AquaScaping

Aquascaping is underwater gardening in your fishtank, this can be done in many styles.
The style of which I'm a fan is the one to create landscapes that you normally find above the water.
Some people are really good at it, as you can see on this website .

Since I wanna do something new with my tank,

I decided to give it a try myself.

I want to start with a simple type of landscape,
so I picked "Chocolate hills" those can be seen on the island Bohol in the Philippines.

It's a fun looking landscape, and it matches with my asian fresh water fish.

So I bought some stuff and plants to get started, and now I'm hoping it can be put in the tank within weeks.

I bought some stone hiding places, and coconuts, to get the right color and effect I'm going to put java moss on top.

To make this work I only needed some fishline and a scissors.




Since the hills are not all the same size I needed
different sizes for my tank as well.

So I use the stone hiding places for the bigger hills,
and the coconuts for the lower ones.

I will start with just making 3 hills, to see if my idea will work.

At the picture on the right you can see how I attached the moss to the stone.

After that I used the remaining moss to cover some parts of the other hills.



It is not that much at the moment but the moss will grow and start to cover the rest.

If I put the hills straight away in my tank, the moss will be quickly in my filter because of my fishes.

So I put the hills in a small spare tank, so the moss can stick itself firmly to the hills. When I think the hills are covered enough I will move the hills to my main tank.

For now I can only wait untill the moss starts doing it's job.

The comming weeks and months I will try to update the progress that I make.

Raptors part II

My other message about raptors ended at the Palawan crocodile farm. This one will start from there.

One of the birds they have, is a white bellied sea eagle. That is too injured to go back into the wild.

Even though it might not have the strength, as it should it have. It still looks as a powerfull bird.

The bird is injured at his wings so it can't fly anymore. Thanks to the crocodile farm, it still has an ok life.

For me it was still a hard picture to take, because his white belly reflected so much sun light.

The bird was too far away from me to use my flash, and I didn't brought any tripod with me.

But with some post processing I think I got the colors better.

I hope some time in the future I get the chance to re-take the picture.

Luckily I don't always have to go that far to see a raptor, or in this case an owl. This female forrest owl, was sitting in the park next to my house.

I was able to go back a few times to try for a better photo. Because it turned out, that the spot I was standing for this picture was right underneed her young ones.

So I was kinda lucky that she kept her claws to herself. It is one of the biggest owls we have here in Holland and also the most agressive species.

The Common Kestrel on the left, I spotted at Texel the biggest island in Holland. It was sitting on a sign, that tells you to not go further.

Behind the sign is a big breeding and resting area for birds. For this male it is also a hunting area, he has to share it with some Hen harriers.

He let me get close enough to take some decent shots, but he was aware and ready to fly away any moment. So after enough shots I walked away so he could stay at his overview point.

Raptors

Raptors are one of my favourite types of animals. They look very confident in everything they do, even when they fly away.

That is the problem for me since I don't have any high end zoom lens. So it's very hard to get close enough for a nice capture.

So I need to take my chances, when I get an opportunity once in a while. Most of the time in zoos or at bird shows.

This "Harris hawk" I saw at a birdshow, near an old water fortress. It is not a native species here in Holland, but she looks cool.

She was one of 5 birds at the show, but the other birds were more shy.

My favourite raptor will be, the "Philippine eagle" even though I haven't seen one in real life. So if somebody knows where I can see it, close to Manilla please post it in a comment.

 Nr2 on my list of Philippine raptors, is the "Brahminy kite". I did spotted one of those in the wild, when we just arrived at the "Chocolate hills" in Bohol.

The one we saw was flying and too far, to capture with my camera. But at least I saw one in the wild.

Later that day we saw three of them in captivity, at some the places with "Tarsiers".

The one on my pictures, is hold in a cage with the biggest python of Bohol.

The way they are kept, isn't as good as they deserve.

Well they still get enough food, otherwise their owners don't have anything to show tourists like me.

Because the storyteller, who went in to the python as a man and came out as a woman. Wouldn't be a good enough attraction to attract all the tourists.

At Palawan we didn't see any raptors in the wild. We saw kingfishers, egrets and manny crabs but no raptors.

But during our day tour, arround "Puerto princesa", we visited the Crocodile farm.

They don't have just crocodiles, but actually it is a small zoo. So if you ever go there, after the tour walk arround through the forrest behind it.

When I was there they had even a "Crested serpent eagle". This bird was not healthy enough to go back into the wild.

In one of the cages all the way in the back, we found the next bird.

The "Chocolate hawk owl" is a small hawk owl, which is commonly found in almost every island of the Philippines; ironically, except in Palawan.

There were a few of them in the cage, they weren't shy at all. This one was even posing for me.

Macro Philippines

These are some of the macro pictures I took, in the Philippines. Since most of the birds that you see, in Antipolo are sparrows and pigeons.

I rather take my macro objective, to see some different wildlife. I still have a problem to get close to the butterflies, outside the butterfly garden. For some reason if you get within 3 meters they fly away.

Luckily I was able to get close to the small blue ones. I don't what species it is.

As you can see, they aren't camera shy at all. The picture on the left, shows mating butterflies.

From those to the one on the left with the darker wings is the female. The male on the right has some lighter colored wings.

In Antipolo you still have enough trees and bushes, so there are more insects to spot.

At the picture on the right, you see a Sweetpotato bug. Like the name already says it is mostly found at the sweet potato plant.

This one however is spotted at an egg plant. With some of it's friends. I never saw an insect like this before, so I was quite happy to take some photo's of it.

I guess I was the only one who was happy, because they turn out to be a pest. So if you have them on your veggies, you better get them away.

The picture on the left with the profile of the butterfly, is taken at the Palawan butterfly garden. We went on a day tour during our trip to Palawan.

Before we left, I didn't knew we would visit this one. So I brought 2 lenses but not my macro.

This picture is taken with a 70-300mm tele objective.
I is not a detailed full colored shot, but still I'm happy with this one.

The Palawan butterfly garden is a must go to, when you are at Palawan.

The Tarsier

This year we went to the "Magandang" island of Bohol (Philippines). The island is famous for the "Chocolate hills" and is home to the Tarsier.

These animals look nice and you may wanna touch them. But it's better for the animals you don't! Manny of these Tarsiers, are kept just for the tourist, and you can see them next to the road. They are really stress full animals, and do to this stress they won''t become as old as their free brothers and sisters.

So if you go there to see them, don't touch them and make sure not to flash to get them on the picture.

Just look them in their amazing eyes, and if the owner asks if you wanna hold it walk away.