drplokta

95 photos (out of over 2,500) from our South Africa trip are here.

Bandwidth is pretty limited in South Africa, so I can't upload all 2000+ photos taken so far to Flickr, but here are a few of the best, behind cut-tags. They're not all birds.

Yzerfontein beach -- this is where James & Simoné's wedding was, a bit further up the beach and out of town.
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James & Simoné with Simoné's family -- on the beach after the wedding.
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James and Simoné after the wedding
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The (upside-down) Moon, shining on the reception in the evening (check out the large version)
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Kite-surfer in Langebaan, where we were staying
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Kite in the air in Langebaan
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Tortoise in the West Coast National Park (which is between Yzerfontein and Langebaan)
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Very scary Yellow Canary in Geelbek restaurant in the West Coast National Park. You get half a dozen of these on your table stealing your food. This photo is not cropped at all -- it's the original framing. Look at the full-size version for the full horror.
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Southern Double-Collared Sunbird near the Geelbek restaurant
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Some of my photos from jamesb & Simoné's wedding are here.

In a controversial new development, a couple of these don't have any birds in them. ( But here they are, behind the cut. )

New species: Green Woodpecker, Song Thrush.

The song thrush is one I didn't score last year.

( Song thrush photo behind the cut. )

New species for 2008: Fox, Pied Wagtail.

New camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 with 18x optical zoom and less noise and processing artifacts.

New photos: ( Lots behind the cut. )

A piece on the BBC's website about an infants' school class of 20 pupils in Devon that turned out to be all boys, supposedly by random chance, got me calculating.

Assuming it was totally random, and equal numbers of girls and boys in the population, then the chance of a class of 20 boys or 20 girls would be the same, 1/2^20 or 1 in 1,048,576. But the numbers aren't quite equal, as the population in that age range has 51.2% boys and 48.8% girls. Not a big difference, you might think, but in fact a class of 20 boys is more than twice as likely as a class of 20 girls -- 1 in 647,000 and 1 in 1,719,000 respectively.

Jay, greenfinch, wren, dunnock, common gull, lesser black-backed gull, herring gull. That makes 35 this year so far.

( A few great spotted woodpecker photos behind the cut. )

At least, its volume is measured in cubic litres, according to the BBC (unless they fix it).

New species sighting for the year, seen from our balcony (by flickgc first): Daubenton's Bat (probably; looked a bit big for a pipistrelle). They're supposed to be hibernating for another two months at least.