egad! extraordinary egret expanse

Egrets are very common in aquatic environments in Hong Kong, especially around the fish ponds along the border west of Fanling and in the Kam Tin River—but only at low tide in the river. We frequently see groups of 30–40 individuals in the Kam Tin River, but we were unprepared yesterday for the sight that confronted us as we cycled along San Tin Tsuen Road.

This road, which circles around the northern and western edges of the group of villages collectively known as San Tin, carries so little traffic that there’s a point where we always encounter three or four dogs sleeping in the middle of the road! San Tin is worth a visit because it contains several historical buildings (New Fields), but we invariably follow this bypass because our objective lies much further west, and the design of the recently completed cycle track connecting Sheung Shui and Yuen Long, which avoids San Tin to the south, is a disjointed dog’s breakfast, so we use it only where we haven’t been able to find an alternative.

We’d started yesterday’s bike ride east of Fanling so that we could follow the Hok Tau country trails, after which we decided to continue along what we always refer to as ‘the frontier road’ on our way west. I’d described this road, which used to be another quiet ride with minimal traffic, as ‘like a rural cart track’ in a recent post as a result of damage caused by heavy construction vehicles, to be avoided if possible, but while I was out of action last month, Paula had ridden along it and reported that the damaged sections had been resurfaced, so I wanted to see whether that meant we could start using it again. We could.

From the western end of the frontier road, it’s necessary to follow Lok Ma Chau Road, which leads to a major crossing point into China, and it usually carries a lot of high-speed traffic, but the border has been closed since the start of the pandemic, and we’ve been using it during this period. We shall have to find an alternative once the border reopens though.

Anyway, the next section is San Tin Tsuen Road, which you can see on this map:

When we reached the fish pond marked by an X on the map, we were staggered to see hundreds of egrets. The pond had been drained—the egrets wouldn’t have been there otherwise—so we stopped to take a few photos. This is a view of the northeastern corner of the pond:

Not an exceptional number of birds here, or so you might think, but there is a high wire-mesh fence between the pond and the road, restricting the view. And there is quite a lot of vegetation in the way, although I deliberately included the bougainvillea in the next photo because, well, I like bougainvillea:

Despite the trees, you can get some idea of how many egrets there were here from this photo:

Having taken the previous photos, we continued on our way, but within a short distance the vegetation on the bank had been cleared, and we could therefore get a better view, so we stopped again:

Like all the photos I took yesterday, the previous photos are the view looking northeast.

At this point, Paula asked a question:

“Why are there so many egrets here?”

I thought that she was looking to me for an explanation, but she’d just spotted several fish floundering around the edge of the pond, which clearly didn’t have enough water for them to survive indefinitely. And they were therefore easy prey for the egrets—the avian equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

All the remaining photos are general views of the pond followed by enlarged versions of the area of interest. This is the first:

…the second:

…and the third:

As I mentioned, one of the reasons that I was able to take such clear photos of the egret population in the pond was the absence of vegetation on the near bank, but there was another factor—only in Hong Kong. There were a couple of chairs next to the fence—we’ve often seen people sitting there—and by standing on one I was able to position my camera above the fence. The first photos above were taken with my camera held at arm’s length above my head!

There was just one minor disappointment. Although we usually continue beyond the end of San Tin Tsuen Road, our intention this time, because we’d started ‘out east’, was to double back once we’d reached the end of the road. As we approached the western corner of the pond, we spooked more than a hundred egrets, which immediately took flight. I’d love to have captured that on video. Maybe next time.