early one morning

I can’t believe it. I’ve been back in my home town for more than five weeks, and I still haven’t been out on the bike. Too bloody cold! The unusual weather in Hong Kong, which I complained about in Haywire, is being replicated here in Britain, although clearly the culprit here is not El Niño. Equally clearly though, it seems to me, the two phenomena are connected.

I may not have been doing any cycling, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. I’ve been out for a walk around my home town every morning, whatever the weather, although I won’t cover more than 5–6km if it’s raining. There is usually plenty to see and hear as I walk the town’s ‘green’ footpaths, quiet residential streets and even quieter country lanes.

The first ‘checkpoint’ on my walk is Thacka Beck Nature Reserve, a small wetland area on the northwest fringe of town. Thacka Beck is an artificial stream that was created in the fourteenth century to provide the town with a water supply. It connects the River Petteril to the north with the River Eamont to the south, and at one time it split the town in two, but nowadays it is completely covered over apart from one very short section.

The wetland area is essentially a buffer zone that was built to ameliorate the potentially catastrophic flooding that used to occur all too frequently in the town centre. Ducks are a common sight here, and the occasional moorhen can also be spotted:

There are also four cows that have been left to graze the marshy area around the central pond:

I have mentioned these animals mainly because they do not appear to belong to any of the common breeds found on British farms. It would not be surprising if they did turn out to be exotics though, because there is an agricultural college a mile or so down the lane, and you wouldn’t believe the strange-looking sheep I’ve seen in some of the fields.

The other day, all four cows were making extensive use of the sign that proclaims that the nature reserve was constructed using funds from the European Union:

This one had what I can only describe as an excruciating itch in its right cheek, which it didn’t seem able to alleviate, although that didn’t deter it from persevering. I thought that the scratching looked painful.

Leaving the nature reserve behind, my route takes me under the railway, but on one occasion a few weeks ago I’d just passed under the bridge when I heard a very striking birdsong. I managed to make several recordings, and although it was very much a case of point and hope, I also took a photograph that was at least good enough to help with identification (if not much better).

An unidentified songbird (click to play):


I sent the photo and recording to a friend, who prefers that I don’t mention his name. He suggested that it was a mistle thrush, an identification that I was able to confirm on the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) website, which provided an audio clip. I’ve since noted several on my walks, often in the same tree, at the same time, but this bird has never been back.

The route then leaves town to the north, following a series of quiet country lanes, before doubling back across the town’s golf course and through a short wooded section…

…to reach the edge of the built-up area.

Most of what was farmland to the southeast of town when I was growing up has long ago been developed for housing, and this process is continuing, but there is still a pleasant path through the fields that avoids current developments:

On several recent occasions, I’ve encountered this small group of sheep, which appears to have become trapped in this area after forcing its way through a spring-loaded gate. These individuals are remarkably calm and relaxed given how close I was (I couldn’t get any further away).

It even has a traditional stone stile, although this one is a tight squeeze:

I had been in the habit of heading back through town shortly after crossing this stile, but this morning it occurred to me that if I kept going until I reached the River Eamont, I’d find a public footpath along the north bank. Here are some photos taken from this path:

Although this isn’t the end of the walk, there is no option, once the next road has been reached, but to head back into and across town. And that’s enough exercise for the day.

black and white minstrels

According to Wikipedia, seventeen species of thrush have been recorded in Hong Kong, but I’ve heard only one, and then on only one occasion. This total does not include the masked laughing thrush, which isn’t a thrush, as anyone who has heard its single-note squawk can confirm. And of the seventeen, seven are not native and have therefore been recorded only occasionally.

In the absence of such authentic songbirds in my own neighbourhood, the magpie robin has no serious rivals as the most accomplished songster. Wikipedia makes the following statements about this species:

The calls of many other species may be imitated as part of their song.

They appear to use elements of the calls of other birds in their own songs.

However, I’ve heard no evidence to corroborate either of these statements anywhere in Hong Kong, although magpie robins can be found throughout South and Southeast Asia, so it may be that in other parts of the bird’s range such imitation does take place.

Wikipedia also claims that it is a forest bird, although it can be seen and heard in urban gardens. As far as Hong Kong is concerned, this claim is nonsense. I have neither seen nor heard a magpie robin in any of the territory’s primary forest, but they are common in urban parks that have many trees.

Magpie robins are aggressive birds: I’ve seen quite a few aerial dogfights and high-speed chases through the branches of nearby trees as one male attempts to drive a rival from its territory. And their threat calls, which you might mistake for the sound of an insect, do sound quite menacing.

