Sunset on the Serengeti
Sigh – it feels like so long ago already.
Well – this is it!!!
I leave tonight for London and then tomorrow from London to Nairobi. Then, from Nairobi to Arusha!!! The adventure begins! I’m excited and feel like a little kid on Christmas eve. Equipment has been checked and re-checked then checked again. We’re going to freakin’ AFRICA!
W00t!
I certainly will post if I get any internet connectivity.. and pictures – you BET!
Out at the Reifel Bird sanctuary, we came across Mrs Hummingbird on her nest. She has at least one little one there, but I couldn’t get close enough to shoot the little ‘un well. It looked like it had just hatched a couple of days ago.
Here’s the best shot I got of mom on the nest:
I think she’s a rufous.
Last night I sat down for a little killing and a lot of dying – Yes, it was going to be an evening of Halo 3. Good times, good friends and more than a little smacktalking. Just what I needed since I couldn’t go to Judo with the bad shoulder.
After dinner, I settled down on the couch, hit the “Play XBOX” on the universal remote and then it happened.
3 little segments of LED’s forming a beautiful arc, almost a Halo – ironically enough. My dear XBox 360 that has been with me for 3 years of hard core gaming and thousands of games of H3 had the “Red Ring of Death” 
I called MS and they have arranged a shipping label for me. The fix is all free! It wasn’t really a matter of “IF” I would get the red ring, but rather “when” Shoddy manufacturing to get a product out the door before Sony… It worked, but one heck of a warranty division now! Today it goes off to XBox heaven. Hopefully they’ll ship back one that doesn’t also make coasters out of my game discs.
A small piece of me died with Boxy, and I’m not sure what I’ll do with all that time on my hands now. Of course there’s always “REAL LIFE”, but I’ve worked hard to avoid that until now and am pretty sure I can do that during the next 3 or so weeks.
Alas, time to figure out what the bright burning ball in the sky is all about 
R.I.P. Boxy
On Sunday, our Scout Troop went for a hike up the Stawamus Chief in Squamish BC. The weather was perfect. At the beginning of the hike, the temperature was around 12C and it promised to be a sunny day for the whole hike. We had 8 scouts, 2 cubs, 5 parents, a friend and myself head up. We lost one parent early due to the extreme start (it’s a really steep uphill to start) but the rest of us all soldiered up and even the few that looked like they were going to die at the beginning came through with flying colours! The peak elevation is 620m so the elevation gain is almost 600m. What an incredible view!!!
We hung up at the top of the mountain for about 1 hour and then hiked down the “east trail” via the gully and it was a fun technical root hop. Lots of little scrapes and scratches to help the kids remember the hike! A great start to the warm weather!
For all the pictures, head over to:
http://www.slacker.ca/brian/webpics/showpix.aspx?20090426Chief
Enjoy the view!
With spring here, it won’t be long before the Pine Siskins move back down south (it’s about time – they are eating me out of house and home). I only see the odd Oregon Junco around now too. We’ve had a couple of new visitors to the feeder this past week – a goldfinch and a female hair woodpecker No photos yet, but I’m sure I’ll get them at SOME point. The bushtits have become more frequent visitors and tend to only show up in pairs now… It’s that time of year of course It’s nice to see the buds out on the trees, but it does mean that shooting the birds among the leaves will be quite a challenge.
I finally managed to snag a shot of a chestnut backed chickadee while he waited to jump on the feeder amongst the Pine Siskins as well a Pine Siskin that was the loser of the batter for feeder space. Here they are:
Chestnut backed Chickadee:
Pine Siskin:
Shot with the Canon 50D, and 100-400L at 400mm. Exif is available on the large photos linked to by clicking on the ones above.
Is everybody going crazy?
Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what’s going on?
Tell me what’s going on?
If you open your eyes
You’ll see that something is wrong
Simple Plan – 2004
1. 
2. 
3. 
They are mesmerizing to watch floating!
Sorry Folks, I’ve been out of blogging action for a bit. Last Monday I started feeling like a train hit me and the flu that took a hold of me didn’t really let go until Saturday. It was a rough ride, but I’m back and better.
Just before feeling like someone had used me for an Olympic class Uke, I managed to finish processing my pictures from the Steveston Judo Tournament held on February 21, 2009. The tournament is a senior only tournament and as such moves along a bit faster than the ones that include juniors and juveniles. It started around 1000 and ended quite nicely around 1630. There was a small contingent of Japanese competitors, but they fought no less fiercely than had there been 20 of them. There was some great Judo to see and I managed to catch some good action!
The complete Galleries can be seen in two parts:
Steveston Judo Tournament Part 1
Steveston Judo Tournament Part 2
(If you visit the links, please check out the Google ads for him… he’s giving me the space and bandwidth free – THANKS!)
The photos were shot with the Canon 50D using the 70-200 2.8IS lens. ISO varied up to 3200 at times. The EXIF is still embedded in the large photos so that you can see the tech stats. I shot both JPG and RAW and tried processing the RAW shots, but couldn’t get as good a shot as the camera had at JPG, so I took the JPGs and ran them through lightroom to “punch them up” a bit and was really happy with the result.
A GREAT day of Judo and Judo photography.
I took a day off yesterday… Wow it was nice to go out to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary when there aren’t hundreds of CARS (never mind people).
I got out there around 0945 and there were only 8 cars in the lot. It was quiet. Perfect. I came across the night herons right near the entrance as usual. There was a juvenile nice and close and he had his eyes open… a great photo op.
Loons and cormorants were busy fishing (successfully) and the birds were almost loud – there were so many of them chirping! There were many Northern Pintails, Northern Shovellers and American Widgeons as well as the usual plethora of Mallards.
