This morning I walked over to the Hotel Pretentious to get few more  shots of the Victoria Crowned Pigeons. There’s a story here – I’ll try to keep it short, since there are a lot of pictures in this post and I want to get to them.

But first, A Pub-like Pronouncement:  I’d been corresponding with a Facebook friend who appeared, from her profile, to be an accomplished painter. There was a compete info page and lots of nice photos. Yesterday I got an email from “her” (not going to give the name, in case she got hacked and she’s for real) saying that she was stranded in London and urgently requested me to send her money . . . well, just read the email . . .

Hope you get this on time, sorry I didn’t inform you about my trip in United kingdom, I’m presently in Surrey and am having some difficulties here because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money and other valuable things were kept. presently i have limited access to internet, I will like you to assist me with a loan of £1,450 to sort-out my hotel bills and to get myself back home.

I have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I will appreciate whatever you can afford to assist me with, I’ll Refund the money back to you as soon as i return, let me know if you can be of any help.

I don’t have a phone where i can be reached.   Please let me know immediately.

Suspicious to say the least! There’s the fractured English, the peculiar amount, the urgent appeal, the sincere promise – all the hallmarks of a scam. In this case there was also the “lady in distress” for which I am a born sucker (ladies take note). “She” had previously contacted me via Facebook message asking me to get some more images of the Victoria Crowned Pigeon so that shes could paint them!  Fantastic!

I snooped around in Google and found that this is the “London Facebook Scam”. It seems that (if I have my facts right) hackers (criminals – it’s nearly synonymous now) set up fake Facebook sites to make “friends” (suckers!) and then use various means to defraud them of their hard earned cash. Well, I didn’t fall for that  one! All traces of this Facebook “friend” have now vanished, except  for the messages in my message folder which , curiously, now show no URL link at the bottom of Firefox and are not underlined.

So, that being announced, let’s get to The Birds! I’ll bet there are one or two which you may never have seen. This one, however is familiar to almost everybody:

It is, of course, the Sulfur-Crested Cockatoo (Cacatua  galerita),  considered vermin in Australia. I’ve had several as pets. I get them at the market when they are very young, sometimes still covered with tree sap from their nests. They bond strongly with humans and are incredible mimics. Walking around with your Cockatoo on your shoulder is common enough here. Over time, they gradually wander more and more until you never see them again. It’s a little sad, but if you’re going to keep wild birds as pets, it seems the most responsible way to do so.

You’ve seen the Sulfur-Crested here before in The Cocaltoo That Loathed Rush Limbaugh.

Well, you’ve seen this outrageous, world’s largest pigeon here before, so regular readers will recognise the Victoria Crowned Pigeon (Goura victoria): 

This one is pecking madly at a Star Fruit freshly fallen from the tree.

Here’s another fairly familiar bird, the Papuan Hornbill (Rhyticeros plicatus):

You’ve seen them here before in my post about the Balek Wildlife Sanctuary.

These are young individuals. The prominent horn on the upper beak is only now forming:

The eyes are startling.

This one is having a bad-hair day:

I haven’t had a good-hair day for a while.

I might be willing to place a small bet that you have never seen one of these:

It is a Pesquet’s Parrot (Psittrichas fulgidus),  sometimes known as the Vulturine Parrot.

It does present a rather menacing aspect. As I was shooting it, it moved toward me several times, trying to get it’s beak on my camera or my fingers, I’m not sure which:

I politely declined to allow that.

The image above may remind some long-time readers of of The Lorikeet From Hell in which I brutalised the Black-Capped Lorikeet (Lorius lory)  way back in September of 2008.

The resemblance is somewhat striking.

Okay, okay, I can hear you yawning from here. “Come on! Give me something I haven’t seen!”

Right! Never fear. IN YOUR FACE  – a Parrot Fight!

The pesky male Eclectus Parrot (Eclectus roratus)  simply would not allow the giant, vulture-like black and red terror bird keep that tasty treat. It kept hounding the larger bird until it was worn down. It was a David and Goliath sort of thing.

If you find anything more interesting on the web today, please pass it along to me.

I’m bored. That usually means something dangerous is in the works.

Yesterday afternoon, when we left work we went over to the docks to pick up our friend, Jo Noble. She is the Steward on a giant super-yacht which is temporarily stuck in Madang awaiting repairs. We had her over for dinner and a “movie night”. Such is what passes for entertainment in Madang. We like it. Although I miss the big city attractions of restaurants, movie theaters, museums, clubs and the like, the simple pleasures of visiting with friends in our homes keeps us more in tune with each other. Relationships are closer, stronger, less concerning events and venues and more about the real things in life.

