Back to the birds

Well yesterday’s stock rant went down a storm – not. I do warn you that this is about ‘anything that comes to mind’. I did have a piece half written about Sandy Hook but I decided to scrap it. Emotions are too raw and I probably am not well enough qualified to write on it. I explored a few discussions without participating but they were scary in their tone. One in particular basically said if you aren’t a US citizen living in the US then butt out. So I did.

This morning I went out to my local patch but returned early. Too busy. Nowhere to escape from the crowds. And the light was awful. I arrived back home, packed up the kit and immediately saw a Black-winged cuckoo-shrike in the garden…… close! Too late. This was my second sighting in 2 weeks. Maybe it will hang around.

After lunch I had a lot of work to do but I set up the camera just in case. In a relaxation break, which seemed to last rather longer than I intended, the Cuckoo-shrike suddenly reappeared but was instantly spooked by a dog walker. I was livid. But as consolation a few Scarlet minivets landed and paused briefly. Bingo!

Now you may be wondering why Scarlet minivets are grey and yellow and not scarlet. Well you haven’t been paying attention have you. The males are scarlet and the females are yellow. But the chaps get naming rights. Remember this one? This is the male.

I also saw Hwamei in the garden – the first time for ages. No photos. Much too dark. The light was better yesterday when I observed a Red-whiskered bulbul shouting at an intruder. Get off my branch!!!

The message was well received and the intruder flew off. There was also a lot of noise from the Crested mynas. They trend to perch prominently and let rip. Here is one in action:

I’m the King of the Castle, You’re the dirty Rascal…….

But the real king of the castle came over when all I had was my 400mm F5.6 on a full frame body. Thank goodness it has a 7′ wingspan. Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you, the White-bellied Sea-eagle.

Ah, the joys of photography – a black and white bird against a washed out sky, directly overhead. Now this is one I really would like to get perched in the garden. And then the Red-whiskered bulbul would have something substantial to shout about. Me, I’m going to start packing tomorrow. Friday is D Day – departure for Doha en route to the frozen wastes of Antarctica. I may be gone some time.

I got lucky today :-)

On shrike-watch again today. I was bemoaning the pollution haze and wondering whether it was safe to breathe. Then I heard the magical sound of the Scarlet minivet calling. Pericrocotus flammeus is a cracking bird. I guess it is locally common here but it is a flashy thing – it is as it says on the box – scarlet. At least the male is. The female is yellow. Still a very attractive bird but I am afraid, as so often in life, the glass ceiling has handed the laurels to the male.

On this occasion the three birds (all males) flew tantalizingly close then disappeared. The air was also scarlet with my language. And then:

“But soft what bird through yonder hedgerow breaks, It is the male and scarlet is the minivet.”

The blooming thing landed right across the path from me and proceeded to sing its little heart out:

 

You can even see the red gape and with a little magnification (and imagination), probably what caterpillar it had for breakfast.

All I did to this was crop very slightly to reformat from landscape to portrait and a touch of ‘sharpen for web’. Otherwise this is exactly what the 7D and the 800mm F5.6 gave me. So shiver me timbers and fluff up my plumage, this was a fantastic bird to gladden any cold heart.

I think this shrike is a good talisman……….. even if it won’t pose itself.

Thanks be for birds

A number of Facebook and Flickr posts have made me pause recently.

Not all countries celebrate Thanksgiving but in the depths of economic uncertainty many of my FB / blogger friends posted reasons why they give thanks even today. Most of them are far away from issues of economics and materialism.

An image I posted on Flickr recently also produced some comments along the lines of “I wish lived in a house where I could photograph birds like that”. This was the image:

White-bellied sea-eagle. Haliaeetus albicilla.

So there are quite a few “Reasons to be cheerful” as the late Ian Dury sang back in 1979. Amongst mine is what I might loosely describe as ‘garden birding’. Like many birdwatchers / birders I define ‘garden’ very liberally. Essentially if I am on the footprint of the house when I see the bird, it counts. So the eagle above is a fully paid up member of my garden list. Now to make matters even more confusing I don’t actually keep a written list. It is all stored in my head. Much of it however is documented by photographs, no matter how poor.

