I have just Become a Father of a Bouncing Baby Girl 6 Years Old

This is a wonderful announcement and the culmination of 18 months work, the little girl that i have been acting as father to for the last 6 years is now officially mine and the birth Certificates that now show me as the father cost all of 5 cents each, yes that is true 5 cents per legal document but the cost of the paperwork and preparing all documentation and social worker visits and lawyers fees sent a cheapskate like me into orbit, I originally had a lawyer who was probably crooked told me i had to get an audit completed by an auditor who would charge me 10% of my annual income, i didn't go with that one, to get a certificated letter of employment from the UK office I was working for, that letter had to be stamped by a notary and then go through the Costa Rican consulate, cost me $250, it was a never ending stream of people with their hands out, anyway it is all over now and she is mine, she doesn't really understand the concept yet as she has only ever known me and thinks the name change is pretty neat. We even got her a little rubber stamp with her new name to stamp her school books and that makes me feel proud, and now she is learning to read and write she can she can write her own name. Proud daddy!!!!

Those Sewage ponds are Full of surprises

I am signed up to receive bird sightings from Northern Australia, even though i am not working there anymore I find it quite interesting to see what is seen, here is a report in total as it is amusing and interesting

Lost Osprey??

Posted by: "bgilfedder" bgilfedder@yahoo.com.au bgilfedder
Sun Sep 28, 2008 12:40 am (PDT)

Alice Springs sewerage ponds revealed another rarity for Central
Australia today. An Osprey made several circuits at close range to our
group, even going down to the water claws extended. Fish there would be
almost as unusual as the Osprey. Good we had several people there to
verify the identification - Will Cormack, Rosalie Breen and Joan - , a
visitor to Alice.
In all 52 species seen in the vicinity, including Curlew Sandpiper and
Oriental Plover, Aust. Pratincole and 5 very new Black Swan cygnets.
Barb Gilfedder

some of you will never think sewage ponds are a draw.

News of Costa Rica

man it is raining here, some giant storms, my niece has just won a scholarship to Singapore of all places, it is with a british based school and she has to wear uniform for the first time in her life and at 17 she thinks she is a bit old for that but the old institutions never die in the old empire, she is so lucky, total yearly costs $55,000 but she pays nothing and even gets an allowance, lucky girl, I feel like joining her back there, school was such a hoot

Jetlag in Costa Rica

I am back in Costa Rica, this is probably a surprise for you all but I have quit the project in Australia. there were a few reasons why, mainly i didn't like the daily routine of it being a normal day job, short hours no overtime payments, no regular holidays, only 4 weeks a year, after all these years of project orientated work and having 6 months of holidays a year make you spoiled. Plus the work was slow and not exciting, so i have decided to go back to project work, but hopefully all based in the latin-american locality. I hate jetlag and as i am getting close to 50 the toll jetlag takes on me is getting worse and not easier.

So I am back in the land of cheap food, cheap beer and lots of rain, last night we got stuck in a rainstorm that was pounding down filling all the roads with just torrents of water, it was Ok for me as i had a 4 wheel drive and I was splashing all the other smaller cars with just a huge wave of water,




we saw one accident where a car had slid under the rear of a pick-up truck and a car had dropped into a large hole in the road that had been filled with water and it looked like it had torn off a front wheel, pretty standard for this part fo the world, the crack heads steal the man hole covers to sell for drug money so there are lots of holes in the roads,




it can be lethal for bicycle riders, this isnt a country for riding on the roads, only offroad in the countryside. I am now looking for a new house and perhaps a little farm in the country, still trying to decide, but while the worlds money markets are in turmoil I will hold off until the prices start falling here like the USA. I am going to try and get out and do some birding on the local mountain called Pico Blanco, a fantastic place and even though it is in the middle of the capitol city it is very quiet, for one you need a 4 wheel drive to get up there and it is hard walking once you get out to walk, but great for the birds.

