Things with Feathers & Things with Antennae

Do you like fluffy puppies? What about birds, gliding through the air? And bugs, with their creepy six little legs and their pinpoint dots of eyes?
As you have read before, I love the forests and the mountains here. (Will I ever be happy in a big city after living here?)

Since I also enjoyed the animals around here, I'm going to introduce those today. Three stand out. The title hints at it already: one is a bird, the other an insect and the last one is a spider.

Praying Mantis

First, Japan's praying mantis. What's special about it? Eh... Nothing. We just don't have them in Belgium.
Here you can pick them up from the streets at will. Well, not anymore since the winter weather has arrived now...

They always look grumpy to me. When you try to pick them up, they'll not move an inch, but they will clasp the ground or wall as tightly as possible with their tiny claws.

And when you then do pick them up (a tiny claw is no match for a human biceps, not even when you got six of them), they'll start flexing like "Hey, look at me, what ya got, huh, huh?! What ya looking at, huh?!"

Imma big green mothafucka hell yeeeeah

I just think they're pretty awesome, okay? Just look at this mean big boy:

Black Kite
The next animal in the spotlight: the black kite. This bird is everywhere, from the beach to the mountains. When I leave for school, I can greet them on the telephone lines.

Black kite aka Milvus migrans lineatus

One Sunday morning, I saw the most amazing scene - pure National Geographic material. Three of these were sitting on the telephone line, when one of them dove down and snatched a chick.
Jealous of the delicious snack, the other two started chasing him, making him drop the chick. And then in turn, he'd chase them trying to recover his snack.
As soon as the murder of crows nearby saw that, they started to play chase too.
And there you suddenly got three birds of prey and five crows chasing and bugging and pestering each other, with one dead little bird changing claws every ten seconds.

 

Jorō Spider

They come in one size ("big") and various colours, but I love the ones that carry the colours of the Belgian flag. It was like a little, special welcome: picking the single animal I've got a phobia for and putting my countries on it. I appreciate the gesture, Mother Nature.

Not to mention that I bumped my head into one and panicked and when I rubbed it off, its legs got stuck in my tangly hair and it fell down but lost it legs so I walked around with spider legs in my hair and the effect of a mini heart attack. Yeah, never mind that.

But eh, yeah, they just sit there doing spider stuff. Like this:

Nephila clavata

Just like the praying mantis, they're now slowly dying by the approaching winter.

 

Just chilling.

I'm going to end this post with just a few more pictures. Feel free to point your finger and say things like "Yuck!" or "Awwww...". :)

Shrooms!

Plants!

 

Antennae thingies!

 

Non-Antennae thingies! 

Water thingies!

 

I did it! 50 000 words in 30 days, NANOWRIMO WINNER!

Just a quick update: NaNoWriMo was a success!
I've been neglecting this blog a little bit, haven't I? Didn't I promise you some pictures of cute animals or something like that?

Anyway, I'm now looking for a 7-day and a 24-hours challenge. If you have any ideas, tell me in the comments!

Click the image if you have trouble reading the text.

One-month challenges seem perfect for me though. :)

2013 My First NaNoWriMo: Plunging into Chaos

November is coming. That soul-crushing writing challenge, NaNoWriMo, is upon us. But before that...

Let's start this post with a confession: I totally butchered my 100 day challenge. I didn't make it beyond day 25. Obviously, I entered it half-heartedly. It gets a small mention at the end of the post, and seems quite impulsive in hindsight.
So what happened exactly? The challenge was: “Paint a portrait every day for 100 days”.
It didn't take long before I started to postpone the portrait to right before bed when I'd go “Oooh, still have to do that.” and rush it. Then one day – day 26 – it was one o'clock and I said to myself:
“Well, I can just paint two tomorrow.”
And then I just never did. That was the end of my 100 day challenge.


In positive news, check out the difference between day one and my personal favourites, day 20-21-22!

Day 1

Day 20-21-22

But anyhow, the 100 days are over. Up next: NaNoWriMo. "National Novel Writing Month" is held in November each year, and the challenge is to find a 50,000 word novel by the last day of November.

