All quiet on the Eastern Front

Sunday January 31st

An uneventful weekend after a draining week at work. I walked down Lung Mei Tsuen Road on Saturday and through Ngau Liu, Lung Mei , across the Sai Kung River and down to the main road in Sai Kung itself. As I walked out the Verditer flycatcher showed briefly (and again today) but still it has not come across the communal garden close enough to provide good photographic opportunities. It seems to like the company of bulbuls as I have only once seen it alone. Suddenly Fork-tailed drongos have appeared and a Siberian stonechat near Jade Villa was a bonus. A flash of dark orange made me start but I could not follow the bird. Today a female Daurian redstart was nearby. Could that have been it? Small private "gardens" were resplendent with orange trees for the Chinese New Year and lower down some blossom was being tied ready for sale.

I had not expected to see Red-billed starlings near the road but a small group of 4 or 5 were up in the trees. The "river" is a bit of a generous tag as it is little more than a stream but may provide some dragonflies later in the year. It was devoid on anything today. There were butterflies on the wing but nothing settled.

The moth numbers have just started to pick up and the temperature today rose to a rather unexpected 26 C. The species count was into double figures and any hawkmoth is welcome. Hippotion rosetta is a smallish hawkmoth but attractive all the same. There were two near the trap and luckily the gecko was some way away on the sun terrace. Mrs Ha. claims to have seen a frog and I am assuming she means an amphibian not a visitor from la belle France. I am all agog about the frog. Ha ha! By the way the other moth is Dasychira inclusa.

Finally a trip to the nursery resulted in two small orange trees, a large branch of blossom for the "crane" vase and a smaller planted blossom display. We were given two free pot plants for spending so much! I think the epithet 'free' may have been misleading. This is the first year we haven't bought from the fair in Victoria Park but I still expect to make the pilgrimage when it opens. Roll on the next weekend when, Kuan Yin willing, the skies will be blue and the breeze balmy.

Post script:

The frog is a toad. Bufo melanostictus to be precise.

My desire has been Kindled

If you are a bookworm like me the idea of reading off a gadget must seem pretty horrendous. However I travel a lot and carrying books around is just more weight in the luggage. Frequently I have several tucked away. At dinner the other evening PS showed me his Kindle and I must admit I thought it was excellent so I went home and ordered one from Amazon USA. It arrived in a matter of days. I bought a leather cover for it and the whole lot including postage was about US$300. It was already registered and when I switched it on it showed as "Andrew's Kindle". A nice touch. It comes with a dreadful two flat-pin USA plug so you need an adaptor if you live in the civilized world.

It is wi fi and I managed to download a couple of books quite easily. No cables needed. It is pretty intuitive and sits easily in the hand. I bough the smaller version but you can purchase one in A4 size if you wish. I changed the font size to make it easier for my old eyes - you can't do that with a book. You could use a magnifying glass but thats a bit awkward. You can make notes on it and place bookmarks but I have not yet managed to tear a page by mistake. It is quite light and Amazon has resisted the temptation to make it too showy. Very understated. It is not in colour but I normally read in black and white.

Any shortcomings? Well its not an iPad as one of my colleagues pointed out. But he's a gadget freak and just MUST HAVE every new boy's toy that comes out. And its a lot cheaper than the iPad - about half the price. It may not have every book you want - paper won't go out of fashion, of that I am sure. But for travelling I think 1000 books is plenty. If you really get to fill it up you can delete the book but it remains stored on Amazon's server for you to download again later if you wish. They even store your notes and bookmarks. I suppose its a bit like paying to use an online library.

So this is an 8/10 product for me. It loses a bit because I have already failed to find a few books for download that I wanted and of course it's not paper. But that's about it. It does, as they say, what it says on the tin. Very neat.

Cold fliers

Not much time to bird between business trips but we did have a Dusky warbler on the back lawn on Friday afternoon and this morning a distant Osprey in poor light. This bird seems to be a regular passer-by. The White-bellied sea eagle also flew past but not close enough to get a decent image. Bearing in mind how far away the Osprey was and how small in the frame I am amazed it is even vaguely useable! And if you don't know which is the warbler and which is the Osprey, you are reading the wrong blog.

