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  • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:va2lam@mastodon.nz
    Aug 13, 2026, 8:10 PM

    July pictures. This flight has another 30 minutes. Well, I can at least post four pictures in this time.

    patricklam.ca/post/20260804-ju

    This includes a lot of pictures from a Whale Watch Kaikōura trip in July (a last minute but highly worthwhile decision), as well as pictures from snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef in 2024, and then one more set of pictures from the Tour du Mont Blanc and from Christchurch in May.

    I'm on a set of planes to Greece and the backlog is going to grow a whole lot...

    #BirdsNZ #Birds

    A stylish white-faced heron taking off. Mountains in the background, a building behind the bird, and some greenery to the left.
    Scratchy the humpback whale shows the results of epic battles with squid down below: the back is black, but there are many white scratches.
    Picking up the rental car in Blenheim, we found that it came with ice on the windshield and no scraper. Credit cards work.
    Three fish and some coral on the Great Barrier Reef: humpnose big eye bream, a blue fish, and a black fish. There is some pinkish coral in the frame below, and sand in the background.
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  • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:va2lam@mastodon.nz
    Aug 13, 2026, 9:22 PM

    Here are some more nature pictures from Kaikōura and the Tour du Mont Blanc. There were about a dozen humpback whales and a sperm whale. I also got lots of pictures of butterflies.

    A seal in the water has captured a squid and is in the process of eating it. An albatross unsuccessfully tried to steal the squid and is now just sitting nearby in case the seal messes up or something.
    A Cape Petrel (black with white spots) flies above a sperm whale on pretty calm waters.
    Near Courmayeur: two butterflies on a thistle, though you can really only see the marbled white (again, black and white) and some orange underneath.
    A cow peeks out over a rise. There is grass between us and the cow, as well as the path. The sky is kind of cloudy.
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  • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:va2lam@mastodon.nz
    Aug 19, 2026, 9:11 AM

    It's my thread and I'll derail it if I want to. Here is a picture from a few days ago, climbing Xerolakki (pretty... engaging... terrain) with the backside of Stefani on Olympus I think.

    Three rocky mountain peaks (limestone) surrounded by some clouds with also some blue sky visible. We are in the alpine and it is mostly rock but there is some greenery (grasses etc) as well as a snowpatch to the right.
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  • zkarjzkarj@mastodon.nz
    Aug 14, 2026, 3:58 AM

    @va2lam I did some whale watching on the way home from work earlier this week.

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