photographic highlights 2021–22: part 3

…continued from Part 2.

The first photo is a shot of the Ng Tung River about 2km upstream from where it flows past our village. I have no idea what kind of plant is creating these green splodges, which I’ve never seen anywhere else:

Notice that like all significant watercourses in the northern New Territories, the river has been canalized. I shudder to speculate what intensity of rainfall would cause the flow to overtop the banks.

There is just one cotton tree in our village (a big one), and this is what the ‘mess on the ground’ looks like when the flowers drop:

The next photo shows another bougainvillea that I’d never seen before. It is located alongside a dirt road that we now refer to as ‘accidental tourists’ (so named because we were shooting a video, and Paula went the wrong way, inadvertently discovering a through route that we hadn’t previously known existed):

Paula spotted this moth on the west wall of the local wai (‘walled enclosure’). The wingspan is almost 15cm:

The cycle track from Taipo to Shatin runs along the shore of Tolo Harbour, and I stopped to take this photo of a large group of egrets on an artificial island close to the shore:

The right-hand half of the ridge in the distance is Pat Sin Leng (‘eight summits ridge’).

I spotted this ceramic ornament, apparently discarded, lying on the ground next to a tree. I’ve no real idea of what it depicts, although there is a tale in Chinese folklore about eight fairies (which is also an alternative translation of ‘Pat Sin’). However, there are only six on this object:

I’ve taken photos of this bougainvillea, in the grounds of a school next to the cycle track that runs alongside Jockey Club Road, before. I didn’t realize at the time I took this photo that someone else was also taking a photo of the display:

Dry-stone walls are an integral part of the scenery where I come from in England, but I never expected to find one in Hong Kong. I discovered this wall off the beaten track somewhere between Fanling and Taipo:

I was surprised to see this graffito, on the abutment of a bridge over a large nullah (‘storm drain’) in the Kam Tin area, as I cycled past. It reads ‘FREEDOM’, so it probably dates to the anti-government protests in 2019, although it’s in a location where few people will see it:

The final bougainvillea photo in this collection is of a plant adorning a covered seating area next to the cycle track that runs along the side of the railway and expressway in west Fanling. This location is a short distance south of the construction site that I wrote about in Constructivism. I never used to come this way, but thanks to the disruption caused by construction along our local river, this cycle track is now our standard way home after cycling ‘out west’:

After taking the photos that I used in Constructivism, I walked back home through Sheung Shui along a route that took me past S.K.H. Chan Young Secondary School. I photographed these two paintings on the wall of the school by poking my camera through the railings:

Last month, I was cycling ‘out west’ by myself, and on the spur of the moment I decided to explore the area south of the big tree temple, which I’d never checked out previously. Among the things I discovered here was this house, which has the date 1936 above the portico on the left. To my surprise, it is marked on Google Maps, where I learned that the house was built by an Indonesian Chinese man and is known locally as ‘the Great Beam House’. It appears to be abandoned, but it isn’t possible to go inside:

I had intended to create a post specifically about flame trees, but almost all the trees that I’ve seen this year produced only patchy displays of colour. The next photo shows one of the few exceptions. It was taken looking west along Ting Kok Road, on the eastern outskirts of Taipo:

Paula and I were cycling along the approach road to ‘the hospital path’ when I heard a shout from behind. My wife had spotted a large cluster of toadstools next to the road. I took quite a few photos, of which this is the best (there were many more toadstools that are not in the photo):

Another fungal photo. This one shows a bracket fungus on a section of fallen tree trunk next to the pavilion in the village of Shui Mei where we always stop for a short break:

I was up on our roof recently playing about with the telephoto function of my camera. This was the result:

My final photo in this year’s collection was also taken on our roof. A few days earlier, we’d noticed a hornet that appeared to be in the process of building a nest, and it had clearly been extremely busy in the interim. The vertical dimension is about 15cm:

Paula thinks we should destroy it, but I want to see what, if anything, happens next.

previous highlights collections
Photographic Highlights: 2015–16
Photographic Highlights: 2016–17
Photographic Highlights: 2017–18
Photographic Highlights: 2018–19
Photographic Highlights: 2019–20 (Part 1)
Photographic Highlights: 2019–20 (Part 2)
Photographic Highlights: 2020–21 (Part 1)
Photographic Highlights: 2020–21 (Part 2)