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.

Bewitched, bewildered and bed-raggled.

Lots of birds of late but not so many bugs. We were looking at a house this morning and there were a few birds around in the rain but this was the highlight - a beautiful silk moth, drenched and waterlogged in the middle of the path. I stopped anybody treading on it and then took a couple of photos with my G9 before removing the moth to somewhere dry where it could recover.

I hope Dr. Roger Kendrick will not mind me quoting from his excellent thesis, which states:

Global distribution: India, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China (HuN, HeB, SD, FJ, GD, GX, GZ) (Wu, 1984; Liang et al., 1989; Zhu & Wang, 1996; Brosch et al., 1999; Nässig, 2000).

H.K. distribution: uncertain, possibly restricted (TLF, Lam Tsuen). H.K. status: uncertain, possibly rare or declining. H.K. larval hosts: Cinnamomum camphora (L.) J. Presl. (Lauraceae) and Liquidamber formosana Hance (Hamamelidaceae) (Lee & Winney, 1982). Notes: populations of this species appear to be localised and declining in number (P. Aston, pers. com.), although some populations are quite abundant. Previously reported in Hong Kong (e.g. Lee & Winney, 1982; Hill et al., 1982) in the genus Eriogyna, which was synonymised with Saturnia by Nässig (1994). Hill et al. (1982) reported this species as quite common, page 208 especially in the New Territoires and that it was probably univoltine (without specifying when), but that it was possible there may be a “second generation in the summer sometimes”."

This record is consistent with it being univoltine / February.

Pick me up

If the sky above you
Should turn dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind should begin to blow
Keep your head together and call my name out loud
And soon I will be knocking upon your door.
You just call out my name and you know where ever I am
Ill come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you got to do is call
And Ill be there, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shakespeare it ain't but its still a great song by James Taylor.

Life is pretty hard at present. Not, job-loss, lost the shirt on mini-bonds type stuff, but just unrelenting grind and endless frustration trying to find somewhere to retire to that I can afford type stuff. Long hours at work and very little down time. Even the last few birding outings have been pretty disappointing. So this buzzard was a real tonic (without the gin) this afternoon. The kites are regularly wheeling around, having fun and showing off. A trio of birds was cavorting in front of me in the soft afternoon sun when I suddenly realised that one was a buzzard and the other two were giving it a hard time, trying to drive it away. I ran for the camera and fired off half a dozen frames. Two were ok and here they are, the first banking towards me and then directly overhead. Direct overhead shots don't work too well but at least this has some semblance of eye contact. I felt a lot better for seeing Buteo buteo (so good they named it twice!). This buteo is japonicus whitish below with a dark belly patch and a pale unmarked tail. (If you click on the images you get better sized ones.) So it was the buzzard that knocked on my metaphorical door today and I am very grateful.

As a postscript, and assuming you can spot four pictures not two, the bird came round again and performed again. Bravo!

Black bulbul

This is Hypsipetes leucocephalus although I don't know why. This variation does not have a white head! I also need to check whether the taxonomy is current. I have seen this bird before but never photographed it. This was a very distant shot, cropped to a reasonable size but showing the effects. Its status in HK is "classic irruption species, common and widespread in some years... scarce or absent in others."