Spring has sprung

Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonder where
The birdy is?

Well yesterday they were at Mai Po, freshly reopened from the government's ludicrous 21 day ban. If anyone can get close enough to a live bird at MPNR to catch H5N1, please tell me how so I can take photos. If its dead I suspect most people are not going to put in their pocket with the cheese sarnies for a tasty 11 o'clock snack. Bird 'flu, cheese and pickle. Whoopee! But I digress.

I left the warmth of my bed at the crack of dawn yesterday and was at MPNR before 7am. So early in fact I was 3rd in the new hide. We were there to welcome a solitary Dalmatian pelican, returning after a couple of years absence and without his/her chums. And there it was, in all its glory, no more than a mile out in Deep Bay. This is a splendid bird and when it flew over us at 10.41 the few of us privileged to see it where united in our awe and joy.

My first delight of the day was a Plain prinia, sitting up and singing its little heart out, oblivious to the lens poked in its face. A scrap of a thing but bursting with lust (I suspect).

Walking on, a flock of (Red-billed) starlings turned somersaults in the sky, a loud swoosh, invented long before NIKE thought of it, clearly audible as they tumbled. Then breeding cormorants, with their gleaming white flank patches and filoplumes on the head and neck... so much more exotic than their, forgive me, rather drab non-breeding plumage. As I reached the end of the avenue leading to the Frontier Closed Area a female Daurian redstart flitted around in a bush, half hidden in the shade but flashing her reddish bum in the sunshine whilst her face stayed hidden, possibly in embarrassment at her brazen behaviour.

Once out in the hide the birds were distant as the tide was out. A long way out. The sound of Curlews blowing bubbles through a flute dominated the soundscape, the flashing white rump revealed on landing confirmed them as the common Numenius arquata (orientalis) rather than the less frequent Antipodean N. madagascarensis or Australian curlew, whose call has more of an Aussie whine to it.

Also in the distance specks of white merging in to long streamers. Avocets. Wonderful birds with a harsh "kluut" call. As my far more knowledgeable hide-companion observed, ok at this level but damned annoying from dawn to dusk on the breeding grounds. Theirs presumably, not his.

You are always guaranteed egrets on the mudflats even when nothing else shows up and sometimes they look simply stunning with the delicate aigrettes all fluffed up with nowhere to go. Maybe at midnight they turn into pumpkins but in the soft morning sun they look as good as Cinderella ever could.

Mid-morning the smoky streamers of cormorants crossed before us, from Tsim Bei Tsui (The Fence) towards wherever they cared to settle. Hundreds and hundreds. Possibly thousands. I didn't count. A real "birder" would have counted them so I guess I'm a dude really. The shame of it. I just like 'em. The multi-coloured dots drifted slowly in with the tide - male Shoveler. Crackingly good-looking birds. They are real dandies, gaudy show-offs with large saptulate bills. Hooray for Shovelers, I say.

Panic suddenly as a Greater spotted eagle lapped across the mudflats. What a bird. How could you not like a bird with the Latin name Aquila clanga? This is a name I never forget. It ought to whistle like a a real clanger, angry at the Soup dragon or Iron chicken. (Actually I was more of a Noggin the Nog man myself. Of course Graculus the bird was my favourite.) But it doesn't. In fact I've never heard a Clanga utter a syllable.

A couple of kingfishers loaf on posts. Black-capped and White-breasted. Should be regarded as "exotics" on colour alone but they belong here. Over-dressed if ever a bird were.

More panic and the avocets go up. An eastern marsh harrier is mobbed incessantly by a Collared crow, driving it off until everything settles again. The dog fight lasts several minutes and is almost as exciting as a Welsh win at Twickers. Diolch yn fawr, chaps.

Just before 10am I notice an Osprey also sitting on a post. A big bird to stay invisible for so long.

I stayed several hours more. The tide came in ever so, ever so slowly. The hide filled up with people eager for high tide and a glimpse of the pelican. So many 'scopes, bins and cameras it would have put half of Stanley Street to shame. Weariness overcame me and I left. Too early. I gave up on the tide coming in really close but I discovered this morning that I had missed a Slender-billed gull. Aargh. I have seen them in Greece but never in Hong Kong. Still, I saw the dapper little Saunders gulls so that was some consolation. But not a lot. So I will have to go back again next weekend if the tides are right. Such is life.