We're in

Well after what can only be described as a few days where the stress levels went off the scale we finally got in. Yesterday the rain cleared and I went for a walk up the hill. A nice selection of goodies. A Barking deer was foraging just off the main road - I had been told they were present but did not expect to see one first time out. Unfortunately it was too deep in the trees to take any photographs and it soon sensed my presence and crashed away. Then a smart, freshly painted Pallas's leaf warbler, Phylloscopus proregulus, followed by a female Red-flanked bluetail, Tarsiger cyanurus. This bird appears to be settled in this location as I have seen it here before. A Dusky warbler, Phylloscopus fuscatus, took me by surprise, although I don't know why. Its habitat is described in Viney, Phillipps and Lam as bushes, reeds, mangroves and open country but not woodland.

The bird shown above is the Black-throated laughingthrush, Garrulax chinensis. The light was going quickly when I took these and I was lucky I was using the 40D with an on-body flash (the pro model 1D mk III does not possess such a luxury). I pushed the ISO up to 800 then 1600 and got a couple of usable shots.

A few swifts flew overhead, very high. I always associate these with summer but these must be resident. The very short tail fork suggests these were House swifts, Apus nipalensis. A Large-billed crow, Corvus macrorhyncus, buzzed me a few times, unusually low overhead. As I descended I saw little more but today in the garden opposite I saw what I at first thought was going to be the common blackbird again, Turdus merula. A splash of flank colour immediately corrected this impression and the lightly speckled throat and pale underparts with a brown back made this a Pale thrush, Turdus pallidus. Aren't the latin names wonderful - what you see is what you get most of the time.

A couple of other species are obviously common here - Black-collared starling, Sturnus nigricollis, and Yellow-bellied prinia, Prinia flaviventris. Just listen for the cat like mewing.

The other photo I posted because I like it. No other reason. So the walk soothed the nerves a little and temporarily only. I seem to move house every 5 years. I aim to make it at least 10 this time. I can't take the strain. Technology is great. I am sitting on the terrace using my new Macbook Pro with WiFi but getting all the stuff to work has been challenging to say the least. The words "plug and play" ought to be banned under the Sale of Goods Act. No such thing. Two more days then back to work and so far no holiday despite being off for 15 days. All I wanted for Christmas was a smooth move (was the Sade?) but Santa missed me off the list. Bah. Humbug!

Happy new year to anybody who can be fagged to read this.

And here's one I prepared earlier...

Val Singleton and Chris Trace could never have produced anything as good as this. It is a Perixera decretarioides and it wended its way to Clearwater Bay last night.

Birds galore

The stress of the preparations for the move are beginning to show but each day I spend time at the house waiting for the next delivery / installation chaps (never a chap-ess in sight) to arrive and scan the garden in hope. The list is short but encouraging. Today a Crested goshawk flew past at close quarters (where is the camera when you need it?). A Fork-tailed sunbird was just across the path and a repeat of Monday's Olive-backed pipit flew over. Most pleasing was a Hwamei which is relatively common but I hadn't seen one on my current patch. At the new house one was hopping around on a scrubby tangle of branches in the communal garden. The usual suspects are present and Mrs.Ha found a Tree sparrow inside the dining room yesterday. The new turf had gone down, the doors were open, wall to wall, and Passer montanus clearly felt it was worth exploring. The raptor list is growing as I have also heard Crested serpent eagle calling. When we move in I shall be listening carefully for owls. Whether the plants will bring in any "extra" birds I don't know but at least now we have a bit of variety and colour. Our gardener (doesn't that sound posh!) told us the tree we bought as a Ham Siu is in fact a Ham siu grafted on to a Pak laan or laam trunk, the latter being a much faster grower so the nurseries turn them over much more quickly. I don't know if this is true but I have no reason to doubt it. Cunning eh!

As a tribute to the workers of HK so far all the sifu have been excellent. Only the rather shabby performance of NOW TV has let the side down. Despite having a name, rank and serial number they flatly denied knowledge of the order and appointment. Tusk, tusk.

