The New View

So this is it..... the view we will wake up to each day when we finally move in :-)

The little island on the right, almost hidden behind the boat, is rather cutely called lap sap chau!

In the beginning was the the word. And the word was Deilephila elpenor

Ok, so it is actually two words. Why are they so important to me? This is why.



This is what started my interest in moths. I found the picture amongst the slides I had scanned recently. It is the very first time I had any desire to find out "what is that caterpillar?". Like all children we used to find caterpillars on the vegetables in the garden - yellow and black stripey ones were common as I recall - but that was it. They were caterpillars. This was a monster. I asked a few bird people and they referred me to Colin Plant, the moth recorder for VC 20, Herts. He stimulated my interest further and I bought a Heath trap.

He explained this was the Elephant Hawkmoth and that its larval foodplant was usually rosebay willowherb (Epilobium angustifolium). So I had discovered another new term - larval foodplant or LFP. And a caterpillar is a larva! I also discovered that the moth itself is called an imago, i.e. the adult form of the insect. Wow. This was better than the biology lessons we used to endure. Those consisted of looking at bulls eyes or cutting up frogs into little bits. I dropped biology like a stone as soon as I had the chance to choose my O'levels and ended up doing French, German, Latin & later Russian with barely a science to be seen. I was only marginally more interested in biology than I was in woodwork, at which I was, not to put too fine a point on it, crap. This shamed my father, who was a qualified engineer and could do everything from build our first TV to make his own HiFi from the bits supplied by a firm called Heathkit (I think), to service the car (a rather aged Wolsey 1500, "504 ATX" she was called, to build or repair just about everything around the house. Ah, but he couldn't conjugate Latin verbs and he didn't know which 9 prepositions in German only ever take the accusative case (FUDGEBOW). Which of us do you think has got more use out of our skills over the years?

So that was it. The heffalump hawkmoth started me "into" moths. About 10 years ago now. Wonderful things. Next year when Roger Kendrick runs HK's National Moth Night I highly recommend you go along and see just what might be lurking in the undergrowth near you.

The new list

The new house has already produced some fantastic treats. Yesterday pm 3 adult White-bellied sea eagles flew overhead. Two were rolling and almost touching talons - presumably a breeding pair. All three were calling with a loud honking noise, rather like geese. They were overhead for maybe ten minutes before flying off inland. These are big birds that fly with their wings in a V and they are very distinctive. I saw them at about 17.30 so if you are on the front at Sai Kung as dusk approaches keep your eyes open.

In the bushes in the communal garden just across the private road I saw a fresh plumaged Dusky warbler, a Yellow-browed warbler as well as the usual suspects such as Chinese bulbul, Tailorbird, Japanese white-eye............ and just up the road a Black-throated laughing-thrush was a good tick. I didn't have my camera gear with me but I shall have to take it next time. All I need now is some birds in the back garden.

Update 7th November

the first true garden bird was, not surprisingly, Magpie robin. 3 Grey herons fooled me very briefly into thinking the WBSEs were back. Instead they wheeled around, stately as galleons, and landed on a wooded patch below the house. I guess they will roost there. One adult WBSE did appear but didn't come close, flying over instead towards Tai Mong Tsai Road and then back towards Sai Kung. Red-whiskered bulbul added itself to the list. Finally a Common buzzard was a nice addition,hovering imperiously over the trees. NB: kites very rarely hover but I have seen them do so after a fashion this is not a clincher. I heard Scarlet-backed flowerpecker but could not see it.

Update from Sai Kung

Well, we have got the keys to the new house. Mrs.Ha has met the contractors and we have a very clear idea of what is going to be done. And no idea what it will all cost. When will we move in? Hopefully by Christmas. A very short walk this afternoon convinced me that patience will reward me with birds, butterflies and dragonflies. Probably some different moths too.

I promised I would report back on the scanning of the slides. Very mixed. Some are frankly awful. Some not to bad.






Three of the shots above are scans and one is a recent digital image straight from the camera. Can you pick the odd one out? Clue, location may help! I am at a loss why the standard is so variable. It could be the processing as I picked a batch of decent images to try first. I may get some redone elsewhere as a control. If they don't work then I may invest in my own scanner.

I have spent so much time travelling recently I am doing little photography I'm afraid. Cathay have just made my life worse as my usual flight to Bahrain (direct) now goes indirect via Riyadh adding almost 4 hours to my travel time. As an added bonus when I got back on Friday pm they were late and had nobody to operate the air bridge. Luckily I discovered Emirates has a better option so just when they are desperate for revenue CP will be losing a fair chunk of mine. They seem to be deteriorating fast in just about every department. The food is uniformly inedible - I now travel with a supply of cereal bars instead. The coffin seats are a disgrace to modern design and if one more member of the crew thanks me for my custom I shall be tempted to tell them a few home truths.