When I returned to HK  in 2004 after a 4 year or so break I chose my rented house based on the fact I had seen a White-bellied sea-eagle from the sun terrace when I was viewing it. The agent insisted on showing be another 15 flats and houses. She failed to grasp where my priorities lay! I took house number one! When we bought our current home in 2009 similar criteria applied. We wanted, above all, a proper sea view in addition to a small garden and some security. It took 18 months of searching. When we saw it we knew it was what we wanted.

The photo above is not a result of sitting patiently waiting for the bird to appear. I was working in my study from which I have the most wonderfully distracting view. Not one but two sea eagles appeared fairly close to the house. I grabbed my camera, ran outside onto the roof terrace and hoped the birds would come my way. I could only see one at this point and although I fired off a few frames they were not really close enough.

Rather grumpily I went back to the desk and downloaded the images. Not very good. At which point one eagle came back. I had to extract the card from the reader, put it back into the camera and off I went again. With a similar result. By this stage I was feeling that the eagles had worked out my exact timing and synchronized their departure with my arrival on the roof. Incredibly the same thing happened again. I am back at the desk and the eagle is waving at me through the window, thumbing his nose at me so to speak.

But this time I had loaded the camera with a different card so I didn’t lose the time extracting and reloading. And the eagle was close enough to fill maybe half a frame. Ha ha! Round three to me. The images are not pin sharp. I was handholding for a start. The position of the eagle is not how I would have wanted it to be. But come on, this is truly a grab shot. No planning, checking exposure settings as I run up the stairs, making sure I am (or rather the camera is) in servo mode and on high speed (9 frames per second) and of course trying not to fall over as I do so.

And yes, I am lucky to live in a house where I have opportunities like this. On Saturday I was drinking coffee on the front sun terrace and a raptor shot past me at incredible speed following the path of our cul-de-sac. It veered off to the left over the gardens and dipped out of sight behind the tree line. Crested goshawk. I have seen sparrowhawks do this in  England but this is the first time I have seen the gos’ so close to our house. Occasionally they sit in nearby trees or fly high overhead, shimmering their wings in their distinctive fashion. From start to finish the encounter lasted a matter of seconds. Yet it gave me a buzz for 24 hours. Such beauty, power, speed and lethal force all in one package.

At the other end of the scale is the dainty and perhaps a touch gaudy, Scarlet minivet.

Scarlet minivet. Pericrocotus flammeus.

Now this is not an uncommon bird but to have it perched on a fir-tree straight opposite the sun terrace is unusual. I could almost endoscope this one. This by the way is the male of the species. The distaff, of which I have only more distant photographs, is yellow, grey and black. Still pretty fashionable, decked out in this season’s most favoured hues but nonetheless hardly scarlet. Sexual dimorphism playing tricks on us again. Just to be clear, this is a happy stroke of good fortune. The bird sat for a few seconds and then flew. It has not returned since at such close distance. It is not, despite rumours to the contrary, a stuffed museum specimen. I am arguably closer to that category than the minivet.

Older readers may recall that Mrs. Minivet almost starred in a 1942 film starring Greer Garson. Quite appropriately the movie starred Walter Pidgeon. However there was an unfortunate typo in the title and the script writer was told it was called Mrs. Miniver. A whole new story had to be drafted and Greer Garson missed the chance to be a real scarlet woman called Mrs. Minivet.

This was then superseded in ornithological cock-ups by the 1944 film, Tawny Pipit, which starred rather worryingly not a single Tawny pipit but several Meadow pipits. Well it was war-time and I suppose Tawnys were rationed. So difficult to get the coupons.

You see, birds are central to my life. I am by no means an expert. I am what I term an enthusiast. A chap once told me you can’t be a birdwatcher and a bird photographer. You have to choose. He was right. I am now half useless at both. Or half good if you are charitable and your glass of red is semi-full. Either is frankly unacceptable to me but I simply can’t decide. Ten years of dithering. It will all end in tears. I am happy to watch and/or photograph from my house or out in the field. The house is probably more comfortable. A liberal supply of coffee, mars bars, an iPad to read, different lenses just a floor away and hey, if nothing comes by I can switch on the rugby. Now you can’t (yet) do that at Mai Po. So whether you are a naturalist or a street photographer I do plead that you should give the birds a go and if you are really, really lucky, Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon may fly by pretending to be minivets.