Highlights of the visit included my first GOOD raptor in flight, my first GOOD Northern Flicker, my ONLY photos of an American Bittern, and being able to hang with 5 sandhill cranes!
I was there for 6 hours and easily could have spent longer if not for my desire to beat the rush hour traffic.
Here are a couple of shots from the day:
Northern Harrier on the hunt: 
American Bittern also hunting (for fish): 
After his catch (you can see the bulge in his throat): 
All these shots were with the Canon 50D and Canon 100-400mm lens @ 400mm.
For full data, view the fullsize image and read its EXIF.
I found myself on Friday looking for more images to make “OOB” or Out of Bounds. Some just seem to be more suited to the idea than others.
I did, finally, find this one. It has a nice double feeling… With the OOB Scouts looking for their way (perhaps back in bounds?):
My latest fun:
Using Serrator’s Excellent OOB tutorial, after the Jay previously, I hacked up Mrs Downy Woodpecker: 
Better than my first try… This is sort of addictive 
Using Serrator’s Excellent OOB tutorial, I came up with this guy: 
That was my first try… I’ve got to find things that aren’t so fuzzy, I think.
Hmm… I just realized that things are getting a bit desperate if I’m writing about an “exciting morning at the feeder”. LOL!
Anyway…
I was about to head of to work this morning and looked out at the feeder as usual to see who was visiting. Imagine my surprise to see both Mr. and Mrs. Downy woodpecker feeding from the feeder. Also, there were these little grey birds (smaller than chickadee, with longer tails) that were mobbing my suet feeder. I didn’t know what they were…
“I’ve got to get a quick shot before I head off to work”, I thought to myself.
I zipped upstairs and grabbed the camera, snapped on the 100-400 and zipped back down. My Downies had gone and so had the little grey birds.. all that was left was a finch, and he bolted once he saw me at the door.
I went out to the balcony to see if the woodpeckers had stopped in the fir (that would be a good shot too!). No luck. As I was standing there, about 4 feet from the feeder, I heard the distinct sound of claws landing and grabbing metal. I knew a bird had landed very close by. I looked around the feeder and as I circled, I found this little Downy. I couldn’t believe my luck! I picked up the camera to shoot and then realized that the lens won’t focus at 4 feet – you need 6.. Arghh.. TOO close – what a great problem to have! I backed out to where the lens would FINALLY give me confirmation of focus and started snapping away. Drat – 1600ISO was still too dark. 2500 seemed to give me enough light to shoot. She held so still. I was able to walk around and try shooting from different angles. She was a VERY patient model
“Maybe I can get her to eat peanuts from my hand!”, was my next thought.
I ran in and grabbed a couple of peanuts and held them out to her. I could reach my hand to within 6 inches her! She didn’t fly away. Alas, she also didn’t want my peanuts. I went back inside and decided to get the 70-200 because I was sure I could get some great pics at F2.8. Upon my return, she had flown off, and all I could see around was a male Downy off in the maple nearby. She obviously decided to move on to a more “professional” photographer. Sigh – story of my life
My chirping and “Downy Woodpecker calling” seemed to have attracted a Steller’s Jay. They LOVE the peanuts! They are pretty skittish though and don’t particularly like being shot. I did manage to get a nice shot of him/her as it was on the fir tree eyeing me over to determine how much of a threat I was, and was the threat worth it to get the 2 peanuts on the balcony railing.
Here’s the Steller’s Jay: 
An interesting morning – I’d STILL like to figure out what the little grey jobbies were… Oh well, that’ll be another day, I’m sure they’ll be back!
Mrs D and I went for a nice walk on Sunday out to the Colony Farm Regional Park in Coquitlam. The area is wide open grassy flatlands, and in the winter it’s pretty bleak… There was still ice on the water in many of the ditches, which I think meant that the ducks weren’t as likely to be hanging out.
We heard a few Chickadees but didn’t really see much sign of life as we walked the first while.
There were a few Great Blue Herons stalking the puddles in the fields (not many fish there for them) and some buffleheads, goldeneyes, grebes, mallard and widgeons in the ditches and the small pond. They didn’t exactly hang out in particularly easy to shoot areas but we did get some good shots. Mrs D was using the 100-400, and I was shooting with the 70-200. I really missed the extra reach Perhaps we’ll have to pick up a 2x converter for the 70-200 so that that extra reach is attainable for both of us.
Near the end of the walk, the light was getting darker and the hawks started to come out to hunt.
We got a couple of decent hawk shots. I think they are a Northern Harrier Cooper’s Hawk Adult and Juvenile Cooper’s Hawk Red Tailed Hawk.. Your help in ID would be appreciated. Here they are:
Harrier:
(EDIT – Apparently this is a COOPER’S HAWK) 
RTH(Perhaps a Juvenile Northern Goshawk?): Juvenile Cooper’s Hawk
RTH(?) Juvenile Cooper’s Hawk in flight: 
We DID also see a Northern Harrier skimming the fields, looking for dinner: 
Thanks for visiting!
2 People were sentenced to execution in China for their part in the tainted milk scandal.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/01/22/melamine-china.html?ref=rss
Seems a bit harsh.
I’m glad I’m Canadian!
I got up at 0545 to make the trek out to the viewpoint for the shots. I didn’t know if I’d be disappointed….
Definitely NOT disappointed!
1) Lion’s Gate Bridge (this shot was on Wayne’s Weather Window!!) 
2) Vancouver under the fog at Sunrise 
More available at: My Photo Galleries
Enjoy!
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