Lunar New Year Holiday

Feb 4

After barely a month of school after Christmas holidays, we are having another 2 weeks of Lunar New Year holidays. After the holiday celebrations with my family ended, I was itching to head out into the suburbs once again.

25/1/2023 - Nam Sang Wai, again

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my experience, that is Nam Sang Wai will always come through with different birds and surprises, it never disappoints. So as a warmup after a break from photography, I visited Nam Sang Wai again for the 4th time, I think

I took the usual route and upon arrival, I was greeted with dozens of birds as always. But the first surprise that Nam Sang Wai brought to me, are black-faced spoonbills. There were a bunch of them roaming the river and swinging their head side by side scanning the riverbed for food.

**Black-faced spoonbills** looks exactly like egrets from far away and you can’t tell them apart unless you zoom in on them

A stark contrast with the dark river surface

I followed the group of spoonbills along the river for 20 minutes, as they grazed along the riverbed. The weather was exceptionally freezing that day because of all the wind, they were howling and almost gave me frostbite

I got an exceptional shot on the spoonbills as they were searching for food. I positioned 2 spoonbills and a black-winged stilt in the image and while I was bursting and tracking their movements, one of the spoonbills managed to catch a fish and I caught the moment he snapped it up into its mouth

This picture shows 3 things: 1. How a spoonbill searches for food 2. What spoonbills eat 3. Black-winged stilt

Always happy to see the **pied avocet**, such a special bird

There is this bridge that connects the main road and inland with Nam Sang Wai. Nam Sang Wai is basically a floating island that sits at the intersection of two rivers. Basically, I start at the end of the river on the right and work my way up until the two rivers intersect at the tip of Nam Sang Wai, do a U-turn and head back to Yuen Long following the river on the left

Somehow, there were exceptionally more birds at the bridge today. There were spoonbills, egrets, herons, cormorants, ducks, stilts, sandpipers and wagtails scattered everywhere. The birds were not shy at all and got super close to the bridge, giving me the chance to snap some portraits

It was only 9 degrees Celsius that day. And at Yuen Long, the howling winds made it feel like I was birdwatching in a fridge. My hands were frozen and the joints creaked every time I moved my fingers to press the shutter. I wore thick layers of clothing plus a windbreaker that day and somehow I felt the cold win in my bones. Shuddering, I couldn’t stand the winds and needed to keep on moving. But every time I start walking something interesting happens, it’s either a spoonbill catching food or a cormorant taking off from the water

A female black-faced spoonbill, please correct me if I’m wrong

A male black-faced spoonbill, from the blood-red eyes (also please correct me if I’m wrong)

These spoonbills are currently listed as endangered

They are endangered due to heavy losses of natural habitat

They spend the winter here in Hong Kong, and spends March and September in Korea

**Common greenshank**, can be distinguished by its beak, as it is only black

The yellow tuft of feather along this **Eurasian teal’s** tail is especially eye-catching

As I crossed the bridge, I saw a couple of cormorants dipping and diving under the surface. Intrigued, I stopped and watched what they were doing. At first, I thought they were just taking baths and trying to get their feather wet and cleaned. But when one of the cormorants resurfaced, it had a fish in its mouth! I was super surprised and scrambled for my camera that I slung over my shoulder. There 5 or so cormorants, all diving simultaneously to catch fish, so I had to track all 5 and react fast enough to snap photos when they are out of the water. Unlike kingfishers, when cormorants land a catch, the fish doesn’t stay very long between its beaks. Kingfishers will swing their catch around to try to stun them before swallowing. Cormorants don’t have that problem. When they catch fish, they resurface and literally start gulping it down. They never stay for very long and it is really difficult for my cheap ass camera to autofocus onto them that quickly

After 10 minutes of frustration, trying to lock in on the bird, losing focus and then losing it under the surface. I had several tries but didn’t really get a quality shot other than this slightly out-of-focus shot on this cormorant

The **great cormorant** was swallowing down a fish larger than the size of its head

Unfortunately most of these are out-of-focus

After passing the bridge, it is just a straight path along the Kam Tin river. As I walked along, I saw a lot of birds, as usual

However, someone special showed up today. A group of black-headed gull were flying down along the river. Their flying speed is relatively slow, and pretty easy to track with a camera. So as I walked along the riverbanks, I chased the group of gulls down the river, looking for a good in-flight shot of the birds.

A **hume’s leaf warbler** among branches. I mistook this for a yellow-browed warbler

**Indian pond herons** can be seen commonly at Nam Sang Wai

A **black-headed gull** walking along the muddy banks

With breeding plumage, the black-headed gull has a totally black head, which cannot be seen at this time of the year

A decent but slightly blurry in-flight shot, wasn’t satisfied with this

A clearer, better in-flight shot of the gull

After chasing the gulls for an hour, I wanted to slow down my pace as I felt like I was leaving out a lot of birds while chasing them down

Just as I started to slow down, a beautiful white-throated kingfisher landed on one of the mangrove trees by the riverbank. This is the first time I’ve encountered this species of kingfisher and its unbelievable how close it got

One of the rather species of kingfishers in Hong Kong, the **white-throated kingfisher**

A **light-vented bulbul** landed on a beautiful spot and I couldn’t resist taking a shot

After getting to the fishponds, a little grebe showed up, another species of birds that I have never seen before

Little grebes hunt by diving down below the surface of water to catch fish, they momentarily submerge themselves for around 30 seconds

