It’s almost 4 months since I last wrote on this site, so I figured I should do an update of some sort. Back in the day I might have added 100 posts since my last entry. Despite my best intentions at the start of the year, other things have got in the way and I’ve had little time, and even less reason, to come up with ideas to share on here.

The fact that I haven’t been posting is mainly good news. I’ve taken on a regular job as an editor which, while not full time, is taking up the bulk of my week and leaving me with little appetite to write more in my spare time.

Meanwhile, we moved house in the summer and it turns out I have an almost endless stream of distractions from my window. Here are some of the things which have kept me away from updating this blog. Every photo is taken from our windows or from the back garden.

The view is pretty good at any time,:

It’s particularly impressive at sunset…

and at sunrise, when the fields are sometimes covered by a light blanket of low mist.

Harvest time saw the farmer in the field late into the night.

Sometimes there are aerial distractions (the odd balloon lands at Grafham Water, just beyond the field).

And there are many planes. This is one of the few travelling slow enough for me to snap – I didn’t manage to catch the Vulcan bomber which flew overhead on its final public flight, or the fighter jets which occasionally pass within several hundred feet of the house.

But most of the aerial activity comes from the many birds who keep us entertained. For several weeks in the summer we had hundreds of swallows like this fellow hanging around near the house:

On most days a kestrel sits on the telephone lines, ready to swoop for its prey in the field…

.. although last week he was chased off in a scrap with a magpie:

Our favourites are the woodpeckers, which enjoy doing what they do on the telegraph pole:

We have been encouraging the blue tits and great tits to feel at home too:

And the night skies are fabulous. We had a great view of the Supermoon and the eclipse…

and we MAY have spotted the aurora borealis last night:

Given these distractions, on top of a ‘proper job’, it’s no surprise that the blog has fallen by the wayside. Perhaps the long winter nights will give me more time to update this site. But with the prospect of seeing owls, hedgehogs and who knows what else, I won’t make any promises.

19.10.15 Update: the Vulcan bomber flew past again, less than a week after publishing this post. I was prepared this time round.

Wither the blog… is a post from: 501 Places

Puffins, Farne Islands, Northumberland

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Neither of us have ever been particularly excited by bird watching, apart from the thrill of a rare and fleeting blue flash of a kingfisher on a walk in the country. And yet our travels in the first half of 2014 have been almost exclusively dominated by birds.

Our first encounters came in January, when a trio of kingfishers decided to pose for the cameras in St Albans’ Verulamium Park. For a couple of months they were happy to fish in full view of an almost-constant crowd, as word got out that these normally shy birds were quite happy to catch their food within a few metres of the big lenses that snapped them.

We travelled to Japan in February to follow the winter festivals in Hokkaido, but while there we set off in an ice-breaker to find Steller’s Sea Eagles and White-Tailed Eagles on the drift ice in the Sea of Okhotsk. We also headed inland to see Japan’s famous cranes as they performed their elaborate courtship rituals on the snowy plains.

When a commission came up to cover a local festival on England’s north east coast, we headed up to Northumberland and arrived in time to see the puffins in great numbers on the islands just off the coast. By now the chunky 500mm lens in which Sam had invested at the start of the year was already paying for itself, and it travelled with us again to the Faroe Islands as we encountered yet more sea birds. I don’t think I’d ever tire of watching puffins in flight and consider myself extremely fortunate to have seen so many of them in the last few weeks.

Anyhow, in the full expectation that we’ve seen all the unusual birds we’re going to see in 2014, here are a few of our favourite photos from this year’s travels. All photos are by Sameena Jarosz.

White-tailed eagle, Sea of Okhotsk, Japan

Ural Owl, Tsurui, Japan

Oystercatcher, Streymoy, Faroe Islands

Steller’s sea eagles interrogating a raven – Sea of Okhotsk, Japan

Cranes, Tsurui, Japan

Shag, Farne Islands, Northumberland

Kingfisher, St Albans

Kingfisher, St Albans

Puffin, Farne Islands, Northumberland

Puffin, Farne Islands, Northumberland

Puffin, Farne Islands, Northumberland

Kittiwake with chicks, Mykines, Faroe Islands

Puffin, Mykines, Faroe Islands

2014 – A Year of Birds is a post from: 501 Places

It’s been a few months since we visited Japan to experience the winter festivals, but I thought I’d share a few of our photos from our time on Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island. We spent a week in the main city of Sapporo, where the annual festival attracts around 2 million people. We then headed north to the drift ice on the Sea of Okhotsk, visiting more festivals along the way.

