I am Here to Wonder

This time I went at sunset because my friend came over and we didn't know what else to do. July is almost ending so the raptors that I've been desperately trying to photograph are quite done with their nesting and public appearances. The visitors and passage migrants have long moved on except a very tardy few; I've been seeing a sizeable number of pacific swifts lately but unexpectedly far from the beach. They are too quick for my camera, which is just an excuse for me being too lazy to try harder, which is also a pity because those swifts are tagged as 'uncommon' here and they'll likely be on their way in a couple of weeks. Anyway, mostly only the lonely natives are left. This tropical concrete island seems bent on offering me sorry scenes just as I prepare to move into a university that disgusts me (NUS). But I have no choice and neither do the beautiful and savage migratory birds. But as John Muir said, 'Nature is ever at work... allowing no res...

Because I miss the birds in Alaska and because I have not recovered from jet lag and don't want to, I headed out to the seaside at Pasir Ris Park at sunrise to look at the birds. I got some stares at my binoculars and telephoto because normal people don't do this stuff here. I had to look up all these on Nature Society's Birds of Singapore app because I don't usually do this stuff either. I wish the app would say more about what the bird does and where it is in the food chain and the tree of life, etc, though, instead of just giving names. Feynman was my childhood idol and what he said in a BBC Horizon interview has stuck with me:

On a particularly clear night some time last year, I discovered that the stars seen from Pasir Ris were surprisingly bright for a heavily light-polluted city like Singapore. So some time in May on a new moon, I got out my flimsy tripod that I had received for free (and which died in Wales by freezing) and put my camera on it. This was my second time shooting stars, after trying it out in Taiwan  and ending up with some terrible pictures. I've made some improvements since, I think. I used a 50 mm prime and I know that's not a good choice for astrophotography but the widest aperture on my kit lens was and still is too small: f/1.8, 15 s, ISO 800, 50 mm, Nikon D610 Two months later, I accidentally caught the milky way! But I didn't (and still don't) quite know how to make it pop out: f/3.5, 25 s, ISO 500, 24-85@24 mm, Nikon D610 In November, I decided to make a personal commemoration of Armistice Day which falls on 11 November. It's not celebrat...