Hi !

Jitze Couperus here - pleased to meet you.

(Or in Dutch - Aangenaam kennis te maken. Except I can't be sure of the spelling because they keep changing it.)

The picture to the right is me - in case you haven't met me in person.

Announcing - Yes! I did it! After years of prodding and cajoling by friends, colleagues, acquaintances and sundry, I have finaly completed a book which collects together some of my more successful aerial photographs. You can read all about it here.

 

Welcome to the following pages...

From here you can go to a number of different topics:

• Photograph Albums Over time I have collected together a number of photo albums which you are welcome to browse. They come in different categories as follows:
  • Aerial Photography
    • A flight on the Zeppelin "Eureka" from Moffett Field via Stanford and Fremont back to Mountain View.
    • Flying around San Francisco Bay on a super clear day - Palo Alto to Napa and return via the Golden Gate.
    • Flying over the San Francisco Bay Area
    • Flying around and over the city of San Francisco itself
    • A flight via Yosemite over the Tioga Pass to Mono Lake
    • A flight down to a dirt landing strip near the coast of Monterey Bay
    • A flight north of San Francisco to the wine country
    • A flight over Oakland and Berkley
    • Pictures of Delta Foxtrot
    • Pictures of a Flying Machine that uses weight-shift instead of rudder and pedals for control
    • Pictures taken during a helicopter flight over the Cambrian Ice-Fields in Canada
    • A selection of pictures taken on three separate flights spanning a decade, to monitor a cement quarry
    • A collection of aerial views over San Francisco Bay accumulated over time - with emphasis on startling colors
  • Nature Photography
    • New England in autumn - A trip to Vermont and Massachussets 2017
    • New England in autumn - the colors at Walden Pond
    • A colony of Egrets grows in Silicon Valley
    • An evening where we meet some Snakes, Birds, Dogs and Cats
    • In which a Great Blue Heron dines on a Gopher
    • A visit with some cool cats (Bobcat, Serval, Caracal and Canadian Lynx).
    • The Trees of Los Altos Hills
    • The Orchids of Menlo Park.
    • The Woodrat Nests of Page Mill Road.
    • Ardenwood Historic Farm where the Monarch Butterlies gather by thousands
    • Some raptors photographed in free flight at the Raptor Center in Boise, Idaho.
    • A group of deer grazing in the backyard
    • A family of deer enjoying life in an apricot orchard
    • Grizzly bears dining on salmon in an Alaskan creek
    • A flight to Gualala on the North Coast in search of Giant Bowling Balls on a Beach
    • Grizzly bears dining on salmon in an Alaskan creek (Subsequent trip 2010)
    • Bird life in and around a lagoon in Alaska (Subsequent trip 2010)
    • An encounter with a Mother Deer and two fawns in the backyard
    • Wild flowers in general - Poppies in particular
    • The Roadside Poppies of Los Altos Hills
    • Byrne Preserve and Horses in Spring
    • Portraits of some uncommon birds
    • Some avian residents of our backyard
    • Three baby Robins are born and fledged just outside the kitchen window.
    • A Crested Crane (national symbol of Uganda) performs a little dance
    • Counting Elephant Seals at Aņo Nuevo
    • A serpent is encountered in the backyard
    • A family of Barn-Swallow nestlings are raised at Westwind Barn
    • A foster home where orphaned Fawns are raised
  • Photos taken on various trips
    • Photographing the Fall Colors in New England - 2013
    • A day trip to the Panoche Valley in search of a Long-eared Owl.
    • Death Valley Impressions - a trip to photograph the colors of Mountain and Desert - 2012
    • Pictures taken on a trip that daughter Jane and I took to Holland in 2011
    • A brief excursion on an historic fishing boat - The General Pershing
    • A tour around San Francisco Bay on a sail boat - The Charleete II
    • Molokai - Unspoiled Island in the Pacific
    • Pictures taken in Canada and Alaska during a trip in the fall of 2010
    • A trip into the Mojave Desert - Zzyzx
    • Pictures taken in Holland and Germany during a trip in 2008
    • A nostalgic look at Holland
    • Pictures of non-bear subjects taken on a bear-photography expedition to Alaska
  • Miscellaneous Assignments (Some of the more interesting I things have been asked to document)
    • Pictures taken at a lunch gathering of The United Flying Octogenarians
    • Pictures of some rare or unusual birds taken at a sanctuary
    • Landscapes in and around a local Open Space Preserve
    • A local wildflower explosion
    • Reno - a Mustang Horse - is introduced to working with special-needs children
  • The (large) collection of pictures saved on my Flickr account, stored elsewhere on the web
  • Boring Family-Related Stuff
    • Some (very) old photographs covering four generations of my family
    • Some other old pictures found in a box when my mother died.
    • Some more old pictures - including some received from a cousin in Holland.
    •  Remembering my sister Willemina (Willy).
    • Bits and Pieces of Family History collected over time
    • A "Book of Faces" (Facebook?) of immediate and extended members of the family
    • Pictures taken around the family homestead in Los Altos Hills
    • Pictures taken around the branch of the family in Easthampton, Massachussetts
    • Pursuing the architectural archaeology of a Pharmacy in The Hague