The preparations continue and the birds bring relief.

Post script: Christmas Eve. I am a prophet. I did a late morning walk up the hill this morning whilst waiting for yet another delayed delivery and heard a hullabaloo in the canopy. Hmm, I thought. Sounds like small birds mobbing a bird of prey - and lo and behold, no wise men but a small owl sitting in the shade on a branch. I didn't get a good view as it flew as soon as it saw me but it was either a Collared scops owl or more likely from the shape of the head an Asian barred owlet. When we are settled I shall have to walk up at dusk and listen for the call.

Also 2 more Hwamei and 2 Bunting sp, possibly Tristram's. It was one of those days when you hear masses and see little. Old saying - you bird watch mainly with your ears!

And just to round the day off, a late afternoon (female) Blackbird in the garden across the path from the house.

A Shrike little poser

Let's go spy a kite

Black kites fly around our house every day but rarely perch. Where the shrike perched earlier, later the kite took up its lookout position. All 3 pics taken with an 800mm f5.6 lens and a 1.4x TC on a Canon 1D mkIII body. Enjoy.

Snapshot

Almost desperation shots here. They were taken from our patio and the closer of the two has burned the white throat, spoiling what otherwise would have been a nice portrait. The second is a distant shot cropped quite a lot. Very ordinary. Long-tailed shrike is a common but attractive bird and you can compare it with the Brown shrike from Sai Kung.

I am soooo tired. Woke up this morning and felt decidedly light headed so despite the gorgeous weather I decided to stay home. Four weeks of almost non stop travel across multiple timezones has left my body pumelled with exhaustion. Friday I start my block leave for 2 weeks and the move to Sai Kung will take place at the end of the break. The old adage is that the 3 most stressful things in life are bereavement, divorce and moving house. Well I have no experience of the middle one but I agree with the two others. This time though Mrs. Ha has truly done everything and all I have done is sign cheques. I am desperate to get into the new house and start recording the birds and moths from a new site. It is strange when you go house hunting and you have to explain to the agent that you need somewhere to run a moth trap. A 125w MV lamp is pretty bright so you need to be able to run it without disturbing the neighbours. I am lucky. The new house gives me opportunities front and back of the house. We went in yesterday, looked around and the builders are on time and budget. They are probably unique. Ask privately if you want to know who they are! The garden gets done this week too so we went out into the depths of the New Territories, got lost but eventually found the nursery we were looking for.




A very wide area stuffed full of goodies and we ended up buying a tree and a load of plants. The tree is called Ham siu fa or smiling flower (Michelia figo). It is common in HK. Most of the plants were untagged so I don't know the names but we certainly picked up what I recognize as marigolds. I have a feeling the gardner is going to tell me they won't grow in our garden but what the heck, its my garden and I'll plant if I want to as Lesley Gore famously didn't sing.

All I need to do now is survive four more days at work. Wish me luck. And by the way, Christmas is cancelled due to packing duties.

A selection of goodies from Mai Po.

Temminck's stint

Temminck's stint
Originally uploaded by 57Andrew

This is a delightful bird, photographed at Mai Po this morning.

They scuttle around on the mudflats, rarely coming very close to the hides. Occasionally they move away from the vegetation and pause briefly in the sun. This one has been probing for inverts in the slime and has a rather grubby bill.The yellowish green legs are distinctive but often hard to see because of the coating of mud.

The Brown Shrike at Sai Kung

Bombay

It is November 26th. I am in Bombay / Mumbai. Staying at the Trident adjacent the Oberoi. 12 months ago today was the terrorist attack. A real sense of reflection and sadness here. Had lunch in the Taj on Monday - still not fully restored and refurbed. Likewise the Oberoi. Not a day for silly puns.

And the North wind shall blow

Well of course it is mid November but still, a cold weather warning (it is a bitterly warm 13 deg C) so soon after a hot weather warning is something of a shock. So much so that it is very much a case of winter draws on. This is a rare early opportunity for the locals to besport themselves in their winter gladrags.