Despite the cold weather there were also a couple of moths on the wing. Lacera procellosa is a rather cryptically coloured moth that rests with wings held upright, butterfly style. Ophiusa disjungens is a large moth that reminds me vaguely of Large Yellow Underwing, an abundant moth in England, where I used to trap (in VC 20, Herts). The only other moth last night was a micro, Diamond-back moth or Plutella xylostella, which Dr. Roger Kendrick describes as "widespread and common". He might have added "jumpy" as I could not get it to settle long enough to photograph! If you can't tell which of the above images are birds and which moths, then you are even more off target than I imagined.

As a complete aside, I ordered a Kindle yesterday. Two people in 3 days have raved about them and I have seen them in action. I may report back in due course. I shall be intrigued to see how many natural history books are available.

Fishing

Click for larger image.

Don't you just lurv black and white?

Little and Large

Sitting at my Macbook half an hour or so ago I suddenly noticed a White-bellied sea eagle heading towards the house. I grabbed the new 7D camera and ran onto the roof to take the picture above. For the uninitiated, the eagle is the black and white jobby. OK the light was going but actually I underexposed it and the image is noisy. I also noticed visible vignetting with the 100-400mm lens. All in all a very disappointing shot.

The next moment the blackbird appeared and I had to run downstairs. This time the camera to hand was the 1DmkIII with the 400mm f4 DO lens. A slight improvement even shot at 800 ISO. You get what you pay for. This blackbird is interesting as there is a suggestion of an extension to the yellow eye ring behind the eye, vaguely reminiscent of Hwamei. The underparts also look faintly barred. Odd.


Finally, another Scaly-breasted munia. This one is impersonating a Pitta. No chance of fooling anyone, not even me but a real poser, coming so close I could have trodden on it and definitely too close to focus.

The other decent bird and "new for the patch" was an Osprey. I was sitting on the sun terrace passing the time of day when my bins picked out a distant blob on a rock. My immediate reaction was "another loafing kite". But wait, this has a white top to the blob. Can only be an osprey! Fifteen minutes later it took off and flew towards me and sure enough it was Blobus albinocapo or Pandion haliaetus to its friends. What a real treat to be able to see these raptors whilst drinking coffee. It almost makes up for the fact that I shall be away for 8 of the next 10 days. NOT happy.

Wong Chuk Yeung

Last time I said I would walk to Wong Chuk Yeung on my next outing. Being a man of my word, I did so this morning and took Mrs. Ha with me. In fact she led the charge.

The walk itself was disappointing on the bird front but we had some nice scenery to look at and chatted to a number of passing strangers. As Mrs. Ha observed, they were all gweilos and Chinese wouldn't engage in such casual chit chat with strangers. But we did and I find it enjoyable and rarely come across anybody, gweilo or otherwise who doesn't respond to a cheery good morning or jo san. Dog walkers, I observe, are particularly chatty and most people are vaguely interested when I explain I am birdwatching and even show them a picture or two. The Daurian redstart, the only "decent" bird today, is always good to engage people as it is colourful (male only I am afraid) and they instantly see its aesthetic appeal, even if their eyes glaze over if I start to go into detail. Little brown jobs do not as a rule impress non-birders. Much to Mrs. Ha's relief we saw no mammals (pet dogs excepted) and no reptiles.

WCY is not quite deserted as there is one sole resident, who walks three dogs each day. The rest however, as you see from the pictures, is pretty derelict and nothing to write home about. I wonder why it is deserted. If my reader knows, do tell. Maybe it is the Hong Kong equivalent of Fatehpur Sikri. I have visited the Indian site and I have to confess it is marginally more imposing than WCY. If you can't be faffed to follow the link, Fatehpur Sikri was a stunning Mughal city abandoned because it basically ran out of water.

Nevertheless we were surprised to find what appeared to be recent washing lying out to dry. A pair of shoes was also on display. Look carefully in one photo you can see crockery. I suspect Goldilocks isn't living here and the congee bowls are empty. Perhaps, Mrs. Ha speculated, there are IIs around. Hmmm. Perhaps seems the mot very juste. Reviewing this I have now realised that I did not upload the crockery picture so look in vain but it was indeed there. Honestly.

Leaving WCY we followed a trail through what was described by a friendly guide as a bamboo forest. It really is a quite enchanting short walk and takes you back to the main road and the climb back to the fire lookout. Birds were thin on the ground. We heard little, saw less. But after 3 hours we arrived home, hungry and satisfied with an invigorating walk. And I hope next time there will be a richer avifauna to enjoy.

