It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.

It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility. 

And the humility is rising rapidly in Hong Kong.

We now have a car. After holding out for 6 months the lure of bird watching away from Lung Fu Shan prevailed. We went out to buy something cheap and cheerful and came back with a Porsche. I am not really sure how it happened. Mrs. Ha likes driving it, which in itself is mildly worrying.

And so it came to pass that last week I went to the Lions Nature Education Centre in Sai Kung. Long-suffering readers will recall this as my old stomping ground before we made our ill-fated foray to Blighty. Now it is a 40-minute drive away. It greeted me like an old friend. A little older (both of us), and surely a little wiser (one of us, I leave you to guess which). Some tidying up has been carried out but essentially little has changed. Six years ago I found a dragonfly species I had not seen before on one of the ponds. Not rare but uncommon and quite sought after. More in hope than expectation I walked along the path and onto the wooden bridge and immediately I was subjected to inspection by the male dragonfly. Adult dragons live about 7 months so not the same one but the species breeds here and indeed I watched the female ovipositing. As I get older I find comfort in the familiar and I thoroughly enjoyed my two walks.

This week I have confined myself to walks close to home. The weather is unpredictable and the heat and humidity are oppressive. It seems to be an excellent time to see jumping spiders, Salticidae. If I walk along the Harlech/Lugard Road circuit I can be guaranteed a decent selection of jumpers. They are hard to photograph. Firstly the light is low and they move fast. Then they are very shy. As soon as you pause to look at them they scuttle round the back of the railings. Sometimes they peek out to see if you are still there. Or they run out, look up at you in annoyance, wave their pedipalps as if to say ‘go away’, then they scuttle away again. They are also small. About the size of one of my fingernails. My photography is better suited to large, slow moving creatures but there isn’t much charismatic mega fauna on The Peak. Unless you count Wild Boar. I don’t.

At some point I may bore the reader with the tale of two flashguns – it does not end quite like Dickens’ version – nobody lays down their life for a friend – but it certainly is not a happy one. Fuji and the battery grip is another scintillating, ripping yarn that is more in the genre of W E Johns than Dickens. I was rather intrigued by the fact that Johns’ last book was (genuinely) titled Biggles does some Homework. Probably more than I ever did.

Soon the migration season will start again and the birds will lure me to Mai Po. Sadly the gate to the Frontier Closed Area is locked now and if you want to go the floating hides you need to ring the police. If the gate isn’t reopened soon I foresee massive protest marches through Central with birders and bird photographers (for they are different species, dear reader) descending on Legco, demanding freedom of movement. For the record and without wishing to be controversial, the absence of binoculars defines a bird photographer, who may or may not know what he or indeed she is snapping. I am much the same with spiders. I snap first and identify later. This does have its benefits.

I recently posted an image of a very colourful jumping spider. An expert suggested to me what it was and I duly looked it up. I had previously tagged it as a different species. His suggestion is not on the HK list but is remarkably similar and occurs widely in Asia. Observing the differences may require the spider to sit quietly under a microscope for a while. So…….. are we routinely misidentifying all of the ones that look similar as the one we know is on the list and missing a second species? One enthusiastic expert has suggested it is worth collecting a few and checking. Citizen science is exciting and thoroughly worthwhile. So to close here are a few of my snaps from recent outings. And as I started with a quote from the great philosopher Yogi Berra, so shall I close. He once said of Mai Po: No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hatching time

If you were expecting cute little baby birds, well I am afraid that once again “All Downhill” is going to douse you in disappointment. These eggs are a couple of millimetres across and I suspect they are our old friend, Tessaratoma papillosa. Actually these are our new friends, as they must by definition be first instar.

I think they are quite cute. If a stink bug can be cute.

Now this chap is positively abundant but so bored was I that I agreed to take its picture. It is a cotton bug, Physopelta gutta.  And try putting that through a spell check or auto correct. It seems to be ungoogleable, although listening to the BBC World Service (the planet’s best wireless channel) I learned that in Sweden the local language version, “ogooglebar” has been removed from the list of the top ten new words. As Swedish tends to sound as if you are gargling with a mouth full of marbles I think we might go further and ban the entire language. Indeed any language other than Welsh and perhaps, at a push, English, should be stricken. My sole exposure to the Swedish language has been, if I recall correctly, Bjorn Borg’s Jacques Tati impressions on centre court, 4 happy-go-lucky Elvis-suited, Eurovision stars called ABBA and the chef in The Muppet Show. So I apologise if I offend anybody. Perhaps Swedish is a decent language but speaking it will forever remain, I fear, a minority sport. I digress and at length. Again.

Physopelta gutta

And because I guess that at some stage my old mucker Steve will drop by, I decided I ought to lob in a couple of flowers. This ought to be a Yellow Flag Iris in the vernacular and if it isn’t I’d like to know the reason why.

Iris pseudocorus

And this is along the lines of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

Alpina hainanensis

I think it may be a rather lonely Hainan Galangal but I’m not betting my non-existent mortgage on it.

There are a few more shots from the dash between the showers today but frankly if I’m bored with shots of Copera ciliata, then I’m sure you must be too.  And not a baby bird to be seen. But the bugs are rather grand. Well worth going out for. I hope you agree.

 

The eye of the skink

More photos from yesterday’s session and a rework of one of the B&W shots in glorious Technicolor.

First, a shot of Lily. That’s Lily the Skink, as made famous by the Scaffold.

These long-tailed skinks are normally notoriously skittish but this one seemed unconcerned as I edged ever so slowly closer. Note the tiny ant crawling on the lizard.

Very close to Lily was Tango, the Orange-tailed sprite.

Orange-tailed sprite

I had to photograph Tango through a fence to get a decent angle. I would have liked the tail tip a fraction sharper.

I was always a big Beatles fan. So meet the beetle. Very slow shutter speed hence the moving antennae.

Lema coromandeliana

Everyone likes a butterfly and here’s Helen. Nectaring on the Lantana.

Papilio helenus

Steve likes frogs – how about Mr. Grumpy? Would Lottie give Grumpy a kiss, I wonder?

Mr. Grumpy Toad

And to round things off, I decided yesterday’s B&W version of the rotting wood didn’t work as well as I had hoped. The rich colours add rather than subtract to this in my view.

Time to do some work now. Until next time.