Anyway, on the way around coronation drive we all simultaneously noticed that there was a remarkable scene before us. I had to stop the car to record the moment. In nearly thirty years of driving past this spot, I’ve never seen such an odd juxtaposition of hues. Honestly, I did not fiddle with this. Other than balancing the tones so that is shows up on the black background it’s pretty much the way it appeared to us:First, the sun was over my right shoulder low in the sky, taking on the winelight colour of the tropical afternoon. The rest of the sky behind me was intense blue, making the storm clouds over the Finisterre Mountains  reflect that blueness back at us. There was also a large amount of fresh, cloudy water from the Gol Gol River  over Astrolabe Bay.  The sunlight was shining intensely there, but not directly on the storm clouds. This gave the water an aqua tint that contrasted strongly with the clouds and turned upside down the normal bright-sky, dark-water combination which we expect.

All of that fiddle-faddle of explaining it sounds stupid to me now. It dropped our jaws. No need to explain it.

This morning’s sunrise was extravagant:As I was moping around the garden for lens fodder, I was amused by the tiny sheep moving around in a little mob in the sky. I took a picture of them.

A few minutes later I heard the wimpy whine of one of Air Niugini’s Fokker F-100 jet-powered gooney-birds coming in over the  main wharf on final approach:I was a pilot for a long time, but I never got used to that term. It always gave me a vague sensation that I was nudging too close to a prediction.

PILOT: Uhhhh Tower, Gold Three-Four on final approach to One-Two.

TOWER: Confirm that, Gold Three-Four on final approach to One-Two.

PILOT: Uhhhh roger tower, this is my final approach . . . ever.

TOWER: Uhhhh Gold Three-Four, say again last.

PILOT: Tower, you got wax in your ears? I said this is my  final approach. I don’t plan on doing any others after this one.

TOWER: Uhhhh . . . mmmmm . .  Gold Three-Four, is it your intention to land?

PILOT: Uhhhh . . . Tower, Gold Three-Four . . . I haven’t decided yet, I’m just approaching for now. But this is the last time.

Well, you get the drift.

As I panned madly, blurring the trees below to keep the sharp eye of the lens on the aircraft, I was still wondering:As it turned out, it did land. This time. Every time I get on an airplane, I think to myself, “What? Are you meshuga?”

On to simpler, less transcendental things . . . like grasshoppers:This was my morning grasshopper. I sometimes don’t even bother to photograph them; it so often leads to a pointless chase around the garden. This one, however seemed to want, need to be imaged. It may have low self-esteem issues.

This is my poor, poor willow tree which simply won’t grow. I’ve been feeding it, mulching it, trimming back dead whips, talking to it in gentle tones of encouragement and tenderly stroking its leaves for three years now. It’s the only willow tree that I’ve ever seen in Papua New Guinea and I have no idea where Juli, our haus meri  got it:

I love willow trees. I had one in my back yard as a child. It was my place of escape. I escaped a lot. I built a house in it. I would have preferred to live there, if I were allowed. I would also like to have had a bicycle, if it were allowed. Too dangerous!  No wonder I’m now a mad man. Poor me.

Jesus wept. So do willows.

Still toppling over occasionally because my inner ears have been stuffed with fast-setting concrete, and wheezing like a steam-powered thresher, I went today with my partner, Eunie, for my first job interview since the ’60s. I’d say that my new boss was already predisposed to give me a go, so it was all very cordial and agreeable. I’m now, probationally at least, the (some kind of) Editor of Niugini Blue  and Our Way  magazines. Those outside PNG won’t recognise these titles, but here “in country” they are top-drawer reading material.

I’ve got until the end of the year to prove myself a wunderkind  who will be indispensable and therefore worthy of further consideration. It’s a great opportunity and it helps to replace some of the money that we’ve lost from churches who, for one reason or another, have decided that we’re no longer suitable candidates for financial support. My new employer understands that I will keep my position (mostly hiding in the IT dungeon) at PBT as well as taking on the editorship of the two magazines. I’m going to be a very busy boy, indeed. Stay tuned.

