Shrikes and other stuff

There are 2 or 3 pairs of Bullheaded Shrike breeding nearby. These are pictures of a female only 2 or 3 minutes walk away. Very skittish and nervous and actually quite difficult to approach. Earlier in the week the weather was fine and sunny with lots of blue sky-ideal for snapping pictures of birds atop bushes.






The more boldly patterned males were much less accomodating and didn't pose for any nice pics.

The last few days have been cool and rainy. Not much of interest around my flat. A few Grey Wagtails are on the river, presumably this summer's immatures from further upstream. Oriental Great Reed Warblers are still singing and Red Cheeked Starlings are flying everywhere in small noisy groups. Last weekend I went to Yunokawa. The usual stuff was around including a family of Stonechats. Here's one of this year's fledglings.



And that's about it. I see Liverpool are buying loads more foreigners. No footie on TV now so I've been watching a few movies. On TV 'Planet of the Apes' (the recent remake) was a waste of 2 hours of my life (plus I found the fact one of the apes clearly fancied one of the humans just a little disturbing). 'Dog Soldiers' was better but got deleted off my hard drive immediately after watching. I don't need to see it again. I now have 'League of Gentlemen' seasons 2 and 3 to watch (I've never seen them).

Here's a picture to show how silly Japan can be. Bet you didn't know trashcans have an intelligent sense of humour.



Expats in Japan see this kind of random mangled English all the time. Nobody who makes or uses these products can actually understand English so any gibberish is ok. My personal fave is a savoury snack reveling in the name of 'homo sausage' which I found in a convenience store when I was living in Iwaki. Last week I saw a typical sour faced Japanese retiree walking down the street with a T-shirt boldly declaring 'I scored last night'. Dunno if he meant with a chick or he got a bag of weed. On the links to the right there's a site called 'engrish' which is full of this kind of stuff.