No Go Mai Po

Yesterday I had a rare trip to Mai Po and took some nice pictures, a few of which I shall inflict on you. Or you could just visit my Flickr page!

Today, however, a Swallow in Yuen Long has caused MPNR to be closed for 21 days. Many people much better qualified than I have articulated why this is a daft thing to do. Local experts Dr. Martin WIlliams and Mike Kilburn have both written on the matter. I really struggle to understand the mentality of the bureaucrats, who have no understanding of what they are doing. Are they going to impose a "no go" zone around the site, where the swallow was found? What else is now closed apart from bureaucrats' minds? Oh well, dose the idiots up with Tamiflu quick in case there is an outbreak of commonsense. If you read the WWF announcement I think it is fair to conclude that it too believes the closure is bonkers and completely unnecessary but it has to defer to the government and AFCD (the C is silent on most occasions). Frankly I'd me much in favour of WWF HK coming out and telling the government what they think. If Ricky Martin can come out, so can WWF HK.

So my plans for today have been aborted and we may go to the garden centre instead. Lets hope that hasn't been closed.

At this time of year the tides at MPNR are good and yesterday the predicted 2.3m tide brought the birds close to the hides. In fact the tide was probably higher than that although I haven't checked the Observatory site to confirm it. So, that means gulls and waders or "peeps" as our friends across the Atlantic insist on calling them.

Gulls are arguably the most challenging birds to identify although some may argue for raptors, cisticolas or indeed waders. They come in many shapes and sizes, take varying years to mature and have different plumages depending on age and season. A quick glance at "Gulls" by Klaus Malling Olsen and Hans Larsson makes my eyes glaze over. I am used to dealing with Greeks but Vega gulls baffle me. Now the more educated amongst my readers will observe that Vega is not a Greek letter but stop nit-picking. I am reminded of my father telling me the very old joke: What's a Greek Urn? About 40 drachma a week! I suspect I was five at the time and found it amusing. Well very little was amusing in 1962 so why shouldn't I laugh?

But I digress. Mai Po was at its best yesterday. Apart from the light, which for most of the morning was dreary. There is a real buzz to sitting in the hide and hearing the crescendo of a swish overhead. The birds fly in to see whether the tide has gone out enough for them to feed on the mudflats and as they do their recce you hear the wonderful noise of tens if not hundreds of them flying at great speed. One may be silent. Hundreds are not. When the main flocks arrive there may be hundreds of thousands of them densely dancing over Deep Bay, sometimes put up by an encroaching raptor (the Ospreys were at it yesterday) or by the tide forcing them off their chosen feeding grounds.

Furthest out are the ducks, Shoveler, Wigeon, Garganey..... then deep threads of black and white Avocets. There are gulls and of course "old carrot nose" himself, the Caspian tern. Look at this bird, what an absolute beauty.




There was also a single Gull-billed tern. But it is the overall experience that you go for. I cannot understand how people can sit behind a camera for hours and not be inspired.











And as a bonus, my first ever effort to video anything using a DSLR, the Canon 7D.



So is there anything bad about MPNR? Well the amount of building going on around the reserve is pretty awful. The buffer zone seems to be shrinking all the time. Road works seem to be everywhere and I have this nightmare that someone will decide that the Tower Hide is excellent potential for conversion into a town house or a number of bijou flats. (I'd like to credit JH for the word "bijou"). So in the event that some jobsworth behind a desk somewhere decides that it is safe to be within 3km of a wild bird I do recommend that you visit the reserve. Of course, if you are local that means going on an organised group trip at times that guarantee you'll see pretty much nothing BUT you could take up birding, join WWF HK, The HK Birdwatching Society and apply for permits and the you too can see the greatest show on earth. But please leave room for me and my camera. Thank you.