What struck us, apart from the bitter cold, was the way in which the festivals involved a lot more than merely staring at ice and snow sculptures, however impressive they were. At each site there was something to do that inevitably had you covered in snow, whether it was throwing yourself down a giant slide or getting towed by a snowmobile in an inflatable raft.

A winter trip to see the Japanese winter festivals had long been on my wish list and the experience didn’t disappoint. A word of advice to anyone heading out: pack plenty of layers and bring the best gloves you can lay your hands on. The temperatures can be brutal and there’s no point travelling all that way only to want to hide away in the warm comfort of your hotel.

Anyway, the photos:

Sapporo Snow Festival. A snow replica of the Mausoleum of Itmad-Ud-Daulah in Agra. Made of 2,250 tonnes of snow (around 450 5-tonne trucks) and using 3,800 volunteers

Transformers-themed light snow at the Asahikawa Winter Festival

Back to Sapporo and a snow version of the Sultan Abdul Samad Building in Kuala Lumpur

Guess who sponsored this ice sculpture. Corporate sponsors featured heavily in the Sapporo Snow Festival.

Snow train at the Otaru Snow Light Path Festival

Ice penguins in Asahikawa – it was minus 15C as we wandered around the festival site

Sapporo and the ice sculptures in Susukino, the city’s entertainment district

Otaru Snow Light Path Festival. Snow, light and a path.

Otaru and the frozen canal along which much of the action takes place

Food for sale in Otaru along the festival route

Watching the snow boarders jumping at the Sapporo Snow Festival

Sapporo Snow Festival and something for all ages

Sapporo Snow Festival and that’s me hurtling down the big snow slide (you can’t see my big grin on this one)

We were in Japan to research a set of commissioned articles (published in Spring 2014 issue of Journeys Magazine, National Geographic Traveller blog, Country by Country and TRVL iPad app). Many thanks to Inside Japan Tours for their valuable help along the way.

Japanese Winter Festivals – in photos is a post from: 501 Places

Steller’s sea eagle looking mean

Japan has several claims to fame as a travel destination, but relatively few people think of the country as a wildlife destination. Fewer still choose to brave the bone-chilling temperatures on the northern island of Hokkaido to see the birdlife which is drawn to this harsh winter climate.

Yet there we were, certainly not self-confessed birdwatchers, standing in temperatures below -10C and gazing at a succession of flying giants. Perhaps I’d be stretching the truth to say we were so impressed by the sight of these birds that we forgot about the chill. That said, when I think back to watching the sea eagles on the drift ice of the Sea of Okhotsk, my over-riding memory is of the majestic birds in flight and not of the many layers I’d piled on to see them.

So, here’s a gallery of Japanese winter birds from our trip to Hokkaido in February. The Steller’s Sea Eagles (the black and white birds with yellow beaks) and the white-tailed eagles (the eagle-shaped birds with white tails) were seen on an ice-breaker trip from Rausu on the Shiretoko Peninsula in the far north. We saw the cranes on the Tsurui marshes near Kushiro, and it was here that we also spotted the Ural owl.

All photos are by Sameena Jarosz.

White-tailed eagle

Cranes in flight

Ural Owl

Steller’s sea eagles interrogating a raven

Steller’s sea eagle coming in to land

Ice breakers on the drift ice in the Sea of Okhotsk

Two cranes on the Tsurui marshes

Cranes at Kushiro

Cranes at sunrise

Cranes singing

We were not alone

We were in Japan to research a set of commissioned articles (published in Spring 2014 issue of Journeys Magazine and TRVL iPad app). Many thanks to Inside Japan Tours for their valuable help along the way.

Sea eagles, Owls and Cranes – Japanese winter birds is a post from: 501 Places

When I posted my first set of photos of the St Albans kingfishers back in January, I assumed our good fortune in having these colourful birds frequenting our local park would be short-lived.  Here we are in mid-March and they’re still with us, visible most days along the River Ver as it runs alongside the lake in Verulamium Park. I’ve met photographers and birdwatchers who have come to St Albans from the other side of the country just to take what is an extremely rare opportunity of seeing kingfishers at such close quarters.

