Too hot to hang out

The upper photo is one of HK's commonest birds, the ubiquitous Chinese bulbul. At the moment they are feeding newly fledged birds (which lack the prominent white head markings). This one sat on the glass panel around our sun terrace for ages whilst I took piccies. Note to amah - clean glass please!

The second is a hawkmoth the size of a saucer. A rather snazzy thing called Clanis bilineata. Most moths in Blighty have a vernacular name. Here in HK virtually none of them does so it forces you to learn the latin. An excellent discipline. Hawkmoths belong to the family Sphingdae and pretty darned sexy they are too. There is, believe it or not, a hawkmoth that squeaks. Isn't nature wonderful?

On another bird note, I invested almost HK$3,000 in an old book this week. I trawled www.abebooks.co.uk and confirmed it was a fair price (at Picture This) and bought "Shangai Birds", which Fumier will be disappointed to learn is not a more northerly version of Suzy Wong but a fine 1929 tome by E S Wilkinson, being an ornithological treatise sub-titled "A study of Bird Life in Shanghai and the Surrounding Districts".

I love these old books and seeing how our knowledge has progressed (or not) since days gone by. This was clearly still the era of 'sportsmen collecting birds'. That is to say, people shot the birds to identify them. Nowadays we prefer binocs or cameras unless we are Maltese or Italian. I learned as early as page one that there are some delightful collective nouns that seem to have fallen from use. When was the last time you heard someone refer to a "dopping of plovers" or a 'sedge of herons'. A 'desert of lapwings' was new to me but presumably in Malta it is spelled 'dessert'. How about a 'whisp of snipe' or a 'sord of mallard'. From a self-confessed layman this is a pretty good effort at documenting local natural history.

My wife, the adored Shirley, does not understand why I collect old books when you can go to Dymocks and buy a new one. She is even less understanding when I pay hundreds of pounds for old first editions, especially the New Naturalist series. I balked at paying a grand for a fine hardback copy of British Warblers though. It is a good job she doesn't know what the new camera body cost but she did ok as out of sheer guilt (and love) I bought her a new handbag at Bottega Veneta (or whatever it's called). Ho hum.