Spring in Winter

Hong Kong gets its annual cold snap around Chinese New Year. This year the lunar new year falls on January 23rd. When I ventured out this morning it seemed like the clock had been running fast. Winter, such as it is, had been missed and Spring had arrived. Everything was draped in velvety, warm sunshine and at least for this Lantern bug, the clock said April:

Fulgora candelaria

I had been looking for birds but had put the macro lens in my backpack  just in case. As I walked one of the back paths of the reserve, where few people bother to go, it being at least a five-minute walk from the main reserve, I could hear a cacophony of small birds, almost certainly mobbing some poor dozing owl. This is always a good way of tracking down owls in the daytime. If they are foolish enough to roost somewhere  on a main flight path then the locals will be up in arms, harassing them mercilessly  until they shuffle off. Frustratingly I could see neither the owl nor indeed the mob. So thick was the vegetation.

As it was I used both lenses during the morning and here are some of the results.

Pond abstract

This has been deliberately softened and some Gaussian blur added. The one below is without tampering

Pond Weed

The Party's Over

Who can resist berries like these?

Berry-bright

In the shaded areas, moss is abundant.

Moss-scape

Trunk life

And my last offering is a newly opened leaf, the harbinger of better, perhaps the halcyon days of Spring.

Opening Ceremony

Now having pooh-poohed in a recent post the staggering ISO capability of the new Nikon and saying I never used more than ISO 3200, I confess that one of these images at least was shot at 12,800. Can you guess which one it is? The clues are that the subject needed F22 for adequate DoF and even then it was only enough to give me a shutter speed of 1/60. The tripod did the rest.

I hope you find something to brighten your day, here.