Twitter

As I understand it Twitter is some form of short messaging service to the yoof of today. I have never actually seen a Twitter and today I was reminded that the old forms of twitter are almost certainly better than the new. I refer to the captivating sound of the swallow or as we are encouraged to call dear old hirundo rustica today, Barn swallow. After a week in dreary London, where I saw snow for the first time in years, I returned last night to a rather warm and humid Hong Kong.

(At this point the blog was interrupted for over a week).

The twitterer seems to be taking up residence. The top photo was taken outside our house on the terrace whereas the second was taken inside the garage. There will now be a family "discussion" about whether Barney stays or is evicted PDQ. Its been a wildlife-y sort of week. Wednesday we had a snake alarm. Only the maid saw the snake and she threw stones at it. She was roundly scolded. When I arrived home from work, late as usual, I went out into the garden with a torch but could find no trace. I am not even convinced it was a snake rather than a lizard but I live in hope.

Then the next day I was in a meeting and received an sms - "A swallow is in the kitchen sitting on the range hood". I can deal with things like that. There are 2 options: leave it there or wait for it to fly through the open patio doors. Option 3, cook it, was not voted on.

The garden is looking good. Butterflies are visiting the plants and the lawn is beginning to look like a lawn. I have another daunting week ahead with a day trip to London on Monday. Don't ask why..... but I fly HK-London-Singapore in 40 hours and back to HK Thursday night. Sorry this is brief but tempus fugit. In fact I was sitting next to a gentleman of advancing years at dinner yesterday evening and he told me that his weeks now fly by in a day and his months in a week. A year is but a blink of an eye. I feel the same. There is no benefit wishing our lives away but time seems to do it for us. We had the "how much longer will you carry on working like this?" discussion again last night and I guess the answer is as long as the body hangs in there. It is, I must say, twitter moments that make it all worthwhile.

This is what the 800mm lens is for!

An obliging accipiter trivirgatus sitting on a telegraph pole close to our home in Sai Kung. The sky is grey and horrible but the bird is just dandy. We saw 4 raptors in half an hour - Black kite, a pair of Crested serpent eagles calling and a White-bellied sea-eagle. The fourth of course was the gos'.

And hallelujah, the temperature rose into double digits today.

The goshawk was something of a spirit lifter after failing to find the RBF again and then virtually missing an eyeball fly past by a White-bellied sea eagle. I was photographing the scenery (??) and peering through my G9 when my wife not so quietly drew my attention to the approaching eagle. As invariably happens at times like that I discovered all the settings were wrong on the lens and the tripod was falling forwards. By the time I grabbed it, stabilized it and switched to AI servo the eagle was metaphorically giving me the V sign and disappearing into the distance. In fact if you look very carefully you can see the WBSE looking over its shoulder and laughing.



We did find a RBF higher up on the MacLehose Trail but this was a very nervous bird. It wouldn't let us approach within 25m. Similarly a female Daurian redstart. A flighty little thing, played fast and loose and always just out of reach. Story of my life. So by the time we were almost home I was fairly miserable to say the least. Then the Crusty Gos did its stuff and we all lived happily ever after. What a fine bird.

Siren call of the Luscinia cyanurus

After days of dripping dreariness the weather improved enough for me to walk up the hill today. Barely bright enough to see a bird let alone photograph one I was pleased to find a reasonably confiding Red-flanked bluetail. It is almost certainly the same bird I see each time as it is consistently in the same location. As the winter has drawn on it seems to have become less flighty. The hill is favoured by dog walkers and possibly the RFB is now so accustomed to them that it barely deigns to hop a few feet away as someone approaches.

I had with me the 100-400mm zoom on a 7D body and I thought this would get me some semblance of decent size in the frame. And then, just as I was zooming out, the ****** thing locked. Wouldn't zoom in or out. Thank you Canon! I was stuck at precisely 220mm. And there it stayed. So the images you see above are huge crops and shot at ISO800 as the 7D starts to get yucky above that. My exif data tells me they were shot after 4pm.

About 30 mins later I set off from home again lugging the 800mm f5.6 on a tripod. As I did so I knew what would happen. Carrying this gear up a very steep hill left me gasping for breath or beer, either could do if I weren't teetotal, after barely 5 minutes. And by then there was no light and no bird. People passing by looked at me in bewilderment, as well they might.

The RFB is however a lovely bird and this is probably a female. It called several times. The call is described as a "coarse whistle". That sounds about right to me. It stayed close to the ground most of the time, picking at whatever it could find, occasionally hopping up onto low branches or rocks. The Latin name is going to be problematic as the HK List has this as Tarsiger cyanurus but Brazil (Birds of East Asia) has it firmly in the robin bucket. I don't suppose the bird (or indeed I) really cares. Taxonomy tends to leave me mildly chilly although I do know people who get all of a quiver when they discover they have an armchair tick or perhaps have lost a tick through some taxonomist somewhere splitting or lumping "species". Some people claim 16 different sorts of Chiffchaff I believe but to me Chiffchaff is fine as long as it is not a Willow warbler. I suspect I shall have my bins confiscated for that. If I had unlimited time I might feel differently. But I don't. And I shall be back at work before you can say "phylogenetic species concept" and in the words of my ex-brother "life's too short to stuff a mushroom".

Goodnight children everywhere. Tune in again to Listen with Moth-er.

Here comes the rain again....

No Annie Lennox here and indeed nobody at all. Its not much of a day really. Pouring with rain, Mrs. Ha out, Wales losing to some team or other yesterday and only Hereford rescuing the situation. I can hardly see through the windows but a Hair-crested drongo did pass briefly by in the garden opposite.

The moths are beginning to perk up. A lot of them are micros (for micro read "small" although that is a generalization that does not always hold good). They are poorly recorded in Hong Kong. Some lepidopterists specialize in micros and one, Mark S is contributing to the magnum opus on HK Moths. Unfortunately (for us) he is no longer resident here so his work has become more sporadic and poor Roger K bears the brunt. Poorly recorded also means many are unidentified. There are few reference guides so it all becomes a bit of a lottery. They can however be quite extraordinarily beautiful, even if in some extreme cases you need a microscope to see the colours and patterns.

The pictures are a bit small but the top one is a tortrix moth, very elaborately patterned with the clear geometric marks where the wings meet. Maybe they look to a bird like bird droppings against the main background of the forewing and so get left in peace. The other two are phycitinae, but as to species, I have no idea.

The bottom one is a B&W shot from the top floor of the house. Low hanging clouds draped carelessly over the hills leaving only the islands in the sea clearly visible.

Only the dog seems unbothered by the dankness of the weekend. She stays deep in her basket, snaffling a biscuit occasionally, hoping when I pass that I shall smuggle a venison chew into her mouth. I have no idea whether they are actually venison. Somehow I hope not. The main thing is Lulu likes them and we won't disillusion her. She is too young to be told that venison chews, like Santa, may just be less than the real thing.

Only 7 days to the lunar new year. I ought to be driving back and forth to Mai Po to see big gulls (Big gulls don't cry, as one song famously doesn't have it). But the energy isn't there so I get my gull fix vicariously looking at the amazing photos on HKWildlife.net. This year garden birds and the local patch are enough. All I want is a dry period to explore again.

𝄞 The first Koel 𝄞

Walking through Sai Kung town today en route to the quaintly called "Honeymoon Dessert" I heard the Koel. It is something of a memory prod that we are starting on a new Spring as I have not heard one in recent months. I hope we don't get one as our morning wake up call or even a Welsh Koel that sings Ar Hyd a Nos.