With a rare morning free I decided to wander further up the road behind the new house. Mid-morning is rarely birdy and so it proved today. I had excellent views of Scarlet-backed flowerpecker, a Grey wagtail was in the middle of the road and a White wagtail flew over the house. Best bird was a female or immature Red-flanked bluetail. If that turned up in Bishop's Stortford it would cause something of a twitch as would the next bird, sadly only heard, a Siberian rubythroat. A couple of late Barn swallows flew over.

After the initial steep section the road is quite easy. I followed the Maclehose trail a short distance to the Wong Chuk Yeung fire look out - a most unimposing edifice - and occasionally there are breaks in the vegetation and the viewer is rewarded with sweeping views around the area,all the way out to High Island reservoir. I have quickly worked out which islands are this side of the golfing paradise of Kau Sai Chau, the main ones being Kiu Tsui Chau, Pak Sha Chau, Tai Tsan Chau and its smaller sister Siu Tsan Chau and finally Cham Tau Chau.

Other than the ubiquitous kites there were no raptors to be seen this morning. However at the current house I yesterday saw one of the Sai Kung White-bellied sea-eagles hurtling around the Bayside Beach area. With a strong North-East monsoon blowing the birds are having a whale of a time (do whales have a bird of a time?) and there is pure adrenalin seemingly driving some of the spectacular wheels and dives.

Photography isn't really a great option at present. As the weather girls tell us, the UV reading is forecast to be about 3 today. That means grey skies and poor light. Bum is the word. Not "Grease".



If you have even the remotest interest in Hong Kong's birds I commend to you the works of Geoffrey Herklots. His book, Hong Kong Birds has some lovely plates (as illustrated) and is just generally a good browse. Ditto "The Hong Kong Countryside". You can pick up reasonable copies of these for under a tenner (GBP) at somewhere like www.abebooks.co.uk or you can buy a copy in very good condition with a dust jacket for rather more. I tend to use Picture This (Galleria or Princes Building) when I want copies to give as gifts. Chris Bailey will always have a decent copy in stock in my experience, even if not on display.

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.

The long hot summer of 09

Well it is about 33 C here today and it felt it this morning when Holmes and Hardacre trooped off to Long Valley to search for the elusive............ well anything really. Skittish. That was the word of the day. Well it wasn't Martin H's word when he discovered H2-Oh! had seen and got pics of Pallas's Gropper, when he had failed to lure the little blighter in. But yes, it was well nigh impossible to get within 100m of the egrets, waders, snipe etc before they flew away. JH saw a Grey-headed lapwing and AH didn't- too busy peering down the viewfinder. There was an obliging Fan-tailed wobbler and we saw a pair of Painted snipe. The PS is one of those unusual birds where the sexual dimorphism results in the female of the species being gaudier than the male. Anyway, any day when you see PS can't be all bad, now can it?

The 2 Hs were beginning to suffer from the heat by mid-morning. As they rambled they rambled. I distinctly recall mentioning The Curse on the House of Moriarty (The Hampstead Building Society). Intermittent downpours were a welcoming cooler but only served to make us steam more afterwards. JH was pointing out a flock of munias (yawn) when an LBJ took up the rear. It was the said Pallas's grasshopper warbler and it skulked a while as the flock moved on and then took off on its own. AH took some "record shots" - that is photographer-speak for shots that don't turn out as well as you hoped but these were genuine record shots. JH insisted that I credit him for standing behind me. And he did a fine job of it. Thank you JH. I am sure there will be better in Yunnan. After that the excitement died down and we decided that the heat was going to win. I rambled on about sponsoring Liverpool next year and JH admitted to being a closet 'Pool fan as a lad, when Shanks bestrode the globe like a colossus. Football is not a matter of life and death, he said. It's much more important than that. This is my 2nd favourite footie quote after Best's response to the question, where did all the money go George? "I spent most of it on women, booze and fast cars and the rest I wasted." I of course never supported anybody but Hereford aka The Mighty Bulls, with just a tiny passion for Leeds. I think I sobbed when Sunderland beat them in the cup final. Well we did make it back to the cars with JH rambling again about how our waggies were really Amur Wagtails. Extraordinary what you learn when you are out with an educated birder. And just in case you are interested this is the PGW.

