Tai Po Kau
Tai po kau is a nature reserve in Hong Kong, and it is renowned for the biodiversity that you can discover there, especially birds. Seizing the opportunity of school holiday, I’ve decided to give this place a visit
Tai po kau consists of 4 hiking trails, blue red yellow and brown. The blue and red trails winds around a river in the middle of a valley, while yellow and brown trails are located at a higher altitude, on the ridges of the valley. Various websites unanimously recommended the blue and red trails for bird watching, as it is closer to a water source and there are less birds at a higher altitude
Upon arriving, a lush dense forest of trees awaited, and I was reminded of the Amazons. Bird chirps were literally coming out everywhere and you just don’t know where to look
The 4 trails split off a main branch that extends perpendicularly from a highway that brought me to the valley. As I hiked up this main branch, a barren tree stood tall at the end of a corner. There were dozens of birds swarming the tree, taking off and landing simultaneously. There were light-vented bulbuls, velvet-fronted nuthatches (of which I couldn’t get a usable pic off :(, it was moving around way too quickly ), and some female scarlet minivets. I ended up only focusing on the minivets or else I’d be overwhelmed by the sheer number of birds
This female was tossing the insect around on the branches to secure the kill
Vibe-check!
Velvet-fronted nuthatches climb up branches upside down to get around, my camera was always focused onto the branches instead of the bird :(
Just as I was about to leave, something really fast and tiny flew down from a nearby tree to a bush full with upside down hanging pepper-like flowers. The bush was within reach of me so I was obviously freaking out, and as I turned twisted my upper body 90 degrees to face the bush, a gorgeous fork-tailed sunbird was feeding on nectar, and this all happened within a meter of where I was standing!!
Notice how the bird's tail is forked into two
So gorgeous omg
What makes this shot even more impressive is that it was shot at a shutter speed of 1/30, which is really slow and even the slightest movement of my hand can cause the picture to become blurry. Miraculously the photo came out in pretty good conditions (the ISO was a bit too high for my camera to handle tho, as the bird was under the shade within a thick bush, there wasn’t a lot of sunlight so the camera decided to sacrifice image quality to make the photo brighter)
Despite the picture being grainy and a little noisy (small particles on the photo), it was my first-ever close encounter with a bird with such vibrant colours. I’m satisfied with what I got
Unfortunately, my luck ran out. When I actually broke off the main branch and started off on the trails, I started hearing less and less bird calls and at one point the entire forest was quite for 15 minutes straight and I couldn’t spot a single bird to photograph
Even if there were bird calls, they were either too far away or they were too well hidden among dense branches, I couldn’t spot any
I guess what they say were right, you will always hear but never see a bird in a forest
Got some amazing butterfly pictures tho :))
A common bushbrown, I believe (not an expert in butterflies)
After walking down the red trail for a whole hour to no prevail, I decided to try my luck on the blue trail. As soon as I stepped foot on the blue trail, I started hearing birds all around me. And as if it was a force of nature, a few dozen of birds were spread across trees and advancing towards me just like a wave. I was rooted to the ground the whole time as I didn’t want to scare them off, but I couldn’t manage to photograph any birds as well. The wave of birds overwhelmed me and passed onto the woods behind
Feeling devastated, I left the mountain with my head hanging. But a male scarlet minivet just happened to pop out of a bush right across the road just as I was about to leave the nature reserve area, and it managed to cheer me up a bit
Spotted this guy instantly, the red makes a stark contrast with the green leaves
Lesson learned:
Never trust your camera to fine-tune the ISO, do it yourself. You know your camera’s capabilities but the camera itself doesn’t
I need a new camera, the autofocus and low-light performance of my camera is terrible
There will always be slow birding days, never let it discourage you and look on the good side of things (my encounter with the fork-tailed sunbird)
Thanks for reading :)
