Some of these are about birds, and some are just shots I took. Nothing important here. Two or three will have larger versions available if you click the photo.

First, the birds: I’ve been able to get shots of Little Grebes before, but nothing big and sharp. When I went to Ueno a few days ago as part of a multi-stop trip (Akihabara, Ueno, Shinjuku and Shibuya, to run errands), there were some Grebes in the rowing lake, and they were very close to the shore. Plus, it was direct daylight, so they came out pretty well. This first shot is of an adult, with a blowup on click:

Here’s a cute youngling in mid-quack:

Also spotted is what must be a Northern Shoveler, though the colors are too dark. Still, the bill is unmistakable, and the colors mean that this is a female.

Also in Ueno Park were a number of cats. They seem to love these markers, gravestones or otherwise, using them as basking thrones:

Also on that day, I stopped by the Tama River. The typhoon that was supposed to slam into us actually just grazed us. There were maybe 20 minutes of torrential rain and high winds and a lot more of just regular rain, but not the deluge that was promised; the storm veered off into the Pacific again instead of heading straight over Tokyo. Nevertheless, when I visited the river, the waters had risen more than ten feet! In this shot, you can see the middles and tops of trees that got drowned in the rising waters:

In the photo above, about an inch and a half from the left edge, you can see one of the taller, bushy trees just off the banks, with a dark area at its base, and if you look hard, you might notice a tiny white speck in there just above the waterline. This is what that was:

So not everyone was challenged by the rising waters, some seemed to like it.

Also unusual at the river were the bats. Bats are common in Japan, especially near rivers, but usually only after dusk. This was mid-afternoon on a hot, sunny day, and there were bats flying around. Kinda strange. It’s really hard to catch these guys–they flit around and change direction all the time to you can’t take any time to focus or set up a shot, not to mention that they do not land anywhere. This was the best shot I got:

And one more flying beast: a jet of the Japanese SDF. What kind, I don’t know, but maybe a sub chaser with a lot of radar bays, or a cargo jet. More bumps on this thing than a toad. Click on it for a blow-up.