• Computers I have known - Some info and pictures of computers (of the mainframe type) that have played a part in my life
  • How a Kenya Policeman got involved with Computers in the first place
  • The BTM (ICT) 1202 at East African Railways & Harbours
  • The ICT 1500 at East African Railways & Harbours
  • The ICT 1904 at GAK in Amsterdam
  • The ICT 1905 at Delft University
  •  A brief encounter with a Telefunken TR4 and soldiers with guns
  • The CDC 6600 - Software Research and Development in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, California (The Bayview Club)
  • The CDC 6600 - An early Brochure

• School Days In Kenya
  • The Hunt For The Rolls Silver Ghost Soon after the Internet (and Email) became generally available to the public, I embarked on a quest to find out whatever became of a 1914 Rolls Royce that served as our school bus in the Kenya of the 1950's. That search is documented here.
  • A Chapel is built In the middle of the Great Rift Valley, a bunch of pupils at a primary boarding school (8 to 12 year-olds) set out to build a chapel

• Other Kenya Links

  For those of you who ended up on this page by mistake, but were actually looking for stuff about Pembroke House in Gilgil (Kenya) or about the Prince of Wales School in Nairobi (actually Kabete - also in Kenya) then let me direct you to their sites at Pembroke House and Prince of Wales respectively.

• Articles in Other People's Blogs to do with my time in East Africa
  • Rallying a DKW through lion country An article that a Hungarian blogger created about my driving a DKW around East Africa,
  • The First Computers in East Africa and what became of them An article I wrote for a Kenya-based Blog

• Menlo Park Farmer's Market
  • Overview A general overview of the Menlo Park Farmer's Market, how it began and what it does.
  • Thirty years after its founding We celebrate our thirtieth year of operation
  • Newpaper Advertisement An advertisement that summed up the market in just a few lines.

• Louis Couperus
  • Louis Couperus. If you came here looking for information about the Dutch author, Louis Couperus, you're in the wrong place. (Unless you're specifically interested in his Family Tree, in which case you are in the right place). If you seek information in English about Louis Couperus, you can best go to Wikipedia here or if you are conversant in Dutch, you may wish to go to http://www.louiscouperus.nl

  • Louis Couperus. Indien U informatie zoekt betreffend de schrijver Louis Couperus, dan zit U hier verkeerd. (Behalve als U gegevens zoekt omtrent zijn stamboom - in dat geval zit U hier goed), Mag ik U door verwijzen naar http://www.louiscouperus.nl

• Genealogy
  Genealogy - There are a number of Couperus-related genealogy web-sites available on the net. Each of these may require you to identify yourself or register with the site in order to access certain levels of information, but none of the three requires any kind of payment.
  • For the genealogy pages that I myself created over the years click here.
  • For the genealogy pages put together by Jan Willem Draaijer in the Netherlands click here.
  • For the genealogy pages put together by Bauke Rients Couperus in the Netherlands and hosted on the MyHeritage site Click here (English Language) or Click here (Dutch Language)
  • Genealogie - Er zijn een aantal websites betreffende de Couperus Genealogie. Sommige sites kunnen om gebruiker-identificatie of -registratie vragen voor toegang tot bepaalde gegevens, maar in elk geval is het kosteloos.
    • Om genealogie pagina's te vinden die ik zelf gemaakt heb klik hier.
    • Om genealogie pagina's van Jan Willem Draaijer uit Nederland te bereiken klik hier.
    • Voor de genealogie pagina's die Bauke Rients Couperus in Nederland verzameld op zijn "MyHeritage" website klik hier (Engels-talig) of klik hier (Nederlands-talig)

And to answer your next question - no - I'm not Dutch. I was born and raised as an Englishman "in the colonies" and lived in Uganda and Kenya (and a few years studying in Britain) until my mid-twenties. Then I did actually live in Holland for a few years, working in The Hague and trying to figure out the language. So I sort of speak it, but I don't think I'll ever figure out when to use "het" or "de" in front of a noun.

Eventually I migrated to California and lived there happily ever after.

Having got that out of the way, let me invite you to browse the pages referenced above, and I hope we may meet in person some time.

Jitze Couperus