Traffic
(The HQ button of the embedded video does not work properly, but I added the &fmt=18 option to the embedding code. I think it shows High Quality now)
Meet Donna (4 days old) and her mom.
Recorded two years ago, but only just posted on the internet.
This is another post in my moms series.
(It doesn’t look very good if you don’t watch it in High Quality. Click HQ.)
Higher up
I post this in reference to Mother’s Day.
(Don’t forget to watch in High Quality. Click HQ)
Metropolis
I like it how this 2 minute 34 second movie turned out, even though I wish I had had more light, which would have made the image sharper. I shot it about 1 kilometer away from home. For information about what is happening here, see Wikipedia
I completely understand if you find it boring. And I would not be surprized if some find it creepy or scary.
What do you think of it, creepy?
A visit from mom.
(Might as well be dad, but because of imminent Mother’s Day, I’m assuming it was mom).
Tip: For Higher Quality, click HQ.
Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr
One day in highschool, our German teacher - instead of following the normal program - put on a recording of the German singer/songwriter Reinhard Mey. It was somewhere in the 1970s and environmental protection and nature preservation were hot topics. It was also a time when cockchafers had completely disappeared from large parts of Europe.
Reinhard Mey had used these elements to create a song in his typical nostalgic and somewhat sentimental style. It is called “Es gibt keinen Maikäfer mehr” (There are no cockchafers anymore).
I found this song on YouTube, but before I give it to you, let me tell you how it goes.
Note: The words chimney sweep, miller and emperor refer to the nicknames that they gave the cockchafers. Chimney sweepers are the ones with a black middle section (pronotum), on millers these are covered with little white hairs, and the emperors are the really big beetles.
First verse
Standing at a newly built car park building, Mey tells his audience how he remembers what it looked like when he was a child, before the massive building projects started. As a little boy, he used to climb over the garden gate there in spring. It was the best place for cockchafer hunting, even though he risked being chased away. He had a big shoe box with air holes and shook the trees and raked the moss to catch the beetles.
The refrain says:
Würd’ ich heut’ noch einmal loszieh’n, blieb’ mein Schuhkarton wohl leer;
selbst ein guter Käferjäger brächte keinen Schornsteinfeger, keinen Müller, erst recht keinen Kaiser her.
Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr.
Translation: If I would try again today, my shoe box would remain empty.
Even a good cockchafer hunter could not get any chimney sweep, no miller, and certainly no emperor.
There are no cockchafers anymore.
Second verse
Then he goes on about the stories that the old Mr. Schlütter used to tell. That man was a real cockchafer expert and recalls the days when cockchafers were a major pest. To combat the pest, they would close the schools in May, and let the children help catching the cockchafers.
The numbers he would catch were huge and made little Reinhard’s collection look poor. But nowadays, if he could only catch half the number he caught then, he would instantly be appointed King of the Cockchafer Hunters.
Refrain: There are no cockchafers anymore.
Last verse
The last verse is a bit more philosophical. He wonders why these beetles have disappeared. They have learned him to buzz, to scratch, to crawl, to extend ones antennae to explore the world all around. He hints to the fact that these beetles (May beetles) and he share a part of their names (the name Mey comes from the month of May). And he concludes the fate of the cockchafers scares him, because if the world became unsuitable for them to live in, it may soon be unsuitable for us all. (Original lyrics) (German)
I’d like you to listen to Es gibt keinen Maikäfer mehr on YouTube:
The following link shows a video of Reinhard Mey performing the song live in Switzerland, but musically, this performance is not as good as the first one: 2. Chansonnade (1973) - Part 6
How my lens got clean
I was trying to film a swarm of long-tailed tits, the other day, but I lost them. They flew too fast. As my camera was pointing towards the sky, the autofocus couldn’t find anything to focus on, until it started focussing on the dust particles on my lens. (My Canon FS100 can focus really close, like a macro lens). It was then, that I decided to purchase one of these nice little blower brushes for camera lenses. As soon as I got home, I tried it out.
I wanted to share this moment with you, so I let the camera record it.
