An ABC of BIFs
Well the world of photography is full of these odd abbreviations. BIF - of course - is "Birds in Flight" but, despite the post title, you'll be pleased to know that there is no instructional aspect to...
View ArticleLast rays of winter sunshine
Just back to Hong Kong and here's another one "I made before the programme started..." I'll post this before all these winter visitors disappear and head north for their breeding seasons. The weather...
View Article"Home of the Snowcap"
Snowcap It's a good thing that no-one reads this blog for its' timeliness, for it was back in mid January that Jemi and I met our old HK friends Nigel Croft and Andie Greco at the arrivals hall of...
View ArticleUnder the Volcano
Before arriving in Costa Rica we had decided on four places to base ourselves for a two-week stay, based in part on Barrett Lawson's site guide to the country "Where to watch birds in Costa Rica"...
View ArticleMonteverde's Flying Quetzals
Resplendent Quetzal Zoned as "The Mountains" in Barratt Lawson's "Where to watch Birds in Costa Rica", the area around Santa Elena provided the highest elevation birding that we did, at around 1,300...
View ArticlePacific coast, Costa Rica
Tearing ourselves away from Monteverde and the cool mountain air, we headed south towards Costa Rica's Pacific Coast. To Cerro Lodge, to be precise, handily placed for boat trips to view waterbirds,...
View ArticleEarly April at Mai Po, Hong Kong
Curlew Sandpiper - Calidris ferruginea Tides at Mai Po (and everywhere else, I suppose) go through fortnightly cycles. They key for wader viewing at Mai Po is for the tide to reach 2.2 metres or...
View ArticleHK Southern Waters 12th April 2014
A 07:00 start at Aberdeen Public Pier meant early starts for umpteen of Hong Kong's keenest birders, including us. The plan was to get out to the sea channel south of Po Toi Island to encounter...
View ArticleA small feature on a very small bird - finding Spoon-billed Sandpiper
It's the middle of April and up until today we had had no reliable records of Spoon-billed Sandpiper during this spring's migration. From the outermost hide at the boardwalk I was thinking of this as...
View ArticleBoat Trip - HK southern waters, 26th April 2014
Pomarine Skua Geoff Welch has certainly spent more time watching the sea channel south of Po Toi Island than anyone else, and has observed that the movement of seabirds in that part of Hong Kong's...
View ArticleDrifting along
I mentioned in my post about the successful boat trip of 26th April that we planned to do it all again. And so we did, on Saturday 3rd May. But the weather was clearer and the birds fewer. One of the...
View ArticleLast Rites of Spring at Mai Po
Well, I hope not, but 10th of May is getting quite late for spring passage here in the tropics…. The rain of the past couple of days eased up for long enough for me to decide to scuttle along to the...
View ArticleWhat a Spectacled….
It's raining here in wet-and-clammy late spring Hong Kong, so what better time to air a few more shots from Costa Rica. (Just when you thought it was all over !) We got back to San Jose on February...
View ArticleNordmann's Greenshank from the Deep Bay Boardwalk Hides, Mai Po Nature Reserve
Nordmann's Greenshanks, like most of the other waders, have usually headed north by the end of May. This one lingered at the Mai Po boardwalk yesterday, with a few representatives of the other species...
View ArticleTaiwan : Anmashan National Forest Area and Yunlin County 30th May 2014 to 2nd...
This was a short break, with four of us Hong Kong birders looking for some of Taiwan's mountain birds, many of which just happen to be spectacular endemics. Many Thanks are owed to Meiling Tang, who...
View ArticleA trip to see Palawan Peacock Pheasant - 13th to 21st June 2014
When I was young I used to hide from tense TV dramas by skulking behind the sofa or going to see what Mum was doing in the kitchen. The prospect of the England football team's first two World Cup...
View ArticleCAÑO NEGRO… home of the Caiman
American Pygmy Kingfisher Cano Negro is an area of river floodplain close to Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua, where the Rio Frio flows towards Lake Nicaragua. We visited at the end of February this...
View ArticleLa Selva Biological Research Station, Costa Rica
Pale-billed Woodpeckers, La Selva Our first taste of the public bus system in Costa Rica saw us on board a shiny new Chinese-made "Higer" coach, thundering southeast from Los Chiles near the...
View Article"Rain, rain, go away…"
Just in case anyone was worried that I'd moved to Central America, I know that a post from Hong Kong is somewhat overdue. It's been raining for the past couple of days with a typhoon passing to Hong...
View ArticleBlack Bazas - summer visitors to Hong Kong
Black Baza is a species that expanded it's breeding range from far southwest China (and Vietnam, Laos, Thailand) to Hong Kong and other parts of south-east China through the 1970s and 1980s. But from...
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