The typical magpie robin song consists of a six- to ten-note phrase, endlessly repeated. This phrase can be broken down into an initial three- or four-note segment, which is usually a piercing, high-pitched whistle, followed by a second segment that offers some scope for distinctive vocal flourishes. However, some such phrases are much longer, as can be heard in the following recording:

The dominant male around my house (click to play):


Each individual has its own song, and it turns out that I recorded the individual featured in this clip four times, presumably because my house falls within its territory. However, this next clip features a newcomer that seemed intent on muscling in. I saw it first atop the metal pole used to support a neighbour’s television aerial, where it repeatedly turned in different directions as it sang, probably to ensure that its presence was heard, and noted, throughout the neighbourhood. After it had briefly repeated this performance on a second neighbour’s aerial, it alighted on mine, where I recorded it.

An aggressive newcomer tries to muscle in (click to play):


I recorded the best example of what I referred to above as ‘vocal flourishes’ a couple of years ago. At the end of each iteration of its song, this individual added either a three-note phrase or a distinctive two-note, ‘wink! wink!’ vocalization.

A distinctive vocal flourish (click to play):


A few weeks ago, I was standing on my balcony, listening to a magpie robin singing from the top of the streetlight opposite my house, when I spotted a young couple walking down the road. Neither was talking, probably because both were gazing intently at the screens of their smartphones. I doubt whether either was even aware of the free musical entertainment being provided just a short distance above their heads, which I think is a sad reflection on modern society.

Unfortunately, I failed to record the most arresting magpie robin song that I heard this spring. At first, I thought that the singer was being accompanied by a second bird, which was singing in a different register, but after listening intently I concluded that it was all the work of a single bird. It sounded as if an intense conversation was taking place as the bird switched seamlessly from one register to the other with no identifiable gap between them. So why did I not record it?

I hadn’t used my digital recorder for three years, and I’d forgotten how to operate it. I tried pressing every button, but to no avail; I’d forgotten that in order to switch it on, I not only had to press the correct button, I had to keep it pressed until the screen lit up. Much to my disappointment, I never heard this performance again, but at least I’m not likely to forget how to use my recorder next spring.

dawn along the indus

Our local river is much smaller in both scale and power than its namesake in Pakistan, and unlike the original it no longer floods. I won’t pretend that it’s a riparian wilderness, because it was canalized in the 1990s and nowadays looks distinctly artificial, but it’s home to a wide variety of birds, and it is full of fish. There are remnants of the old course of the river, where the outer parts of some of the widest meanders have been bypassed, and these marshy areas are home to thousands of frogs at this time of year.

This year has been exceptional, in that millions of periodic cicadas are now drowning out the routine bird calls:

It takes a lot of insects to make this much noise (click to play):


…making it necessary to do any bird recordings before the sun rises:

The local birds kick off up to an hour before sunrise (click to play):


Early morning is a pleasant time for a gentle stroll along the river, as the following series of photographs shows:

Looking downstream (west). The high-rise buildings over the hill are part of Shenzhen, the ‘Wild East’, a city of ten million people that was a fishing village just three decades ago.

“As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow bend”.

Looking upstream from the same point where the previous photos were taken. The high-rise apartments mark the eastern edge of Fanling.

The confluence of the river’s two main tributaries.

And if you come back after dark, you will discover that the frog chorus has changed dramatically from that of a month ago:

Yet another frog chorus (click to play):


Compare this recording with the third one in We All Stand Together. Both were recorded in the same place.

one sunday afternoon

Wouldn’t it be nice to get on wiv me neighbours,
But they make it very clear: they’ve got no room for ravers.

The Small Faces, Lazy Sunday.

Yesterday was the annual open day of our local branch of the People’s Liberation Army, whose base our balcony overlooks. Not that we can actually see anything: our direct view is blocked by two large trees and a huge clump of bamboo, so we can hear far more than we can see. We’re reduced to looking left or right, which provides limited information on what is happening at any given time (see photos below).

A squad of PLA soldiers practises kung fu. They aren’t very good.

An armoured personnel carrier stands by ready to ride to the rescue when required. The climbing frame appeared last summer and rather spoils the view, but by way of compensation we get to see China’s finest in action. They aren’t very good.

Our neighbours provide a new meaning for the term ‘racketeer’: although we’ve become accustomed to random noise from the camp—formerly garrisoned by the British under the name ‘Gallipoli Lines’—the PLA excelled themselves last week as they practised for the open day, which meant lots of shooting and shouting. While shouting is so common that I was driven to conclude, when we moved into the area, that it must be a battlefield tactic to confuse and intimidate the enemy, shooting is a mercifully rare occurrence, except when the soldiers are practising for an event.

