Anton, a good friend of mine, is into bird photography and took these lovely pictures on a recent trip to Xinjiang. He’s super nice and let me post some. : )

Here’s a European bee-eater:

image

This is the very same bird from a different point of view:

image

How spiffy is that? Amazing how beautifully formed every part of it is..

This fellow below, a greenish warbler, defines dapper. It could attend a wedding or luncheon pronto, right off the cuff (/wingtip), don’t you think?

image

Now for gorgeous shades of blue on an azure tit:

image

My little sister Katty is finishing up her last year of secondary school. For her senior dance performance, she had the idea of having the dance team do Yang Liping‘s Chinese contemporary classic 女兒國, ‘Country of Daughters’. They just performed this past weekend, and she sent me these lovely pictures (that’s her in the red hat!).