Pine Creek Sewage Farm Holiday

I suppose most of my friends must think I am insane to think of going to a sewage farm settling pond just for a day out but if you have never seen the bird life that tends to accumulate around these isolated and usually very quiet areas then you have missed the point. Sewage ponds are not that stinky, but sometime they are and this last weekend we went to Pine Creek that is about 2 hours drive away from Darwin into the hinterlands of the Gold mining area, there is gold in them thar hills but most people barely make a living and we could see holes recently dug into the hillside around the refuse tip and I think not many people make a living out of it, it is that crazy thought that they may hit the rich seam. We went to the giant opencast mine that was closed in 1976, it was dug 250 meters deep, that is pretty deep and it had a history of opening and closing over the last 100 years, i think the only people who made money were the people selling the mining equipment.

Big Gold Pit



So we arrived into the town of pine creek and went directly to the sewage ponds, it had some very interesting birds there and a few new species for me, the red-kneed dotterel which is as it says has red knees. We then went on to Copperfield Dam, a very nice area again blighted by the gold mining fever that is hitting everyone here, new mines springing up all over the place, pouring Cyanide all over the place, isn't it quite unbelievable that such a toxic poison is being used in this industry and without much control. Anyway that Dam was a very nice relaxing place after the loud mouth canoers had left, they were loading up and shouting instructions to each other, I wouldn't have stayed if they were going to stay, but they left and Myself and my birding partner "Doc" had a great picnic of Gluten free sandwich and salad and fresh strawberries perfect for the late dry season hot weather,it has been around 37C everyday this last week, plus we managed to see the wild cockatiels that are local to this area, another new species for me,

Copperfield Dam



So after the picnic we went to the area of the central town and walked around the industrial open air museum, this place had all sorts of old mining equipment and even the old steam railway locomotive that was built in Manchester UK in 1877, it was all closed down when the big pit shut in 1976.

Industrial Musuem



we saw lots of lots of parrots all over the town as the trees that are in the area were all in flower giving the birds a nice nectar feed, the colours of the birds are quite amazing, Rainbow Lorikeet, just gives you an idea of the colours. We left quite early and decided to go to one more last place in Darwin just as the light was falling, to McMinns Lagoon, a large billabong in amongst some nice houses and it was teeming with birds. As it is late in the dry season the birds are now being concentrated into the remaining water holes and we saw many hundreds of the Magpie Geese and whiskered terns dipping into the water diving after the fish plus the little Pygmy Geese and a whole load of other things, but no Storks which i would have liked to have seen. But it was a magnificent end to the days traveling.

The Lilies of Mcminns Lagoon

Crazy Drunken Driving

This morning I had the misfortune to witness first hand the drunken activity of the local aboriginal community. It wasn't a pretty sight and I was really pissed off to the point of wanting to go and give someone a beating. I was rudely awakened by the constant honking of a cars horn, blaring out really loud directly by my bedroom in the apartment block. I got up all angry and shouting to myself as I am here alone and stomping round the apartment as I can't get enough sleep as it is without disturbances like this. When i got onto the balcony it was obvious that there was a drunken guy sitting in his car that had driven onto some spare ground at the side or our apartment complex and the car hd fallen over a small wall about 50cm tall, this had obviously thrown the driver forward onto the steering wheel and his head was propped against the horn, he must have been so drunk that the horn didn't wake him up, it was on constantly for 10 minutes. When it had stopped I realised that someone had arrived, when i got on the balcony again the police and fire service were there and pulling the drunken guy out of the seat and onto the floor, I wanted to shout"Give him a kicking" but they may have thought i was being a racist, but i hate all idiots. I wish he had driven into a power pole and killed himself like all the other drunken idiots on the rods in the Northern territories, that way he would have been prevented from waking me up, my sleep is more valuable than his miserable existance. Here endeth the lesson on drunk driving

Dont drink and drive



it looked similar to this

Rufous Owl in The Botanical Gardens

This weekend has been a busy one for my birding, on Saturday morning it was the local wader watch with the group giving interested locals classes on how to distinguish the different species from the mass of similar looking birds. I did tell you this town is all about the wide open spaces and nothing else. So I went to collect my local birding guide 'Doc', at her new apartment, top floor overlooking the sea and local mangroves, it was an amazing view and while we were sat there I managed to see two new species for me, two small species of finch type birds,