Shooting and shouting are not the only ways in which the PLA annoys its neighbours. Heavy military helicopters fly in over the rooftops from time to time, and the base also has its own brass band. You might expect such a band to play patriotic Chinese tunes, and so it does, but I’ve also heard Strauss’s Radetzky March and the coda from Rossini’s William Tell overture from time to time. The former was featured yesterday in the build-up to the main event of the afternoon, which is captured in the second of the two audio clips below.

The most prominent feature of the first audio clip is the two disputatious black-collared starlings in the tree directly in front of our house. These are quickly joined by a pair of crested mynahs, while in the background the band strikes up the Radetzky March. The other musical background is provided by my stereo, which just happened to be on when the ‘entertainment’ began. Towards the end of the clip, a koel kicks off and provides an excellent example of how this bird’s call grows progressively louder and more strident as it warms up.

Welcome to the asylum (click to play):


The second clip is the mock battle scene. Listening to this, you will have no more idea of events than I, except that I was able to observe the armoured personnel carrier leave its place of concealment all gun blazing. The birds have fallen silent. The loudest explosions are not captured adequately by my recorder: all that you can hear is a short hiss followed by a generalized roar, but in reality these are so loud that they invariably set off alarms in all the cars parked in the vicinity. The music playing quietly in the background, which I think is splendidly serendipitous given that it is one track on a thousand-track random playlist, is Dance for the One by post-hippy band Quintessence, which was active in the early 1970s and was heavily influenced by Eastern mysticism.

Let battle commence (click to play):


Noisy neighbours? Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, who has applied this epithet to his crosstown rivals, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

a day in the life

I saw the news today, oh boy!
Four thousand graves in Fanling countryside
I didn’t count them all
But I know how many ghosts it takes
To hear a koel’s call.
And this may turn you on….

with apologies to John Lennon.

Yesterday was a typical day: routine errands in the morning, and an afternoon spent working on rehabilitation. I’ve been cycling along the riverbank for the past three weeks, but last week, looking for slightly hilly terrain, I discovered a quiet road that meandered up and down the spurs and hollows at the base of the ridge that overlooks the river. I’d known about the road, but I’d assumed that it was a dead end, leading only to a small village. However, it turned out that an access road to the scores of graves on the hillside below the ridge led from the other side of the village. This is the very hillside that was consumed by a carelessly started conflagration during Ching Ming.

First, the errands. Nothing to write about here, except that on the way home I suddenly noticed a partial sunbow overhead. This relatively uncommon phenomenon is caused by ice crystals in the stratosphere diffracting the sun’s rays, in contrast to a rainbow, which is caused by refraction of those same rays. Refraction occurs when light passes from one medium into another with a different refractive index and can be described as a bending of light. Diffraction, by contrast, is where light is scattered; this scattered light forms a halo around the primary light source.

A partial sunbow. This is a genuine picture and not mere glare caused by pointing the camera at the sun.

My afternoon bike ride began in similarly auspicious circumstances. I’d gone less than half a mile before I noticed a white-throated kingfisher perched on the railings alongside the river. Kingfishers are not rare—there are six species in Hong Kong—but they are not a common sight either. It took off as I stopped to take a closer look, and as it skimmed low over the river I could have been forgiven for thinking that it was scattering sand in a thin arc beneath its flight path. Actually, the disturbance in the water would have been fish close to the surface executing crash dives to avoid attracting the predator’s attention as it swooped overhead.

Two uncommon sights in one day! I wondered if there would be opportunity for a third. I turned off the road along the riverbank towards the village of Wah San Tsuen. After leaving the village, the road passes through an area of thick woodland before emerging onto open hillside and an area where there are many graves. I stopped to photograph the damage wreaked by last week’s hill fire.

This hillside almost certainly burns every few years, because there is little except low scrub, elephant grass…and graves.

I continued on my way until it was possible to double back along the riverbank to my starting point. Naturally, one circuit is not sufficient, and it was not long before I was again passing through the thickly wooded area. I remembered that someone had asked me whether I had any recordings of cicadas, and I couldn’t help but notice the intense screeching all around. Very little unwanted background, I thought, so this should be a good place to make a recording. However, as I drew to a halt, I suddenly became aware of an unfamiliar song, and I almost fell off my bike in my haste to dismount and get the recorder out. I have no idea of the identity of the singer (there were two, presumably of the same species), and I’m posting the songs here in the hope that someone can identify them. Cicadas can be heard rasping in the background.

