SAN TIN

14/2/2017

Fish pond, San Tin, February 11 2017

I have spent some time on three afternoons recently walking the bunds between the fish ponds at San Tin, bird watching and taking photographs. I like this area. It is quiet; there are few people around apart from the fish farmers going about their business. In many ways, it’s a place “far from the madding crowd” – or it would be were it not for the metropolis of Shenzhen a stone’s throw away. Once - even in my time here - most of that modernistic city was like San Tin, undeveloped countryside. No more.

San Tin is very birdy. Egrets are everywhere, feeding on discarded dead fish, or live fish when a pond is drained down. Great Cormorants are constantly flying overhead and Black-faced Spoonbills fly over too, sometimes coming down to feed on drained ponds although they are shyer than the egrets and often fly off when they detect a human presence.

Waders frequent the sides of the ponds: mainly tringa sandpipers – Common, Green and Wood Sandpipers, and Common Greenshanks – but also Black-winged Stilts.

Duck frequent the less disturbed ponds. I saw Northern Shoveler, Eurasian Teal and a single Garganey during my afternoon visits, but the most obvious birds on the ponds are Little Grebes. One pond held 25 of these birds.

Black Kites are common scavengers here, as are Collared Crows. Other birds of prey I’ve noted on my recent visits are Common Kestrel, Western Osprey and a juvenile Pied Harrier; the latter is rare in Hong Kong outside the autumn migration period but this individual seems to be wintering here. Other bird watchers have reported Eastern Imperial and Greater Spotted Eagles – perhaps more likely in the early morning than the afternoon.

Black-headed Gulls also fly in from Deep Bay to feed over the ponds. On February 12th, they were joined by four Whiskered Terns - the first 2017 record of this species on its spring migration through Hong Kong.

The bunds themselves hold a number of Eastern Yellow and White Wagtails, and Richard’s, Red-throated and Olive-backed Pipits, as well as Little Buntings and Stejneger’s Stonechats.

Other common birds here are kingfishers – Common, Pied and White-throated - and a variety of mynas, starlings and doves. The latter birds often feed on the heaps of discarded white bread crusts that are presumably put out by the farmers on the bunds as supplemental fish food. Species I’ve seen on my three February visits are Common and Crested Mynas, Black-collared, White-shouldered, White-cheeked and Red-billed Starlings, and Spotted, Eurasian Collared, Red Turtle and Oriental Turtle Doves.

The images that follow were taken during my recent visits.

Great Cormorants flying past Ping An IFC, Shenzhen. Photographed from San Tin, February 11 2017. This is, apparently, the 4th tallest building in the world.