red legs

I don’t consider myself to be a birdwatcher, but I do like to know the identity of birds that I see around my home and when I’m out cycling. Mind you, Paula and I have our own names for many of the birds we see or hear regularly, based on either their calls or their appearance. For example, the large hawk cuckoo is the ‘telephone ringer’—it doesn’t actually sound like a telephone ringing, but the cadence is the same. Black-collared starlings are ‘noisy buggers’—Paula’s coinage, although if you hear a pair ‘arguing’ you will understand. And red-whiskered bulbuls are ‘pointy heads’, an allusion to their prominent crests.

This is also the case with ‘red legs’, more formally known as black-winged stilts. You may guess from the formal name that they have extremely long legs, and from our name that these legs are bright red, although you can’t tell this from any of the photos below. I’ve seen the odd individual bird in my local river (Ng Tung River), and also on the upper reaches of the Sheung Yue River, which is part of the same catchment. However, to see these birds in large numbers, the Kam Tin River, in the western New Territories, is the place. Yesterday, I took the following photo at the point where we first reach the river:

I’ve seen cormorants, spoonbills and avocets here, which are all seasonal visitors, in addition to the local herons and egrets, although avian activity is limited when the tide is high. You can just make out a group of red legs to the left of the solitary mangrove tree. The high-rise buildings in the distance are in Shenzhen.

From this point, our route continues upstream to Hung Mo Bridge, which we cross. We then follow a Drainage Services access road along the west bank of the river to a point where the river divides into two. A short distance upstream from the confluence, there is a dam across the more westerly tributary, and there was a large group of red legs spread out across it:

This is a closer view:

We’ve often seen red legs here, but I don’t think we’ve seen quite this many at one time.

There were so many that there was a spillover group a few metres behind the dam, which we’d never seen before:

You can see the MTR’s West Rail Line in the background, and also what I believe is a water treatment plant.

And this is a closer view of the second group of red legs:

…while this photo provides a general view of the two groups:

A few individuals were foraging for food in the water behind the dam:

The last photo that I took here is a view looking downstream, also showing the two groups of red legs:

The mouth of the eastern tributary can be seen between the right-hand and central reflections of the support pillars of the rail line.

Finally, on the previous Saturday, the water level was high when we arrived at the river, and there seemed to be no activity to record. Suddenly, however, there were a couple of loud croaks, I think from egrets further up the unnamed tributary that joins the main river here, and this spooked a large group of red legs that had been assembled at a point on the opposite bank. They flew off in tight formation—an incredibly impressive sight that prompted a frantic scrabble to get our phones out. Unfortunately, I was too late, and Paula just managed to record the last 10 seconds as they returned to where they’d started, by which time the formation had become somewhat ragged:

I cycle this way at least once a week at this time of year, and now is the time for seasonal visitors, so look out for more reports on bird life on the Kam Tin River.