Two duets by the same two unknown songbirds (click to play):



I’ve previously enthused about magpie robins, which are common where I live and are the pop singers of the avian world, but these birds, which were recorded in undisturbed woodland, are opera singers by comparison. Naturally, I went round for a third circuit, but I heard nothing else. However, I will be back.

Just another day in Fanling.

we all stand together

Frog he would a-wooing go,
“Heigh ho!” says Rowley,
Frog he would a-wooing go,
Whether his mother would let him or no.
With a roly-poly, gammon and spinach,
“Heigh ho!” says Anthony Rowley.

traditional folk song.

Paul McCartney has composed quite a few turkeys in his time—Mull of Kintyre and Give Ireland Back to the Irish spring immediately to mind—but perhaps the most turkish of the lot is We All Stand Together, allegedly by the Frog Chorus. If I’d written this horror I think that I’d want to hide behind a pseudonym too, so I shall not be providing a link, and if you haven’t heard this recording, you will have to take my word for it that it is as grim as I’m suggesting.

By way of compensation, I thought that some genuine frog choruses might make for an interesting diversion. It’s that time of year again, the breeding season, and a walk along our local river after dark reveals the frog population in full voice. There are 20 species of frog and three species of toad in Hong Kong, and they are found in a wide variety of habitats: rivers, mountain streams, ponds, swamps and flooded former paddy fields.

The concrete shafts that form part of the territory’s storm water drainage system can be regarded as a habitat sub-type, because Asiatic painted frogs (Kaloula pulchra pulchra), individually the loudest of the local species, are frequently heard at the bottom of them. The shafts, which are one metre square in cross-section, act as acoustic resonators to amplify their croaking; you can hear the effect in the first two audio clips. The booming sound that you can hear in the first clip, similar to and almost as loud as a mooing cow, is an Asiatic painted frog several feet away in a large storm drain, while the other types of croak in the recording belong to two other species, as yet unidentified.

This chorus is loud enough to drown out two barking dogs a mere 15 yards away (click to play):


The second recording also features an Asiatic painted frog, but in this case I held the recorder next to the entry drain to a shaft. You could say that the sound is like that of a euphonium fed through a Marshall amplifier. Paula was standing on the concrete cover of the shaft and said that she could feel the reverberations. You can certainly hear them. The third recording was made in an open field and features at least four frog species.

Feel the vibrations (click to play—be sure to turn the volume to maximum):


How many different ‘croak’ styles can you identify? (click to play):


At this point, you may be wondering why I chose to begin this post by quoting the well-known song about the courtship habits of Mr Frog. In fact, all this creaking, croaking, clicking, clacking, clucking, stuttering, muttering, rumbling, grumbling, groaning and moaning can loosely be described as a series of ‘love serenades’, although it isn’t obvious what sound qualities an amorous amphibian might be looking for in a prospective mate. Purity of tone? Musicality? Loudness?

Many years ago, when I lived in the Sai Kung area, I was walking home along a quiet country road late one night when my attention was attracted by a cacophonous racket emanating from the storm drain on the opposite side of the road. I discovered that the drain had been blocked by fallen leaves, and in the pool behind the dam a dozen frogs were floating lazily, their cheek pouches rhythmically inflating and deflating in a honking concerto of booming croaks. It all seemed very lackadaisical, a kind of ‘I’m here if you want me, take it or leave it’.

And what about the apparently cooperative nature of some croaking? The village where we lived between 2005 and 2008 still had its paddy fields intact, and a path led through them to the next village. To stand in the middle of that paddy and hear thousands of frogs, all of the same species, croaking together as if they were following the baton of some invisible conductor, was an unforgettable experience. Not surprisingly, it was also a happy hunting ground for the local snakes, and it was a common occurrence to hear a thrashing kind of commotion out in the darkness as yet another snake found its dinner, a meal that from the snake’s point of view would have been preferable to a wedding dish of gammon and spinach.

Mention of the darkness reminds me to point out that our frogs are nocturnal, and they are hard to spot during the day, when they are probably hiding in rock crevices, under the leaf litter or in the long grass, where their natural camouflage helps them to resist discovery. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to work against egrets, which are common hereabouts. I often see these voracious predators in the field opposite our house after heavy rain, walking stealthily through the grass, head bent low to the ground and every so often snatching at something I cannot see that is then swallowed immediately. I can only surmise that what the egret is eating is a frog, because a lot of croaking emanates from the field at night, and the main diet of an egret is fish. However, the easily caught frogs are a bounty the egrets cannot resist, and many perish in this way (an individual egret can gobble down a dozen or more). Roly-poly pudding is not provided!