Chestnut Breasted Mannikin



We had a cup of tea and then went of to meet the rest of the birding group just up the road at the rocks, these are where the waders rest while it is high tide and while they are sat resting we can all get a good look at them, once you have some experienced birder tell you what to look for it is easier to identify, not that it is easy after that but a little easier, as the difference in some is the size of its bill and at 50 meters it still isn't easy, i managed to catch about another 7 new species there. But as we were leaving someone suggested we all go and look for the Rufous owl in the Botanical gardens which are nest door to my apartment. We drove down and in this weather the gardens are really fantastic, full of blooms and millions of birds that tend to hide when i go to look for them. there were three of us who arrived and we walked all around the rainforest and the lower forest and then finally the higher forest and saw nothing, some of the more common birds but no Rufous Owl. This is a large owl and a ruthless predator, it eats big animals, like possoms and other large birds, but we still didn't see it, while were looking around the top car park area another group of the birders arrived and part of there group was the Northern Territory Champion Birder, she has won the local 24 hours spotting competition several times, so she was marching along to the local roosting spot and looked up into the dense canopy squinted and announced that the owl was hiding in the leaves, "Right There", pointing skyward, we were looking and could see nothing but leaves, we all started scrambling through the bushes and from closer and directly under the tree could finally see a huge owl in the uppermost branches. It was huge and just had amazing eyes, it was looking at us as we looked at it. But I am still amazed at how she was able to see it without any effort, i believe that she is the reincarnation of God Vishnu, the God of Maintenance, she doesn't have to look for them she knows of their presence. She has an uncanny ability to just know where the birds are. She also knows all the calls of the local birds, this is not normal.

Rufous Owl



Sunday birding, today I went on a local short trip to east point, which is an old military base where the Japanese bombed the crap out of and destroyed everything, apart from the military installations. We were looking for a particular dove, the crazy multi-coloured psychedelic, Rose crowned Fruit Dove, nobody but Lord Buddha could have thought up a more ridiculous colour scheme, it is just a really paint pot explosion, We walked all the way around the beach head and explored the old gun emplacements and underground bunkers and overground bunkers, but as we went from one fruiting tree to another we found nothing but our typical common birds, we then went all the way back round the beach and into the forested section, we found a water bath for the birds to drink and hoped to find the bird there, but all we saw was all the honeyeaters splashing and bathing, if you have never seen this behaviour before it is hilarious, they splash down like kingfishers, then spend ages shaking themselves dry, very funny and very entertaining but we then heard the special bird we were hunting. we walked across some sections of forest and ended up on a path and we saw what we thought was the bird fly over the path into a tree, we stalked up to the tree and found this crazy coloured bird hiding from us, it was just an amazing sight, just colurs like you cannot believe, that was it, our day was made, I had seen the dove, so to celebrate we went to have fish and chips in the local chippie, what more could you want.

Rose-crowned Fruit -Dove

Has Anyone Ever Heard of Yma Sumac

I have been seeing this crazy ice-cream advert on TV, it shows some Inca tribes people worshiping a Female God who hold a giant ice-cream, yes very crazy stuff but the music with it is even crazier, There is this shrill operatic style voice doing the mambo, and growling and then Husky then shrill and it does everything and anything all to Mambo. I was intrigued enough to try and find out who was the singer. I attempted to do a search and funnily enough there were many sites that also had the same question, it appears that many people had the same idea about this crazy music and the answer was there. Her name was Yma Sumac, she used to perform around the 40's 50's, she lives in Las Angelas, she is 86 and she used to tour the world and made a couple of films, the music today is pretty cheesey stuff but she could sing in 5 Octaves and soprano, very high, but that type of music today is almost silly but I managed to listen to 7 songs and there are plenty of them on Youtube, it is just bizarre, i cannot think of any other expression of it. But you have to check out that woman, Yma Sumac

Darwin Festival Update

The swaying group are called "Strange Fruit", apparently they have been around for a while and there are plenty of clips of them on Youtube, this one is of the white globes. quite visually impressive and entertaining.
here is the Picture from the local paper, it shows the night time colours they had the white globes illuminated,