When I got home, I collapsed in a deep stupor for a few hours. I then awoke at about 15:30 and was horrified that I’d not yet written anything to satisfy my compulsion to glorify myself on your computer screen daily. Having no other ideas, I fell back on my favourite disguise – MadDog the Artist.

My three great (okay, only ) ambitions in life were to be (1) an actor, (2) a musician and/or (3) an artist. I’ve failed miserably at all of them, not that it bothers me much. As for the acting, I simply never got a break. I know I could be a movie star, if I could just manage to get discovered. As for two and three, I’m simply too bone lazy to practice enough to gain the skills. I peck at the guitar and keyboard and I sketch stuff which is immediately fed to the office shredder. In short, I’m a dilettante.

So, I ran through my Big Pile of Images looking for pixels to massage. Being temporarily more brain damaged than usual, I hope your expectations of me will not be too high.

This one I call Falling Angels:

You’ve seen it here before is a less jazzy form.

Here’s a couple of different treatments of everybody’s favourite fish, Nemo the Clown Anemonefish, or as he is known to his intimate friends, Amphiprion percula:

The one above has simply been brutally massaged by Noise Ninja Pro, which if nudged in the right direction, can produce some nice artsy effects.

Here I gave the same image a severe beating with the Photoshop Watercolour filter. The effects probably won’t be too noticeable at the thumbnail resolution, so indulge me by clicking to enlarge:

This has always been one of my favourite images. I snapped it many years ago with my first underwater camera, a giant film rig which nearly drowned me on several occasions.

Warming to my work at hand, I found another of my favourites, a very pretty Spincheek Anemonefish known as Premnas biaculeatus  to fellow fish freaks:

I gave it a thorough thrashing with the Photoshop Poster Edges filter.

Here’s another Spinecheek which I smoothed and polished with Noise Ninja Pro:

And here is the same image treated with the Poster Edges filter:I like the “cartoon” effect of the Poster Edges filter.

Here’s another one Poster Edged – three pretty yellow Anthea of some kind. I think that this was my best effort of the couple of hours I spent waiting to fall unconscious once again:

The more I look at that one, the better I like it. I remember being affected the same way by Elke Sommer.

Well, I think I have a couple of minutes to go before I fall out of my chair. Incidentally, I’m posting this from my house, so my war on TELIKOM must be going well while I convalesce. It’s another happy little Clown Anemonefish, Nemo’s brother-in-law, Fredrick:

Freddy also got the Photoshop Watercolour treatment. It seems to agree with him.

And now, forgive me while I pass out.

Birthdays are terrific excuses for a party up at Blueblood. In fact, we need no excuse at all. Since there are now facilities for sleeping over, Eunie and I went up on Saturday afternoon for a small party to celebrate Karen Simmons birthday. Since I am still sick as a dog and didn’t feel much like partying hard, I fooled around with my Canon G11 camera to see how far I could stretch it. It proved to be fairly flexible.

For instance, here’s a passable shot taken of the party makers around the picnic table by candle light only:

I think that I shot this at ISO 1600 and it took a 1/4 second exposure. I had to give the “hold still” warning, but the shot did turn out nicely. I should mention that I had the camera mounted on a tripod, as with all of the rest of these shots. I like the shot. It has just the right mood and the lighting is very realistic. Not bad for a camera that sells for a little over US$400.

This shot might fool you, at first. It looks like a poor-quality image from a cell phone. However, if you consider that it was exposed only by the light of a full moon shining through clouds, it takes on a whole new aspect:

I shot it from the balcony overhanging the first floor (second floor for Yanks – the ground floor is called the ground floor by Australians – the next one up is the first floor). Believe it or not, this image was taken at ISO 80 for fifteen seconds. Therefore, it had practically no noise and was more or less perfect as it came from the camera. The long exposure accounts for the glassy water.

Here’s another one take from the beach level: You can clearly see Kar Kar Island  in the distance:

Since the giant earthquake in Chile was on everybody’s mind and we had no idea when or if a giant tsunami would engulf us, the party had a bit of a fatalistic flavour to it. “Wonder when it will get here?” “How big do you reckon it might be?” were popular topics of conversation.

Here is a similar shot taken after we lit the bonfire. You can see the firelight illuminating the sterns of Lying Dog  and Sanguma,  which were, here at about midnight, already beached by the low tide:

I noted a crazy thing which I had never even considered as I was shooting these long exposures. The night sky is not  black as it appears to our eyes. It is just as blue as it is in the day time, but it is very, very dark, so our eyes can’t see it. Below a certain light level, everything is just shades of grey to our eyes, even though colour still remains in the scene. It’s because our colour light receptors drop out of the data stream once the light level is low enough. They just don’t respond.