Okay. Is NaNoWriMo going to be different? I hope so.
To begin with, my alarm is set at 4:50 now.


Yup, 4:50 every morning. The plan: get up, eat a little, write 1667 words and then start my day. Tomorrow is an extra day for practice. :P
In other words, avoid NaNoWriMo interfering with daily life, which could provide excuses to give up!


To keep myself accountable, I also decided to post my daily writings. I had no idea how the NaNoWriMo posting system works, so got looking for a different site to post my updates.
I had two requirements: 1. Free to use 2. Non-users can read & comment.
Note: I made a subdomain, but deleted it after NaNoWriMo was over. Many thanks to you who read my daily writing updates!

Whew.


Now, if you look at the title, you see I don't expect things to go smoothly. I already encountered one difficulty: since I have no plan whatsoever, it was quite difficult to come up with a title... I went for “Golden Fields, Black Snow” because it doesn't mean anything.


By the way, you can sponsor me on NaNoWriMo. If you do, my avatar will get a shiny halo.

A Forest Health Check in Tottori: Pictures of Leaves and Blurry Insects

Last time I made a post about the scenery near my home. I've also visited a forest in Wakasa – about 35 kilometers away from here.


Why a mountain forest in Wakasa?
Well... Let's have a look at lumber production in Japan.
A lot of mountain forests in Tottori are not natural, but planted for lumber. So the forest mainly consist of a single, fast-growing pine species. In the case of the forest visited, this was the sugi (杉) species.
The cycle of cutting and planting actually allowed for rich forest diversity. This practice of nature existing in coexistence – and partially thanks to – human influence, is a concept called “satoyama”. Which I am writing a paper about, actually...

But here's the problem: lumber prices dropped. Business being no longer lucrative, the pines don't get cut anymore. And so they grow bigger and bigger. Planted in tight rows, the growing trees loot all the sunlight from the poor starving weeds below.
Undergrowth perishes, animals go on a pine-bark diet and the forest's nature deteriorates.

Recently, an activity was organized to keep track of the forest's health: a yearly forest health check-up.

And I participated. :) Professor Nagamatsu introduced me to the event, and allowed me to participate – even though the application date was over already. *round of grateful applause*
This year there were a little over 40 participants. Guess the event is not well-known yet...

Quite a long intro, isn't it? So... Let's move on to the pictures. The first forest was planted on top of ancient paddy fields.
I found it difficult to imagine that these were once sunny rice terraces... With croaking frogs and butterflies...

I think I saw a deer here, but I'm not certain. It was big, brown and fast. That's all I know. Does seeing a flying brown blob even count as deer sighting? Actually no, it doesn't.


The second forest was quite different... For one, it was STEEP.
Littered with rocks, too. Rocks, and tree roots on top of the rocks. That made climbing quite a challenge - feet getting twisted, rocks stumbling down... The first time a rock came crashing down, I had a mini-heart attack! I thought one of the volunteers was rolling to his death!

Now, what did we do exactly? Measuring. Tree circumference, number of weed species present, slope angle... Especially measuring a tree's height was difficult! No, we didn't climb them. We used some tools and calculations, but the problem was that to calculate correctly, you needed plain view of the tree from top to bottom. And as you read in the introduction: these are fast-growing trees, planted closely together and their planned cutting is long overdue.

 

And at last, after completing the check-up, we left a little wooden board saying we carried out the forest health check, with our names at the back.

The rope and wood we used won't pollute the forest.
It'll get slowly digested by the ecosystem ;)

Sadly, in both forests we visited, the conclusion was the same: too many fat trees binging on sunlight. The forest needs some maintenance... Luckily, as you saw in the pictures, it's not yet too late: there's still some undergrowth and specks of light coming through.

Let's end with a few more pictures from the "Forest Health Check" adventure. :)

 

The next post will be about some plants and animals I encountered. For now, let's just say that I regret not bringing a macro lens to Japan...

Actually, maybe I'll post three times this week. There's also an update needed for my older post "How About Doing Something? Challenges: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly ": the 100 day challenge has ended, and I want to try a month-challenge.

Note: some images were edited (cropped or contrast upped).