Typhoon tea

Plans to go abirding have been derailed by the latest typhoon - Typhoon Washout. One of the compensations is to see how the kites cascade and swirl in the wind, like some form of corkscrew roller coaster. Anybody who believes they don't do this for the sheer hell of it should just watch a while and be converted. We had a noisy and sleepless night as the wind crashed against our windows and the rain rattled down, with the occasional lightning but no thunder as I could tell. Our house faces NNE and the typhoons tend to come from the NE so we get pretty much the full brunt.

These were the skies this afternoon as we went down to T3. Shortly afterwards the heavens opened again but briefly. I tried one as taken and one in B&W, courtesy of photoshop.

Lazarus

I thought I was dead but actually I was just brain dead from work. Life has been in totally the wrong rhthym. But I do still have a camera and I do very occasionally take photos. In Blue Peter fashion, here's one I prepared earlier



This is a male Hierodula patellifera. It is a Praying mantis and it was captured by my lens as recently as last night. Quite a strange chap. He just kept walking round in circles and seemed fascinated by the flashgun's pre flash. Looked at it every time so when the actual flash went he was staring right down the barrel of the lens.

Here is another rather flashy visitor.



Hypsopygia mauritialis is a Pyralid moth. Not uncommon.

In a few months time we - Mrs Ha., Lulu and I will move to a new home in Sai Kung and I can start recording what occurs around the new abode. We even have a microscopic garden, in which I can play. Lulu? Ah,let me introduce Lulu:




Like all good hounds this 3lb ball of Pomeranian fluff is deciding whether to bite the mat or Mrs. Ha's bum. She made a good choice.

I may post again sometime in 2009.

Kenya continued

Every safari has its highlights and lowlights. For me there were a few real highlights. The group of Montagu’s harriers on the ground at Samburu was quite exceptional. We spotted one, then two and finally we found 5 sitting amongst the wispy grass. There were 3 females and 2 males. With the sunlight softening and falling they looked quite beautiful and as they allowed us to approach reasonably close and flew barely 50m when we crossed the invisible line of tolerance, I suspect they were on migration and simply too tired to care. I have seen Monties before. My first was in Spain about 15 years ago and I had even seen an occasional bird in the UK but never at such close quarters. If you look at the images at the bottom of the previous post you can see just how good they look with the yellow eye gleaming. The male is a particularly smart bird and I have an image of one flying away from us.



There is a real chance of confusion for the inexperienced birdwatcher. Male Montagu’s and Pallid harriers are easily confused if you don’t get a good view of the wing markings. The shape of the black marking on the outer primaries / secondaries is less extensive on the Pallid and comes to a point. The Montagu’s has a black bar on the inner secondaries and underneath has beautiful chestnut streaking. The Pallid is a clean bird, often described as ethereal. It does have a ghostly pallor as it quarters across the grassland. My photo above shows the shape of the Montagu’s black wing tip markings and the secondary bar.

Females are more cryptic and my previous post showed a female Montagu's. Here are 2 female Pallids (or actually the same bird in different poses). Look very carefully at the facial markings.






Particularly noteworthy is the pale necklace that shows from above the ear coverts to the neck.

Just to reassure you that Kenya has bugs and indeed larger beasts, here are 2 more pictures from the trip. The moth is Bunaeopsis oubie of the family Saturniidae and the other is a cat.

On the road with Mrs. Ha in Kenya or MAMOBA!!