I’ve not been able to take any pictures of frogs in their natural surroundings to date. This spotted narrow-mouthed frog (Kalophrynus interlineatus) was snapped as it attempted to cross the concrete access road that runs along the river, where its natural camouflage will not stop it being trodden underfoot by an unwary pedestrian or squashed by a passing cyclist.

the first koel

No, it isn’t Christmas, and that’s not a misprint. The koel is a common bird around these parts, and it has a very distinctive call. I used to think that it was a seasonal visitor, like the European cuckoo, which every year provokes a competition among writers to the national newspapers in England to determine who heard one first. However, this year I heard a koel on 16th February, which is seriously early for a mere visitor, even though we have had a surprisingly mild winter.

The reference to the cuckoo is not a coincidence, because the koel is sometimes referred to as the Asian cuckoo, although the two are not related. However, like the cuckoo it is a brood parasite (laying its eggs in the nests of other birds), and like the cuckoo its call is instantly recognizable. The similarity ends there: while the call of the cuckoo is gently evocative of the English summer, the koel’s call is extremely loud and insistent. Two years ago (Birdsong) I had no idea what I was hearing and described it as the ‘swanee whistler’, because its call resembles the sound made by a swanee whistle as the plunger is pulled out. However, I should point out that the swanee whistle hasn’t been made that can match the volume generated by a koel on full throttle.

Only a week after hearing the first koel, I heard a magpie robin singing. Although these birds are here all year round, they sing only in springtime. But they are the best singers around these parts, and each individual has its own song. It may sound odd to be saying so, but you need to see a magpie robin singing in order to appreciate its song, because the whistling sound by which this bird can be identified is only a part of its repertoire. The background of short chirps and throaty warbles that you hear is easily mistaken for the contribution of other birds, but watching confirms that it is all the output of a single individual.

The song of an individual magpie robin is often very complex (click to play):


Over the past few days, I have been out and about trying to record some of these sounds of springtime; yesterday, I heard a magpie robin singing its heart out at the top of the tree in front of our house, so I rushed up to the roof to record it. Behind the robin, an invisible koel was also sounding off. If you can imagine a piccolo soloist in the front row of a symphony orchestra, interrupted at the end of every bar by a brief glissando from a bass trombone, played fortissimo, in the back row, then you will have a good idea of the musical conflict involved.

The call of a koel drowns out a magpie robin’s song (click to play):


Having mentioned the mistaken association of the koel with the European cuckoo, I am reminded of other local birds that bear no resemblance to purported European relatives. The masked laughing thrush, which looks like a fat partridge wearing a Lone Ranger-style mask, possesses none of the musical talents of its European and North American namesakes. Its local name, ‘seven sisters’, is a reflection of two characteristics: it tends to appear in groups of six or seven; and they all ‘talk’ at once, producing the incessant chatter that is also reflected in the well-known Cantonese saying ‘three women make a market’.

The black-collared starling, like its European namesake, has some talent as a mimic, but it looks more like a parrot or a puffin, apart from the beak. Although these birds can occasionally be seen in large groups, they are more usually seen in pairs, which appear to be arguing constantly. They are the commonest victims of the koel’s egg-laying activities, which may account for their ill-tempered exchanges.

One common local bird that cannot be mistaken for a European lookalike is the red-whiskered bulbul, which has a prominent pointed black crest and red cheeks. Ever since I learned, a few years ago, that the local name for this bird is the ‘court official’, I’ve been unable to observe its fussy antics, constantly hopping from twig to twig, without being reminded of the silly hats that used to be worn by high-ranking civil servants in imperial China. Its song is easily recognized—always the same sequence of four notes—but I sometimes wonder why, if it is able to sing four different notes, it doesn’t sometimes sing them in a different order. After all, it has 4!(=24) permutations to choose from.

It was probably a mistake to equate the koel with the loudest instrument in a standard symphony orchestra, because the ‘telephone ringer’ has yet to make an appearance this year. I’ve no idea of the real identity of this bird, because I’ve yet to see one, but what I can say is that this one is not only loud; it is deafening if heard at close range. And, to make things even worse, it keeps going all night! The ‘fire alarm’, by comparison, has quite a modest call, although the only reason I don’t mistake it for the real thing is that we don’t have one installed.

What the hell was that? A ‘telephone ringer’ deafens the neighbourhood (click to play):


postscript, 7th april
I feel as if I’ve just guessed Rumpelstiltskin’s real name. After years of calling it a ‘telephone ringer’, I’ve discovered that it is a large hawk cuckoo, and like the koel it is a brood parasite.