I’ve tracked this one for long time and failed on multiple attempts because it kept on diving under the surface and I had to time my shot perfectly to succeed in photographing this bird

As I walked inwards, a common cormorant was taking off, I immediately raised the lens up to my eye and fired away

I captured three shots of the bird taking off, wings outstretched and all, it’s beautiful. The cormorant had white feathers on its head, and I was intrigued at first. But after doing a bit of background research I found out that this is actually the breeding plumage of common cormorants, their head becomes white entirely

This **little grebe** seem to be resting, it was just gliding gracefully on the pond

Common cormorants lined up on a telephone pole

As I continued to walk, I did the usual routine of walking around the place once to get a good look and idea of what species of birds are present among the ponds

Other than egrets, herons and some cormorants on poles, the place was relatively quite and less chaotic than usual. I did spot a new species of birds - the eastern yellow wagtail within a dried up fish pond

Fish ponds are cleared and dried up from time to time for the owners to dredge the bed of the pond and refresh the nutrients and food available for the fishes in the mud. When it’s dried up, birds like wagtails, buntings and other kinds of small birds are attracted to feed on what’s left of the pond

A **eastern yellow wagtail** in a dried up pond

I was not completely satisfied with the in-flight shots I took of the black-headed gulls earlier. They didn’t quite hit the spot

So after I spotted a group of them around another pond, I stayed around for a long time, praying for my trashy autofocus to lock onto target (to compensate for the long zoom range on the Nikon p950, the autofocus and image quality is garbage)

Since the gulls are relatively slow-flyers, they made an easy target to practise bird-tracking and in-flight photography on. I finally got some satisfactory shots after 30 minutes

The dark background perfectly brings out this crisp image of the **black-headed gull** in flight

A **black kite** circling the sky that I spotted while photographing the gulls

Another encounter with the **white-breasted kingfisher**

Ticked off a few goals of my list today at Nam Sang Wai

1) White-throated kingfisher (I saw it 3 times in the same day!!)

2) Bird in-flight (gulls)

3) Birds-of-prey (black kite)

Goats I saw on my way out, by the docks at the river

28/1/2023 - Lung Fu Shan & HKU

Our school joined the TakeAction 2023 programme, and as one of the activities the organizers planned to bring us to Lung Fu Shan in Hong Kong island

We started the day off at HKU and worked our way up to the mountain through the campus. While the group was passing through the lily pond at HKU, somebody pointed out a squirrel scurrying up a tree. It is the first time that I’ve spotted an animal other than birds in Hong Kong and I was thrilled! Immediately started snapping photos

An accidental panning shot of the **palla’s squirrel** as I was using a very slow shutter speed (no light under the trees)

Shortly after the squirrel left, a loud and crisp call pierced through the leaves. I looked up and spotted the iconic yellow-crested cockatoo resting on a tree. It is a critically endangered species and was introduced into Hong Kong many years ago. It’s native to Indonesia but a small population of around 200 cockatoos now thrive on Hong Kong island. It has been at the top of my to-see bird list for a long time

The **yellow-crested cockatoo** is one of the most iconic birds in Hong Kong

Sometimes you can spot a flock of these cuties on the HKU campus, but this one was flying solo

That’s another to-see bird ticked off the list

Our focus for that trip is on plants, so we didn’t get to see much action in terms of wildlife. But I did manage to see another specialty of Hong Kong —- the wild boar

Some time ago, the government killed off a portion of the boar’s population because of them constantly barging into urban areas and causing disturbances. The action caused a lot of organisations to rise up against the decision and protest. But the rest of the boars now reside within forests on Hong Kong island.

**Black kites** can be seen from the hiking trail as they circle the mountains

On our way down, a rare passage migrant —- the **red-flanked bluetail** popped up beside a tiny stream on the mountain!

30/1/2023 - Lung Fu Shan

After visiting Lung Fu Shan once through the TakeAction programme, I wanted to go again. So I packed and travelled to the place again after 2 days

Upon arrival, a **blue rock thrush** jumped out of a nearby bush to greet me

Up on a fruit-bearing tree by the side of the road, a large flock of red-billed blue magpies were squawking and screaming. Although beautiful, they are one of the noisiest birds in Hong Kong and I have been wanting to photograph them for a while now. Even though they are quite common in urban areas, I have not seem them much

The view of **Victoria Harbour** from the hiking trail at Lung Fu Shan

There are some ruins of battlements and defence batteries around the top of Lung Fu Shan. While walking past one of the ruins, I heard rustling from piles of fallen leaves on top of them. I stopped and searched when a grey-backed thrush popped its head out of the pile

I sat down on another part of the ruin at a comfortable distance of 2-3 meters away from the bird. And it wasn’t shy at all, it was just minding its own business bustling around in the pile of leaves while I sat at the same spot for 30 minutes and kept on snapping shots

**Grey-backed thrush** hiding among the leaves

The uneven lighting conditions made it hard for me to get a good picture

I stayed with the thrush for over 30 minutes

Thrushes tend to dwell on the forest floor unless disturbed

While walking down the mountain, I passed a patch of bright red flowers which stopped me dead in my tracks, because sunbirds are especially attracted to these kind of flowers and you are almost guaranteed to see them flying from flower to flower if you stick around long enough

As I still don’t have a clear and usable photo of the fork-tailed sunbird, I stuck around at a vantage point over the entire flower bush and waited