I had heard the expression “Miles and miles of bloody Africa” before but did not know that it came from Hemingway. Given in my Google searches as “MMBA”, I prefer “Mamoba”. It has more of a Kiswahili ring about it. This certainly captures the spirit of the vast, open, grassland landscapes of the Mara but to me it encapsulates also the clouds of thick, clogging dust, the corrugated roads that make your spine feel like it has a road-drill vibrating inside it and the swirling, pebble-glass haze of heat that distorts your vision. We visited Samburu and Masai Mara, two very different places.

Samburu is a bird paradise but you have to earn your rewards. A sort of BirdMiles scheme perhaps? We flew in from Nairobi to the Samburu airstrip but our lodge was still nearly 90 minutes away. The road was rutted stone, bone-jarring every inch of the way. By the end of a day in the field the sandy grime matted the hair and clung to the clothes, forcing its way in to your eyes, nose and throat. And heat. Endless gulps of bottled water kept us hydrated as the sun slowly baked the sardine lid roof of the safari bus. Thank heavens we had the bus to ourselves.

Mara is cooler. Our lodge airstrip said we were at 5,500’. Much better tracks, smoothed by the greater commercialism of dozens of vehicles criss-crossing the grassland, desperately trying to sate the clamour for the “Big Five” from eager voyeurs. Fewer trees. More open landscapes with lush greens shading to arid browns, truly breathtaking. For us, Mara meant fewer birds but a greater chance to relax and enjoy the Kenyan experience as you see it in the glossies and on the endless wildlife programmes. But don’t expect a “kill a minute”, Big Cat Diary style. Game drives are leisurely affairs on the whole, gentle giraffes chewing on acacia thorns or lolloping along at a measured pace; herds of buffalo, grazing contentedly then staring directly at you as you approach, unsure whether to back off or snort and snuffle aggressively; timid gazelles, aristocratic elephants, demanding respect and trumpeting occasionally to remind you and each other, who is where and who is in command. Contrast the cool, polished Topi of the Mara with the tinder dry Oryx of Samburu. There are of course sudden changes of tempo in Mara as a bus finds something special. Lion, cheetah, black rhino……in 3 days no sign of leopard anywhere. Anything feline provokes dust storms of F1 style driving as the drivers try to out-position their peers so that their clients have the best vantage point and photo opportunity. High stakes here as end of tour tips tend to be correlated with success on the savanna. Our experience was that the lions were invariably asleep (although we did witness one brief copulation) and the cheetahs more active. We saw one aborted hunt and two days in a row we found the same mother and cubs, providing us with fine entertainment. To Mrs. Ha’s relief none of the cats decided to use the vehicle as a vantage point. I think it was Jonathan Scott, who once had the privilege of being underneath a stream of Cheetah pee as he sat inside the Land Rover or Land Cruiser and the cheetah walked across the roof, relieving itself as it did so.

No balloon trips at Samburu either. Mara is cool, Samburu is the spiky teenage rebel. Mara is the Range Rover whilst Samburu is the Defender.

And I learned a lot about photography. It is a cliché that photography is all about light. Cliché it may be but nowhere is this truer than on an African safari. I had done some bird photography in Kenya in 2005 but this time I was much more aware of quality rather than quantity.

I used almost exclusively my Canon 400mm F4 DO lens with a 1.4x TC on a 1D mk III body. This on a bean bag gave excellent results. It is amazing what 2kg of rice can do to your photographs! In poor light I did a few times shoot at ISO 3200 with acceptable results. Such is the quality of the Canon sensor.

I learned that the soft light of morning and evening can indeed give a warm, luscious tone to a picture but it can also play havoc with whites, caught by the sun. Spangling or dappling effects can create sharp contrast that the human eye can cope with and a digital sensor can not. Try getting a cheetah correctly exposed in late afternoon sun and see what I mean. At times I had to use -2 2/3 compensation to hold the whites and stop them burning out. Yellows were especially challenging. The Yellow-throated longclaws were particularly hard to get right and I deleted far more images than I kept. There were recurring problems with highlights on acacia thorns, elephant tusks and bird legs, all of which reflected a great deal of light. Getting unobstructed images was often tough with grass and thorns obscuring part of the target. Over time I disciplined myself to take fewer pictures and be more selective on when to squeeze the shutter button. Sometimes it is simply better not to take the picture. A few horror moments also reminded me of the need for “re-set hygiene”. Simply put, after shooting I always returned the settings to AV, F5.6, +/- 0, Single shot, “silent” shutter mode.

