Friday 7 January 2011

Birding Hong Kong: Part 2 of 2

To complete the loop here are a few more images from the HK trip... All photographs here are from the January 1st visit to Hong Kong Wetland Park. starting where we left yesterday, here is another crop of distant black-faced spoonbill, consorting with grey heron, little egret and great white egret. At least a few are awake in this picture! I had only taken the 100-400mm lens on this trip - given that birding turned out to have been very limited I should have really made the effort to take the 500mm / 1.4 extender...


A few white-breasted waterhen fed in the mangrove channel - they would scuttle back to the mangrove every time a group of noisy HK families paraded across the boardwalk - non birding visitors were much more interested in the mudskippers that fed on the muddy channel banks!




Dusky warbler were noted on a couple of occasions - this bird fed adjacent one of the boardwalks and was frustratingly hard to photograph as it fed frustratingly close in cover - chacking away frequently to hint at its location.


Long-tailed shrike were abundant on the reserve, and again, the 500mm would have been ideal for the better posing birds. This individual was close to the visitor centre late afternoon. Stunning birds indeed.


To complete the selection, here is another daurian redstart image - this female was feeding in shade but provides a better illustrative pose than the image from the first post.


 So that's it - short trip, very few photographs taken - but a reasonable selection given the circumstances.

As I conclude this short post, its just past midday in the north-east of the UK and temperatures outside have soared to a balmy -1.5 degrees C, and it's started snowing again... I can't wait to get out for some UK birding this weekend!

2 comments:

Stuart Price said...

Good to see you could get away and not get stranded at icebound airports (like I did)!

Great pics, I really have to give HK a try this year, it looks wonderful for a short birding trip.

John Malloy said...

Hi Stu - I probably did not do HK justice in my trip there - plenty of additional sites should have been explored, but without transport and a non birding wife, my trips have to take balance! Hope you get to go...