This shot is amusing, but I reckoned that I could do better:

Though the sparks are interesting (I had Rich Jones poking the fire to make more), the flames were badly overexposed and I lost all the detail.

This one turned out much better:

Moving away from the fire improved the shot. It’s a long exposure, so the flames are blurry, but the image is much more pleasing;

I couldn’t end this without showing you this lovely shot of Jenn Miller taken only by moonlight and the flames of the dwindling bonfire:

It’s not perfect, because it’s very difficult to hold perfectly still for four seconds, but it clicks for me. I’m very happy with it.

The tsunami never arrived. This is just as well, as we had no plans to go anywhere.

I’ve seen a lot of stuff percolating on the web recently about the “amazing” Victoria Crowned Pigeon. Well, I’m here to tell you today, friends and neighbors, that that are absolutely delicious. However, before we get into recipes, let’s have a look at this morning’s rapturous sunrise:No, I wasn’t “taken up” or anything like that, but I do think the sky may have rolled back a little at the corners. Better be safe than sorry.

So, setting off to fulfil a promise to some Facebook friends to unveil the secrets of the aforementioned pigeon, which, by the way is the largest pigeon on this planet (frankly, I’ve seen larger on other planets – I’m only visiting here, you see), I walked over to a rather large and pretentious hotel where an impressive flock of our huge, magnificent flying rats abide. As luck would have it, some enormously fat dignitaries were arriving for some sort of mighty pow-wow and a small, timid group of local Sing Sing performers had gathered to present their modest contribution to the pompous festivities:One of them was about to offer me a pillowcase full of Mary Jane for K20 when I reckoned that I’d had enough of the war paint and decided to begin my stalk for the rare Goura victoria.

I didn’t have to stalk far. They are, after all, merely chicken-sized pigeons. Yeah, they’re pretty, but they’re still just pigeons. If you get enough of them together in one place and don’t overly molest them, they’ll multiply until you can’t swing a dead cat without knocking the top-knot off of one of these haughty buzzards:The Tok Pisin  name for these fat show-offs is guria,  which, oddly enough, is the same word for earthquake. For a long time I thought that the coincidental monikers was because of the deep booming noise that the males make when giving the come-on to their lady friends. As it turns out, when I looked up the taxonomic name, the genus is, of course, Goura,  which explains the sameness of the words. Or does it? I asked three local people today why they call the pigeon the same thing that they call the earthquake. The all looked at me as if I were stupid, something that you get used to very quickly here. “Because they make that earthquake sound when they are . . . you know . . . laikim meri.”  (That’s a polite way of saying, well . . . you know.) So, the mystery remains. [See UPDATE at the bottom of the post.]

Anyway, my first contact with a G. victoria  was at the National Zoo in Washington DC. Our son, Hans, of tender years, proclaimed it the most magnificent of God’s critters. We were inclined to agree. The next time that we came in contact with G. Victoria  was in a dugout canoe motoring up the Clay River  in the Sepik area. On that occasion, we stopped briefly at the river side where the canoe driver’s wife, with little ceremony, wrung the neck of a G. victoria  which she had caught in a snare. Hans was stricken. We had to remind him that to our guests, the wondefulest pigeon is just a hunk of meat.

Here’s a Sharp Dressed Man  (ZZ Top is playing now) jazzing it up in hopes of getting lucky:She didn’t look very interested. I didn’t stick around to watch.

In case you think we’re running short of Victoria Crowned Pigeons, I snapped this shot to show you a small platoon of them out foraging for the local farmers’ crops:Their apetites are voracious. They’ll eat fruit, berries, nuts, flying fox feces (a bit like jam, actually), small dogs and pretty much anything including rocks.

Oh, I nearly forgot the recipe. Here’s my favourite: (Sorry about the non-metric measurements. I was educated, if that’s what you could call it, where “The Metric System” is considered a despised foreign influence.)

UPDATE: Facebook friend Justin Friend (funny coincidence, that) just left me a message saying:

My understanding of the name Guria pigeon, is based on the way they almost shiver and all their feathers shake and vibrate as they do it, and that the Genus name was actually a direct link to the name “Guria” when they were first described in New Guinea, having heard the birds described as “Guria” when they do that shiver-shake thing…..but I could be wrong….but thats my understanding…. and give me a good ‘ol BBQ Tree Kangaroo over a BBQ Pigeon any day!