To emphasise just how easily these birds have been sighted recently, the photos on this post were taken within a brief 10-minute period yesterday when I took a lunchtime walk to the park.

They are getting a little more camera-shy lately and with the river levels finally dropping they might soon retreat to their more typical habitat away from the crowds. So if you want to see our local kingfishers in action, now is a good time to head to St Albans and catch what is a very special sight.

St Albans kingfisher – more photos is a post from: 501 Places

We’re just back from a couple of very enjoyable weeks in Japan and I’ll post several stories from our trip on here in the coming weeks. For now I thought I’d quickly share some of the funny Japanese signs and strange English translations we encountered on our way around the country.

I should stress that the fact that signs are in English at all is a great help, especially in a country with so few English speakers and still a largely domestic tourist market. And the translations, funny as they are, do ensure that the signs get more attention than they would otherwise receive. Perhaps it’s all part of a very clever plan…

Vigorously a good sign

Cow cross a street – this street in particular

Nobody likes a crowed room

Google Translate at its finest?

I decided I probably shouldn’t have been there

No entry for big-footed people – again, I decided I shouldn’t have been there

No gender stereotyping here – none at all

Logic you can’t argue with

Danger – do not hold giant mobile phones near the railway tracks.

The whole of northern Japan was a Play with Snow area

Given the size of the icicles, the exclamation marks are fully justified

Collection of Japanese signs is a post from: 501 Places

We must have walked around Verulamium Park in St Albans hundreds of times, dodging the swans, geese and marauding hordes of small children as we make our way around the lake and along the banks of the River Ver. During that time, we’ve gone out of our way to try and spot kingfishers on our regular trips hiking through the countryside of southern England, always on the look-out for the tell-tale flash of electric blue flying low over a riverbank.

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that a pair of kingfishers had taken up residence in our local park, barely 5 minutes walk from our house. Having spotted them in the middle of the January (it turns out they’ve been here since Christmas), we’ve made several trips down to watch their antics along the river; they seem to attract a regular crowd. January has not been the sunniest of months and with a lack of decent light it’s been a challenge to take photos at the fast speeds required to get these lightning-quick hunters in any sort of clarity. The grainy nature of some of these photos is evidence of the difficulty in catching them at their best.

Hopefully they’ll make the park their long-term home and will provide us with plenty of opportunities to get sharper photos as the weather (eventually) improves.

Sitting pretty

I spy with my little eye… my next meal

Going in for the kill

Watching the crowds watching her

Flying back to the perch after another successful fishing trip

For some reason I think she’d look better with glasses on

Never talk with your mouth full

Too fast for me – Kingfisher in a blur

Update: More photos of the kingfishers can be seen in this second post from 11th March.

The Kingfishers of Verulamium Park in St Albans is a post from: 501 Places

There are times when I struggle to come up with something to post on here, but one thing I will never ever resort to is the desperate posting of cat photos. Oh, ok… just this once then. We stumbled across this handsome kitty rummaging through a bin in Hilo, Hawaii. He appeared to have been attracted by the golden arches on the bag, but was soon looking around for something better.

A cat gets his paws on junk food is a post from: 501 Places

When we returned to New York in Dec 2012 for our first visit in 8 years, one of the most welcome changes was the opening of the High Line, an all-too-short but pleasant stretch of urban parkland running above the rooftops of the Chelsea district of Manhattan.

While you might think the aim of a green space in the centre of a busy city is to provide an escape from the traffic, the developers of the New York High Line came up with what I think is a great idea – a calm place from which to enjoy the chaos below. On a warmer day I could have sat there for hours – much like the folks in the traffic below on some days, no doubt.

Watching traffic on the New York high line is a post from: 501 Places

Brighton Pavilion doesn’t fit in easily with its surroundings even at the best of times. How do you make a building that would look more at home in India than on the English south coast appear even more incongruous? Stick an ice-rink in front of it of course.

The strange sight of Brighton Pavilion ice rink is a post from: 501 Places