The really bad news came the week before in Dubai when I was called at 6am by AmEx (who in fairness thought it was 10am and I was in HK) to thank me for my business. I can only assume Mrs. Ha has been on the loose with her supplementary. Oh my! Oh golly gosh! If I were not permanently off the juice I'd have to have another sherry, Bishop.

BTW, captions are invited for the bottom picture, which educated chaps and chapesses will have ID'd as a Nazca booby. Ooh er, as Fumie would say, I'm sure.

Toodle pip.

Autumnal heat

Even though I knew I was too tired I struggled out of bed this morning and drove to Long Valley. I just needed some bird time and whether it was at LV or Mai Po didn't really matter. I was hoping for a cool morning and clear air. No such luck as once again the temperature headed over 30 degrees Celsius. Carrying the big lens I can manage 2 or 3 hours and then I have to stop. So nothing too exciting today but a cryptic snipe sat tight against the edge of a shallow pool. Usually they take off like a rocket as you approach but not always. If you are slow and quiet and maybe use a bush to break up your outline you can sometimes get close up shots.



The bird below is a Wood sandpiper.I used to get quite excited in Britain when I found a Wood sand' but here they are common enough. This one ignored the panicked departures of its fellows and stood in the middle of a pond in soft morning light, seemingly basking up the warmth and ignoring the tripod and lens pointed directly at it. It is a simple portrait but quite pleasing. I love the marquetry effect of the feathers. They are not as dainty as the Marsh sandpipers but just as stunning in good light.



Finally another simple portrait - of a cattle egret this time. In breeding plumage they sport a warm tobacco colour and I don't know why but I prefer them to the Little egrets. They are slightly bulkier and have a sort of cocky strut that I like. The Little is more refined and a bit of a popinjay with its filaments blowing in a light breeze. The Cattle might be more of a street fighter, oblivious to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. The yellow bill is bulkier, ideal for jabbing someone in the chest. "Now just listen to me.....".



I ended up in a far corner of the valley and lost my bearings slightly but struggled back to the car and gulped down several slugs of water before pootling home for a mid-morning bowl of shredded wheat.Luxury.

Mellow yellow

I'm just mad about Saffron.
A-Saffron's mad about me.
I'm-a just mad about Saffron.
She's just mad about me.

They call me Mellow Yellow,
Quite rightly.
They call me Mellow Yellow,
Quite rightly.
They call me Mellow Yellow.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

As we start to think about moving house I have been wrestling with the fact that I have literally thousands of slides. Unlike jpegs they take up a lot of space and unlike jpegs they are still there when your hard drive crashes. I decided therefore to get out the lightbox and start to do a review of what to keep and what to throw.

Problem 1 was not being able to find the lightbox. So off we toddled and bought a new one. Ooooh. I like Velvia. Is digital really as good as slides? (Discuss). Of course I threw away hundreds of pounds worth of rubbish pictures and digital allows me to buy a flash card and shoot over and over again. Nevertheless I have a sense that my "feel" for exposure was better in the old days and the light seemed clearer and warmer in the pre-digital era. That is either global warming or me getting old or neither.

The slides have brought back wonderful memories and I can remember virtually all of the shots, where I was, whom I was with and what the day was like. And of course now I want a load of them scanned so I can display them on the web. Such presumption! Why should anyone want to look at my pictures? I don't care. I want to see what Photoshop can do versus Velvia.

I suspect it will take months to plough through all of them. This is not a chore but a treasure hunt coupled with a trip down memory lane. I can hear the drone of the Coronation Street theme in the background and picture Ena, Minnie and Martha in the snug as I also look also at some of my father's old slides. Some are almost 50 years old and a kind of heirloom. Great Aunt Kate on the stone beach somewhere in Cardigan, probably Llanrhystud........ straight out of Leica Magazine?

I have been trying to work out how to get the slides scanned. Lots of people offered advice. Buying my own scanner is probably economic but definitely slow. Going to a well known outlet..... quicker and reliable, hopefully. But then Mrs. Ha took me to a small shop in Gilman's Bazaar. Firstly, I had never heard of Gilman's Bazaar. Secondly, it is a very small shop and doesn't seem to sell much if you simply look at the shelves. This is a shop with second hand cameras in the window and lots of rolls of , yes, Velvia, behind the counter. They even had a Leica M3 in the window. No high piles of Canon, Nikon, Olympus, etc but when I enquired, they disappeared into the back and produced a Canon 7D, hot off the production line. So somewhere they probably stock everything. Where, I asked, would they send slides to be scanned? Here, they said. Convert them into 6mb jpegs for HK$10 each. That is the going rate. At this point Mrs. Ha was multiplying the cost of one scan by the number of slides I have and thinking this was more expensive that a trip to Cartier. I promised I would be selective. And so the adventure with the lightbox began. When I get back from Singapore I will go back to Gilman's Bazaar and give them 50 to scan and we shall see what miracles they can work.

You have been warned. You may get to see Great Aunt Kate, on the beach in her world war one army great coat trying to keep out the bitingly cold wind of a Welsh summer. "Laughed? I nearly bought a round " as they say in the Valleys.