Thanks for that very nice clarification, Justin.

After a week of being sick with sinusitis and bronchitis and not having time to take off of work to heal, I was ready yesterday to cut loose for an afternoon. Having a boss who is particularly in tune with my needs (my wife of 45 years, Eunice) gave me the privilege of saying, “I’m going for a Harley ride this afternoon, to which she responded, “Get out of here!” Long-term monogamy has its advantages.

My dear wife was likewise approving of my riding companion, Jo Noble, who had been . . . ah . . . shipwrecked here in Madang for several months. Jo is the Steward (I think that is the correct term) on a large yacht which is here in Madang awaiting major repairs before traveling on to where it is that large yachts go. I’m sure that I’ll never know. Jo is the very nice young lady you met on our trip to Nob Nob for the post Lightning Down a few days ago. Here she is fooling around with the Harley on the road out to the mountains on the way to the Ramu Valley:

The road this far is “improved”, which means there are fewer giant potholes and the gravel is not so loose that you risk a rash at every corner.

We took a couple of breaks for photos. Here Jo tries to remember how ‘left’ and ‘right’ are somehow magically reversed as she attempts to photograph herself in the rear-view mirror of the Harley:

I didn’t ask to see the resulting image.

Our plan was to cross this river ford and ride for a few kilometres up into the beautiful mountains. However, when we looked at the deep mud at the ford, we decided not to spoil the day by wallowing in the muck with the Hog:

So, we turned around and headed back to town to the Balek Wildlife Reserve, using our noses to guide us to the famous “Stinky River”.

For this shot, Jo asked if I thought that she looked “too silly”. Little did she realise that she was asking the wrong person. Silly is a way of life for me. I’ve made a career of it. I think she looks just fine:

One wants to visit Balek in the morning hours. In the afternoon the giant limestone cliffs from which the spring emerges block out the light and make photography a challenge.

I did manage one nice shot of Jo in the cave with only the natural light coming in. The colours on the rocks in the cave are psychedelic:

On my last trip to Balek, I had forgotten about the giant eels. This time we managed to coax one out. This was the best shot that I could get:fdsaThere are several that live in the river, along with some fairly large turtles.

At the village, we got the classic “Baby in a bilum” shot:

Babies are normally hung in string bags from trees for their naps.

I hate to do a post without a weird critter shot, so here it is:

This giant millipede seemed to be curled up for a nap in the sun.

Back safely at the office, we coaxed Eunie out to take our picture with the Harley:

I needed a fun day. Sometimes we all do.

I got one!

A little fresh air seemed to be in order today, as I’ve been locked down at my office desk or in bed all week. Yes, quite! A little stroll around to to see what I can see. So, what did I see?

Hmmm . . . starting on a sour note, I first saw a fake remedy peddler, or, as I prefer to call them, murderers:Take careful note of all the things that he can cure. If you are afflicted by any of these, he will arrange to send you a a fix.

I stopped by Ho Kit’s, a Chinese variety store, and found something that I haven’t noticed for years. No, they are not red rocks. They are salt plums:I have no idea how they are made. When you put one in your mouth the first instinct is to spit it back out as rapidly as possible. If you hang in there for a few seconds you are rewarded by an amazing, powerful salt, sweet, vinegar, plummy taste that lingers until the thing eventually melts down to the pit, which I recommend that you do spit out.

Ambling over to the market, I found some rather rare red bananas, which I really like:Inside, the flesh is orange and they taste more like banana custard than an ordinary banana.

Still under the heading of tasty sweets, I found some very nice ripe rambutan:You peal the prickly outside off to find the jelly-like very sweet stuff inside.

While I was at the market, I got this panorama shot to give you a little taste of it:This one is pretty cool if you click to enlarge. There are a couple of messes where people moved between shots, but it’s still interesting.

These little Coke stands are all over town. Apparently Pepsi lost that war:

I’ve just been listening to ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man. Of course, in my usual mode of shameless self-promotion, this image came immediately to my mind. It’s from a “Fashion Shoot” that Eunie and I did in Hamiltion, Ontairo.

She has a nice eye for the moment. I love the way she caught the cigar smoke drifting across my shoulder:

Well, enough about me.

Now let’s talk about me.