Soaring Black Kites

One of Prof. Ewans. His camera is better than mine!

Went on a day trip to Kamakura with the family last weekend. For those of you who've never heard of the place, Kamakura is a cultural center of Japan and was at one time the capital of the Tokyo shogunate. It has a lot of temples and a very large Buddha as well as being blessed with a large amount of nature. It's a beautiful area and I would move there tomorrow if it wasn't one of the most expensive places to live in Japan!

It is also right on the sea and the bay has several beaches frequented by surfers, beachcombers and in summer the Tokyo crowds. It was warm so we spent a couple of hours there to assist Prof. Ewan in his quest for shells, in which he was very successful. We also had lunch on the beach during which we noticed an increasing number of 'tobi' (black kites) circling and soaring over our heads. These are fairly big raptors and they seem to have evicted the seagulls as there were none around. I was getting a little uneasy as they were slowly coming lower and closing in, obviously with their eyes on our food. It's one thing throwing scraps to pigeons, quite another having one of these dive at you, so I was relieved to finish eating and get everything packed away. I then settled down with the video and got some fairly good footage of them fighting and playing in the sky. (see video at end) I packed the camera away and put all the picnic stuff, towels on top in my bag. It was then that 'Sod's Law' came into play. A man was throwing a stick for his dog when suddenly one of the kites swooped down and plucked it from the snapping jaws of the shocked canine. It didn't stop there. For about a minute three of the kites passed the meter long stick to each other, either tossing it through the air or literally passing it between each others talons. One turning upside down to grab it from another. During this time I was open mouthed searching blindly for the video camera, tossing out everything I'd carefully packed in an increasing frenzy, much to my wife's disgust! I found it just as the kites dropped the stick and flew away........ dreams of a YouTube hit receding into the sunset :(

Ring of Fire Eclipse

Not quite relating to the 'animal' theme of this blog, but certainly falling into the area of nature's wonders, we enjoyed the rare spectacle of an eclipse over Tokyo a couple of days ago. I skipped work for the morning to watch the the event at Professor Ewan's school, enjoying the 'ring of fire' type eclipse almost as much as watching the elementary students run around like demented lemurs as the sky got darker.

And talking of lemurs, the ring tail variety at the famous Ueno Zoo in Tokyo apparently went into a frenzy as the sky got darker, jumping around and displaying the kind of behavior that is normal for them during nighttime. Certainly reveals our primate roots if you compare lemurs to 10 year olds ;)

It's quite probable that a lot of other wildlife in Japan displayed unusual behavior as well during the eclipse. However, I'm sure that this would have escaped notice as practically the entire population of Japan were looking at the heavens, or of course their home grown lemurs!

Stink Bugs!

Watch out for that spray!

If you read my last post you'll find that I had no idea what kind of beetle I'd found. Well, today I got a surprise. Along with the type pictured here, they belong to a group called 'stink bugs' and they are actually classified as pests! Apparently, they can do a lot of damage to crops like soy and others and farmers spend a lot of time and effort to eliminate them. The thing that most surprised me though is that when scared, they spray out a smelly liquid. Considering I spent some time handling the bug in the previous post and didn't get sprayed, I guess I'm lucky! Either that or the beetle I picked up was a dud bug ; )

Mystery Beetle

 Don't have a clue what this beetle is. Found several of them in a small area of a bamboo forest I was walking through with Professor Ewan near our home in Japan. We took a lot of photos and spent some time after we came back looking through one of his bug books without any success. It was about the size of a fingernail, green and cream color and didn't fly away despite getting a lot of prodding and handling. We came back the next day for another look but they'd all disappeared so if anybody out there has any idea what it is, please add a comment to this. My thanks in advance. Until then this is the 'mystery beetle'  :)

Tentomushi

Got very warm this week for a short time with temperatures reaching 26~27℃ in some parts of Japan. Didn't last long but a foretaste of summer. Everything seemed to wake up with a bang. The trees were greener, flowers burst into bloom, in particular the yellow nanohana (rape?) and there were ladybirds (tentomushi) everywhere.

We get them in all kinds of colors here. The usual red with black spots, a lot of the black with red spot type and on rare occasions the yellow with black spot variety. This one I found raiding a poppy for pollen. Not very noticeable until I took a macro shot and saw the yellow powder covering its back.