The real eye-opener for me was the way Mrs. Ha took to photographing birds. I set her D30, 400mm F5.6 combination to take small jpeg files (I took RAW and jpeg combined) and she rattled off a huge number of images. Yet she deleted ruthlessly and her eye for composition is better than mine. She soon was in the swing of jostling me for the optimum shooting position and getting the driver to move a yard this way or that to get the light “just right”. Good on you, my love!

Our guide was from Nature’s Wonderland Safaris. I will provide unbiased references on request. A few logistical comments. We could not get our preferred lodge at Samburu and ended up at one in Shaba. There are 3 adjoining reserves, Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba. As I mentioned above, Shaba is not close to the airstrip, the roads are grim and there is little “big game” Shaba side. You go to Shaba for birds. We stayed at a lodge that was to put it kindly, tired. The rooms were ok but hot with little airflow and the “aircon” only a noisy fan. After a bad first night we were told we could leave our windows open at night (contradicting what we had been told the previous day) and this gave us much relief. The food was ordinary. But the restaurant did boast a Shikra sitting on a branch next to the breakfast buffet on day 2. The grounds also held Giant kingfisher so not too shabby! After a fairly tense exchange with our reluctant guide, whom I had told to drive us on a route that would allow us to pass a lodge (any lodge) for a toilet break at some stage in our 12 hour all-day marathon, we found the lovely Ashnil Samburu Camp. 25 minutes from the airstrip in beautiful surroundings we were welcomed, walked around and shown the rooms and we rapidly wished we had stayed there. It is newly opened and had not a single guest the day we visited. Well worth a look.

At the Mara we stayed at Keekorok Lodge. This was a big improvement on our Shaba experience. It was very busy, many groups seemingly from France and Japan with a few Brits thrown in, presumably spending their last pounds before the currency and country sink without trace under GB’s “leadership”. This lodge is comfortable, well equipped, friendly and has lovely grounds. It is 5 minutes from the airstrip (2.2km the sign says). We enjoyed our stay here but again the food was pretty ordinary and none of the meals started on time. This is not a problem at lunchtime but if you want a 6.30 breakfast before you go off on a game drive it is annoying when the service starts at 6.45. However tea, coffee and biscuits are available from 6.00.





Mr. and Mrs. Montagu' S Harrier


To be continued

On hearing the first ......

Old Fred Delius was a Yorkshire man and there's not many people know that. Unlike his Trueman namesake he didn't play cricket for any country but he wrote a tone poem called On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. Well I heard my first Koel, Eudynamis scolopacea, of Spring on Saturday. It is quite possible they have been calling for a while but I have been in Singapore and Jakarta all week so yesterday was the first time I heard our local alarm clock. When we go to bed we hear the Collared scops owl, Otus lempiji. There is something soothing and reassuring about birds calling and singing, whether it is at dawn or dusk or even during the hours of darkness. The bird below is a male Koel




As I write I can hear the bulbuls chattering and outside the study window a Tree sparrow, Passer montanus, is making a wheezy rasp. A couple of Spotted doves, Streptopelia chinensis, are courting, the male bobbing at the female optimistically. Tonight Mrs. Ha and I are heading off to one of my favourite places, Kenya. Just a short 8 day sprint round Samburu and the Mara, ending up with a dinner with friends in Nairobi. So no posts this week but to finish with a couple of moths from last night.




The first is Marasmia trapezalis, rather early to be on the wing and the second is Herochroma cristata. What wonderfully cryptic colouring. Both braved the 18 degree Celsius temperature and the steady drizzle and I thank them both.