Wong Chuk Yeung

I climbed the hill behind the house this morning and got as far as the sign on the MacLehose Trail that says Wong Chuk Yeung. I didn't go into the village itself. That is the next adventure. But just beyond the post there were birds galore. At least 5 Tristram's buntings, a Streak-breasted scimitar babbler, 2 Rufous-capped babblers, a Chestnut bulbul flock and a small flock of minivets,one of which I photographed and turned out to be Grey-chinned (above) rather than Scarlet as expected. I was quite surprised by the number of people around, some on mountain bikes but mostly dog walking or "power-walking". It all looked far too energetic for me. As I said before, woodland birding is darned hard work. You hear calls, squeaks, rattling noises from floor to canopy. Challenge one is to see anything. Generally all you are looking for is movement. A twig or leaf twitching that suggests other than the breeze. Then once you have located the bird, getting a half decent view to identify it. It moves in and out of sight, scuffling amongst the leaf litter or hopping from branch to fallen branch or maybe lost amongst the foliage above your head. Sometimes they cross the ride. The Laughingthrushes and Hwamei do that quite a bit and you get fleeting glimpses in the open. The Tristram's buntings did so as well today. To get a photograph requires luck and patience. I appear not to be blessed with either. Remember the old saying:

Patience is a virtue
Possess it if you can
Seldom found in women
Never found in man

This was a lucky site and I doubt if it is jumping with birds all the time. Indeed after 45 minutes silence reigned. Feeding flocks are good if you find them and anything can tag along.

On the walk down I saw the end of a snake disappear into the grass. Maybe 8" of olive green tail about as thick as a finger - so nothing too nasty and certainly, like most snakes,more anxious not to be seen than to pose for the camera. But a useful warning that warm days bring out sleepy snakes, some are venomous and it is best to watch where you put your feet.

Back home now and feet up in the feeble sun but a lot better,I dare say, than wintry Britain. A bonus in a Verditer flycatcher on a distant tree and a close up Scaly-breasted munia (top). Happy days.

Special bonus posting - a "Wol"

I was actually looking for porcupines but this owl flew in. I tried to hold the torch in one hand and press the shutter with the other. When I actually got the two in synch it looked away then flew. Such is life.

And no, I didn't see the porcupine tonight :-(

Another day, another tick or two

All these are what photographers call "record shots". They are what they say they are - records to prove you saw something. The top one is a real unexpected bonus as I haven't seen one in ages. This is Pomatorhinus ruficollis or the Rufous-necked or Streak-breasted scimitar babbler. The field guide says it "probably overlooked". It is a category C species i.e. originally of captive origin. The Avifauna says distribution appears to be linked to dense closed-canopy scrubland and perhaps to a lesser extent, forest. It is local in Sai Kung. I was very pleased to find 3 or 4 of them in the bushes about 4-8' off the ground.

The next is the Hwamei and finally the Greater Necklaced Laughingthrush - this was one of a flock of about 8 or 9 birds that crossed the road a couple of times. This is also a category C species. Also not uncommon but a welcome "tick" to the new local patch list.

These shots are very noisy (grainy) shot at ISO 3200 with the 1D mk III and hopefully soon to be replaced by the mk IV if reviews continue to be good.

Out with Romany

Or how Rag lost Tag and Bobtail.

We are imprinted in early childhood. I read the Romany books (still have a couple) and watched (with mother of course) Rag, Tag and Bobtail. This evening in steady rain I went out with a torch looking for owls. Of course, sporting a pair of spectacles makes it tricky as the rain obscures the vision as you scan the higher tree branches. So that drew a blank but crossing the road behind me was a large shadowy creature that I expected to be a small boar. On closer examination it turned out to be a rather large Rag, Hystrix hodgesoni or the Chinese porcupine [see Hill & Phillipps: Hong Kong Animals]. The tome says it is 60-90cm in length and weighs 7-14kg. Well it certainly looked good for a top end of that to me but maybe it is like the fish that got away. They always look bigger when they escape.

Anyway, barely 4 days in to the new home and already things are looking good. So despite the fact that Rag slunk rapidly but sedately into the trees out of sight I was able to go home with a warm glow, owl-less in Sai Kung but up one porcupine. Wonderful.